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Change, Culture and Tradition:British Muslim pupils talk aboutMuslim girls’ post-16 ‘choices’LOUISE ARCHERInstitute for Policy Studies in Education, University of North London,166–220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB, UK (e-mail: L.Archer@unl.ac.uk)

ABSTRACT This article explores interactions of ‘race’, gender and ethnicity within BritishAsian Muslim pupils’ constructions of Muslim girls’ post-16 choices. Dominant policydiscourses have framed educational choices as rational and individualistic, against which,popular public discourses have positioned Muslim girls as having limited ‘choices’ due torestrictive gendered cultural values and practices. This article problematises both suchconceptualisations through a focus upon the constructions of Muslim young men andwomen. It is argued that Muslim girls’ post-16 choices are not simply or homogeneously‘restricted’. Instead, analysis reveals how the theme of ‘choice’ can be a site of emotion,power, and contestation, because it is intricately bound up with the re/production ofidentities and inequalities. The focus of the article is not so concerned with ‘what choices aremade’ or ‘what resources are drawn upon to make choices’. Rather, it addresses how pupilsunderstand and explain notions of post-16 choice through themes of culture, change,identity and inequality. It is suggested that the young people’s negotiations around Muslimgirls’ choices can be read as part of a process of ‘doing’ masculine and feminine racialisedidentities.

‘Choice/s’

Identity is socially and culturally ‘located’ in time and space and in� ectedby rejection, displacement and desire. Post-16 ‘choices’ are bound up withthe expression and suppression of identities. (Ball et al., 2000, p. 24)

Various criticisms have been made of ‘the uni-dimensional, calculative, individualis-tic, consumer-rationalism which predominates in of� cial texts’ (Ball et al., 2000,p. 21). It has been argued to the contrary that educational choices are not rationalor neutral individual processes. As Diane Reay (1998) points out, social injusticesunderlie unequal patterns of choice between different social groups. People’s differ-ent choices are made from within very different circumstances, re� ecting theirunequal access to various forms of cultural, social and economic capital (Reay et al.,2001). Choice is thus a medium of power and strati� cation (Giddens, 1995).

ISSN 1361-3324 print; 1470-109X online/02/040359-18 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1361332022000030888

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Inequalities around educational choices have primarily been addressed in terms ofsocial class, following the work of Bourdieu (e.g. Bourdieu, 1986, 1990). Forexample, research has drawn attention to classed choices of school (Ball & Vincent,1998; Reay & Lucey, 2001), further education college (Maguire et al., 1999) andhigher education institution (e.g. Reay, 1998). Within such work it has also beenacknowledged that ‘race’, ethnicity and gender play crucial roles within patterns ofchoice (e.g. Reay et al., 2001), although it has been suggested that the interactionbetween ‘race’ and choice still requires further investigation (Maguire et al., 2000).

Feminist/critical scholarship has addressed some of the structural constraints oneducational choices in terms of gender, class and ‘race’. For example, work hasdocumented and revealed the ways in which women’s educational choices have beengenerally constrained through notions of ‘acceptability’, steering girls towards par-ticular subjects (domestic science, languages) and careers (see Stone, 1994). Simi-larly, researchers have identi� ed structural constraints on choices among, anddifferential channelling of, boys and girls from ethnic minority backgrounds (e.g.Mirza, 1992; Sewell, 1997).

But as such studies also highlight, and as suggested in the opening quotation ofthis section, ‘choices’ are not passive responses to the structural context. Choices arebound up with identities, embedded in tacit/common-sense notions of ‘what isappropriate for people like us/me’ that can be speci� cally racialised, gendered andclassed (Ball et al., 2000). Choice can be used as a site of resistance and theenactment of identities; thus, notions of ‘choice’ can be contested as part ofracialised gender relations. However, this identity/emotional aspect of educationalchoices is not always easy to tap into and may not be readily articulated, as DianeReay and colleagues found:

while material constraints on choice were readily articulated by respon-dents, there were often only hints, and barely articulated suggestions ofemotional constraints on choice. (Reay et al., 2001)

This article takes up this theoretical concern by addressing how ‘race’, ethnicity andgender identities are interwoven with British Muslim pupils’ constructions of ‘post-16 choice’. However, as detailed below, British Muslim girls’ post-16 choices areframed by distinctive theoretical and policy concerns, and are contested betweendifferent competing discourses.

Muslim Girls and Post-16 Choices

The current policy concern with ‘widening participation’ in post-compulsory edu-cation (National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, 1997) has drawnparticular attention to different patterns of educational ‘choices’ among underrepre-sented groups. In addition to concerns for white and African-Caribbean working-class men (e.g. McGivney, 1999; Lloyd, 1999), awareness has grown that:

Women from certain ethnic groups between the ages of 16 and 24 tend to‘disappear’ from participation in the preparatory stages of progression toHigher Education. (Rabiee & Thompson, 2000, p. 6)

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Muslim Girls’ Post-16 ‘Choices’ 361

Muslim girls and women from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds have thusbeen highlighted as particular causes for concern in the widening participationproject (Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, 1998) due to their low ratesof participation in post-compulsory education (Modood, 1993; Cof� eld & Vignoles,1997). This contrasts with Muslim women’s general invisibility within academicthinking and theorising (Alexander, 1998).

‘Common-sense’ understandings have identi� ed ‘culture’ as a main source ofconstraint upon Muslim young women’s post-16 choices. This explanation can betraced back through dominant public discourses which identify minority ethniccultures as ‘Other’ and problematic, and through the positioning of women asmarkers of ‘culture’ (Yuval-Davis & Anthias, 1989). For example, a number ofstudies have addressed issues at the level of ‘Asian’ identity [1] and have conceptu-alised ‘Asian cultures’ in particularly negative terms. Second/third generation youth,but particularly the girls, have been portrayed as ‘oppressed by culture’, sufferingfrom identity con� ict and ‘caught’ between two worlds, attempting to juggle the‘freedom’ of liberal Western life and education against an authoritarian, restrictivehome life (e.g. Ghuman, 1991; Hogg et al., 1988).

Within Western discourses, Muslims, in particular, have come to occupy theposition of quintessential Other (Phoenix, 1997), with Muslim women being heldup as key examples of this intractable cultural ‘difference’:

Whether she is exoticized, represented as ruthlessly oppressed and in needof liberation, or read as a victim/enigmatic emblem of religious fundamen-talism, she is often perceived as the bearer of ‘races’ and cultures that areconstructed as inherently threatening to the presumed superiority of West-ern civilizations. (Brah, 1994, p. 158)

The location of Muslim girls’ educational problems within their ‘culture’ has beenevident through debates about uniform/dress code and concerns about their (non)participation in particular lessons or activities (Verma et al., 1994). But in thedecade since the Salman Rushdie affair, Britain has seen an increase in ‘Islamapho-bia’ and public fears of ‘fundamentalist’ Islam (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1992;Burman & Parker, 1994; Lewis, 1994; Shaw, 1994). Such panics have furthercontributed to stereotypes of young Muslim women as heavily oppressed, sufferingfrom ‘wasted potential’ and prevented from continuing in education/employmentbecause they are expected and/or ‘forced’ into arranged marriages on account ofauthoritarian, ‘alien’ cultural norms and practices.

Critical sociologists/feminists (e.g. Brah & Minhas, 1986; Rattansi, 1992; Basit,1997b; Shain, 2000) have challenged such stereotypes for placing the ‘blame’ forAsian women’s oppression within ‘Asian culture’ rather than examining racisms andoppressions originating within white society. For example, Brah (1994) has exam-ined the detrimental effects of institutional racisms and sexisms on Asian/Muslimgirls’ attainment and aspirations, and argues that professionals/educators’ stereo-types play an important role in denying particular educational and employmentopportunities:

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The social imagery of Asian women as hapless dependents who would mostlikely be married off at the earliest possible opportunity has played animportant role in shaping the views that teachers or careers of� cers mighthold of young Muslim women’s education and employment prospects.Such professionals have an important role to play in encouraging ordiscouraging young Muslim women from pursuing certain types of edu-cation or employment. (Brah, 1994, p. 156)

Rather than not being allowed to work by their families, Brah found that, along withracism:

it was clear that low expectations and stereotyped perceptions of Asiangirls, their aspirations, abilities and cultures on the part of educationalprofessionals were seen by the women as a major obstacle to Asian girls’success in the labour market. (pp. 167–168)

Research has also highlighted how young British women from Asian (Brah &Minhas, 1986; Basit, 1997a; Parker-Jenkins et al., 1997) and African-Caribbean(Mirza, 1992; Archer et al., 2001) backgrounds feel that teachers expect less of themacademically and receive inadequate careers advice/support.

In addition to focusing upon structural inequalities, researchers have argued thatdominant discourses tend to portray minority ethnic subjects, but particularlywomen, as ‘passive victims’ (Mama, 1995). Thus, attention has been drawn toissues of agency, identity, diversity and resistance among young Asian men (e.g.Alexander, 2000; Archer 2001) and women. For example, Shain (2000) exploresvarious ‘coping’, resistant strategies employed by Asian girls to ‘deal’ with theirschool experiences and highlights the importance of racism and sexism in shapingthe girls’ constructions of alternative educational identities. Research has alsohighlighted not only the vibrancy of Asian female cultures, but the important role ofyoung women’s agentic identity constructions within their educational experiencesand opportunities (e.g. Brah & Minhas, 1986; Archer, 1998).

This article attempts to link together scholarship regarding the role of identitywithin educational choices with concerns about British Asian Muslim girls’ ‘restric-ted’ choices. Themes of identity, inequality, culture and power are drawn out withinan examination of how Muslim boys and girls themselves explain young Muslimwomen’s educational/career opportunities. Analysis focuses on the young people’sconstructions of ‘choice’ and the reasons underlying ‘changing choices’ in relation tothemes of gender, identity and culture.

A Discursive Approach

A discourse analytic approach (e.g. Billig et al., 1988; Billig 1991; Wetherell &Potter, 1992; Burman & Parker, 1993) is adopted in order to identify sharedpatterns of meaning in respondents’ talk and to engage with the multiplicity and� uidity of socially constructed identities and inequalities. The treatment of talk asideological also allows analysis of the ways in which different young people’sconstructions perform actions such as justifying particular power relations. The

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Muslim Girls’ Post-16 ‘Choices’ 363

views of young Muslim male and female respondents are thus framed here within awider context of multiple, shifting power relations. As Brah (1994) argues, patriar-chal discourses and practices are interwoven with, not separate from, the societalcontext:

Asian patriarchal discourses and practices in Britain do not exist outsidediscursive and material practices that are endogenous to British society;rather they are articulating con� gurations that are interwoven into thefabric of British social formations. (Brah, 1994, p. 159)

In line with such an approach, social identities, such as ‘race’, are understood as an‘unstable and “decentred” complex of social meanings constantly being transformedby political struggle’ (Omi & Winant, 1986, p. 68). As I have detailed more fullyelsewhere (Archer et al., 2001), identities and inequalities of ‘race’, gender (class,etc.) are also conceptualised as inextricably interwoven and � uid, shifting acrosstime and context, although structures of inequalities may be durably, if multiply,reproduced.

Single-sex discussion groups were conducted with 64 British Muslim male andfemale pupils, aged 14–15 years. Respondents were drawn from four schools in amedium-sized town (‘Mill Town’) in the North-west of England. The area has apredominantly ‘working-class’ population and at the time of the research recordedan unemployment rate higher than the national average. Levels of deprivation in thearea had increased in the years following the decline of the cotton mills. The schoolsvaried in terms of their student populations: pupils from Bangladeshi and Pakistanifamilies accounted for approximately 80% of ‘Lowtown’ School, 30% of ‘East� eld’and ‘West� eld’ Schools to around 10% of ‘Hightown’ School. All respondents inthis study were identi� ed by teaching staff as coming from broadly ‘working-class’families. The data reported were collected as part of a larger doctoral studyexploring British Muslim pupils’ constructions of ethnic and gender identities andinequalities in which participants discussed a range of topics, including their schoolexperiences and aspirations, gender relations and issues around gender and ‘race’inequalities (Archer, 1998). Discussion groups were tape-recorded and transcribedby the author. Parental consent was negotiated through the schools but the authoralso attempted to obtain informed personal consent from participating pupils [2].This article speci� cally examines the ways in which boys and girls talked about theirviews on Muslim girls’ education and employment. The views of both boys and girlswere sought in order to contextualise and locate issues of gender, to explore howgirls themselves understand their choices and how boys may generate and drawupon patriarchal discourses that position women’s choices in particular ways.Discussions were conducted with either the white female author (Louise) or anAsian, Pakistani female interviewer (Tamar or Nessa). The role of the researcher isdrawn out in the analyses, and fuller theoretical interpretations of interviewer/respondent issues can be found in Archer (2001) and Archer (2002).

Respondents predominantly talked about Muslim girls’ post-16 opportunitiesusing a discourse of choice/lack of choice. However, as analysis will indicate, boysand girls appeared to use different discourses.

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The Young Men’s Views

Generally, across the discussion groups Muslim boys constructed Muslim girls aslacking agency and choice in their post-16 decisions, and the issue of whether girlswould stay on in post-compulsory education was largely framed as a matter ofparental choice. As Yasser told Tamar (Asian interviewer), it all ‘depends on theirparents really’. Several boys who talked to the white interviewer drew on stereotypesof Muslim girls as forced to leave education at the age of 16 for arranged marriagesand/or domestic roles (signi� ed by ‘watching the tea’, below). But these exampleswere used jokingly within the boys’ groups and were not necessarily borne out by therespondents’ own experiences:

Louise: Do you think the girls in your year will be getting jobs like youor not?

Rakim: Well, some of themMushtak: Some won’t be allowed to-Rakim: [inaudible]Mushtak: Some will go on to do further education, soon as you’re 16

that’s-Rakim: yeah, you getting married now! [laughs]Louise: Do you know people who are getting married at 16?Rakim: I don’t know anyone.Louise: What sort of jobs do you think the girls you know will be doing?Rakim: Some of them, like the ones that do well, they’ll just be the same

as, you know um, boys. But some of them won’t even—they’lljust stay at home.

Mushtak: Watching the tea!(Hightown School)

In this extract the boys’ talk reproduces a patriarchal juxtaposition between thegendered spheres of the private (female) home and the public (male) workplace.‘Normal’ Muslim femininity is located within the domestic sphere of marriage,home and cooking, and the boys suggest that only those girls who ‘do well’academically are able to enter the world of further education/work, earning thechance to ‘be the same as … boys’. The young men’s suggestion that only some girlsattain high enough grades to warrant continuing in post-16 education is interestingin light of the widespread recent public crisis surrounding boys’ underachievementand girls’ ‘overachievement’ (see Epstein et al., 1998). It is also pertinent given thatother research has shown that young men and women are widely aware of this ‘crisis’and are likely to reiterate a notion of male underachievement (e.g. Francis, 1999).In this respect, the views of the Muslim boys reported in the above extract point toan important racialised caveat to the debate, that whilst some boys achieve betterthan others (Epstein et al., 1998), some girls also achieve less than others. The issueof whether the boys themselves would have a choice over their post-16 routes is notspeci� cally addressed within the cited extract, but throughout the discussion groups,boys took it for granted that they would ‘naturally’ continue into either education orwork. This implicit assumption could be interpreted as notions of ‘work’ being so

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Muslim Girls’ Post-16 ‘Choices’ 365

integral to the boys’ constructions of future masculine identities as to be ‘too true towarrant discussion’. Such constructions also position young men’s choices as auto-matic, naturally occurring (an issue of simply which option or route to pursue),whereas whether or not a young woman has a choice is positioned as dependentupon a mixture of internal and external factors such as culture, circumstance and/orattainment.

Shain (2000) has found that Asian girls with low levels of attainment tended toexpect to drop out of school whereas those in higher sets tended to aim to stay on,but her explanation for this occurrence differs from the views of the young men citedabove. The young men’s talk suggested that the decision to stay on at or leave schooldepends upon parental cultural gendered expectations for their daughters (withregard to marriage and domestic responsibilities) that are only ‘overridden’ for girlsthat ‘do well’. Conversely, Shain (2000) understands the expectation of leavingschool among lower-attaining Asian girls as a strategy through which the girlsactively resist the school system through ethnicised and gendered cultural discourses(which Shain terms ‘resistance through culture’). The young men’s talk suggeststhat high attaining Muslim girls can earn the privilege to be ‘like boys’ in theirpost-16 options. But Shain suggests that high-attaining Asian girls may be adoptinga ‘survival strategy’ with regard to inequalities within the education system, ratherthan viewing their attainment as a possible source of liberation from home cultures.

I would suggest that the boys’ talk can also be read as using a form of humour,grounded in its speci� c cultural, gendered location, designed to bond the boystogether in the discursive production of Muslim/Asian masculine identities. Theconstruction of ‘passive’ Muslim girls who are largely con� ned to the domesticsphere could be read within the assertion/creation of discursive hegemonic masculin-ities that try to ‘defend’ male ‘traditional’ spheres from female ‘invasion’. But asGilroy (1993) and Alexander (1996) have argued, masculine identities are negoti-ated within speci� cally racialised contexts, and may centre on struggles over thecontrol of ‘our’ women and speci� c symbols of masculinity. The boys’ talk may beread as attempting to carve out a speci� cally Muslim, male arena of dominance inrelation both to white society/men and Muslim women though the assertion ofhegemonic masculinities (Archer, 2001). Thus, by positioning Muslim girls in termsof ‘traditional’ feminine roles of domesticity and marriage, and as lacking agency,the boys are able to assert strong masculine identities and defend positions of maleprivilege.

The boys’ talk could be read as reproducing dominant ‘common-sense’ assump-tions that Muslim girls are oppressed because their choices are restricted, but theboys also drew on themes of ‘danger’, ‘change’, ‘culture’ ‘tradition’ to argue that thecauses of this restriction are located within white/British society. Generally, the boysseemed to suggest that British society is increasingly dangerous for women, who thusrequire more ‘protection’ and guidance from men. The main source of danger wasframed in terms of ‘honour’:

Tamar: Do you think your sisters should go to college?Naseem: No.

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366 L. Archer

Sham: No, I think she—‘cos my sister—your sister’s clever! [Jagdip: youknow] thing is-

Jagdip: If you’re like somewhere like Pakistan like Bangladesh they’llprobably be OK, but here-

Sham: Yeah but here! You know like-Jagdip: ‘Cos they’re more like lessons you go to your college and [Sham:

you’re mixing with boys] and go to college and how are wesupposed to know what’s happening and what’s not!

Sham: So uh they won’t let ’em … it’s the way we’ve been brought upreally, I mean.

(Lowtown School)

The boys used a notion of ‘protection’ to argue that many Asian women are/shouldbe restricted from continuing in education. The need for this protection was justi� edin terms of ‘culture’ with both the white interviewer (‘it’s tradition’) and the Asianinterviewer (‘it’s the way we’ve been brought up’). Yuval-Davis & Anthias (1989)argue that within discourses of culture, women are often positioned as ‘culturalcarriers’ and embodiments of cultural differences. As Anthias suggests, ‘genderrelations are important boundary markers between one ethnic group and another.The ‘true’ ethnic subject is often de� ned through conformity to gender stereotypes’(Anthias, 1996, p. 18). It is suggested that the young men in this study de� ned theirMuslim masculine identities in relation to women, through the ‘protection offemininity’ (Wetherell, 1993). This duty involves the policing of women’s behaviourand ‘knowing what’s going on’, as Jagdip put it. The use of the protection offemininity as a central, de� ning feature of Muslim masculinity and ‘tradition’enables the boys to both assert and maintain positions of hegemonic privilege, asthey construct themselves as powerful by virtue of their ‘caring’ for women, (seeWetherell & Potter, 1992).

Boys mentioned themes of culture and tradition in discussions with both theAsian and white interviewers, but the transcripts produced with the Asian inter-viewer were notably suffused with accounts of racism, unlike the accounts producedwith the white interviewer. Although the boys did not explicitly link the ‘protection’of Muslim girls to protection from racism, some of the boys who talked to Tamardid suggest that some parents may not let their daughters continue in educationbecause Western society is becoming more dangerous and violent. As Yasser (fromEast� eld School) suggests:

Yeah, it’s just that some parents don’t let their daughters come to highschool either [Abdul: yeah] ‘cos you know … their … their reputation thesedays is going bad [Abdul: is going bad] innit? There are guns now, peoplehave got guns in Mill Town so … when we were little kids there weren’teven one cop car, we didn’t even know what coppers were! I mean apartfrom on TV … but now you see coppers everywhere and it’s gone badder.

The boys’ invocation of an increasingly ‘dangerous’ Western/British society can beread within the construction of racialised masculinities as the boys justifying their

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Muslim Girls’ Post-16 ‘Choices’ 367

continued positions of power and privilege in relation to the girls. The boys’construction of ‘worsening’ times in Mill Town works to counter popular Westernliberalist ideals of women’s equal participation in education (which could be de-nounced as ‘irresponsible’ in an ‘unsafe’ environment). The ‘dangerous’ situationthus justi� es the tightening of ‘protective’ patriarchal relations.

It is important to note that constructions of ‘dangerous Western society’ werepredominantly produced in conversations with Tamar, and as such it might bespeculated that my whiteness may have had a ‘silencing’ effect upon the articulationof comparable discourses in groups with myself. The reasons for this may relate bothto avoiding potential racism/con� ict and through lack of meaningful shared discur-sive ‘context’—for example, in relation to Jagdip’s references to ‘back home’ inPakistan/Bangladesh. However, it is also possible that the boys’ use of such dis-courses is an example of their ‘doing’/performing racialised masculinity, activelyasserting their identities in relation to the Asian woman researcher.

The Young Women’s Views

Whereas boys located girls’ options in terms of parental choice and the maintenanceof ‘traditional’ gender roles, the young women respondents emphasised their ownagency and choice in post-16 decision-making. Choices were as personal decisions(‘anything I’m happy with’, as one girl told me) and parents were talked about assupportive of these choices (‘Well really what they want is for you to have the bestpossible thingy, life’, Nazia). Many girls suggested that parents simply ‘want thebest’ for their daughters, and education was widely regarded as a valuable route inthis respect. Only one respondent, Shanaz, suggested (to the white interviewer) that‘it’s up to my parents because Asian people think girls are not going to college’. Butthis view was strongly rejected by all the other young women in the group. Instead,the majority of girls argued against notions of ‘restrictive cultures’ and said theirparents would support whatever choices they made, particularly if these were toinvolve education:

Nazia: I’m gonna go college, my sister went so I’m gonna go … it’s easierfor us now to go to college but in like—all the girls that are� nished they say, oh before like a couple of years ago, about � veyears before, that banned Asian girls going but as a lot of peoplelike you know, you know, the other parents eased down ‘cos theyknow there are gonna be other Asian girls there, so its moreconvenient for us.

Louise: So would your parents be OK if you wanted to go college?Mirrium: Umm, they’re all right ‘cos education is good for you.(Lowtown School)

The young women overwhelmingly talked about ‘restricted choices’ as a historicalissue that, as Nazia suggests, affected girls ‘a couple of years ago’, but that was nolonger relevant. Nazia’s extract suggests that restrictions on girls going to college

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368 L. Archer

were not simply an issue of gender-appropriate expectations and options, but wererelated to fears for their daughters to enter an environment where there are few otherAsian girls. As Parker-Jenkins et al. (1997) found in their study of young Muslimwomen, for practising Muslim young women and their families, the gender (and‘race’) composition of post-compulsory education courses may be an importantconsideration. This concern was not only for religious reasons, but because practis-ing Muslim women reported experiencing hostility and negative stereotyping fromother students and teachers. The importance of a racially mixed institutionalpopulation/culture for minority ethnic (and working-class) students to ‘feel comfort-able’ (rather than ‘Othered’) is highlighted in a number of recent studies (e.g.Rabiee & Thompson, 2000; Reay et al., 2001; Hutchings & Archer, 2001; Readet al., 2003).

The young women who were interviewed by Parker-Jenkins et al. (1997) alsoconstructed a gradual change in their parents’ attitudes towards daughters’ edu-cation, and this change was explained in terms of ‘a realisation that education capitalis necessary for survival in a modern, rapidly changing society’ (Parker-Jenkins et al.,1997, p. 10). Respondents also suggested that Muslim men are increasingly lookingfor educated partners, with the result being that ‘this “cultural capital” is as essentialas caste, family and material circumstances and potential’ (Parker-Jenkins et al.,1997, p. 10). I would suggest that it is important to note that the reasons used bythe young women to account for change clearly re� ect the young women’s locationof themselves within Islam and Asian culture, not in con� ict with it. And, as will beargued later in the article, notions of ‘change’ were integral to several girls’ explana-tions that Asian girls did not previously participate in post-16 education because ofthe threat of encountering racism within educational institutions. In other words, thegirls used discourses that position the source of restriction/con� ict within whitesociety and unequal patterns of participation in post-compulsory education.

Some of the girls who spoke with the Asian interviewer explained differentialgendered participation in post-compulsory education using constructions that couldbe seen to challenge some popular notions of ‘choice’, as the following extract willdemonstrate:

Navdip: I mean, my sisters, my sisters didn’t want to—that’s why theydidn’t. But my—I mean my dad was asking me just the otherday—he says what do you want to do? I said—he says do you wantto work or what? I says no, I want to carry on. He says that’s good,I wanted to carry on too, I says all right then [Tamar: yeah] ‘coslike my br—my brothers, all—all three of them have graduated[Tamar: yeah] they’ve all got degrees and stuff and like they’reguys and they think you know, we’re guys and they, they don’tthink I’ll do it you see//

Priya: My parents are still not happy, they still think that they couldcarry on and they want my brothers to c—all the time you couldhave done better, you could have done better! [Suki: yeah] youdidn’t try, you didn’t try hard-

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Suki: Because the parents-Priya: //I know! yeah but they say oh we never got the chance, you got

the chance.Suki: Yeah but they say we don’t want you to end up as we are now. But

brothers are pushed harder to education than girls.Navdip: If—if my brothers said that they didn’t want to do it they’d make

them do it, say no! You are gonna do it! If I said I didn’t wannado it, they’d say OK � ne, that—what do you wanna do? Work?And if I said yeah, they’d just go � ne, you work

(Hightown School)

In contrast to the boys’ constructions of girls as lacking ‘choice’, the young womenin this extract identi� ed themselves as actually having more choice than theirbrothers, who they suggest are ‘pushed harder’ and ‘made’ to progress into post-compulsory education by parents. Navdip’s explanation challenges the notion thatthis form of differential encouragement results from education for girls not beingvalued, as she states that her father is pleased by her decision to carry on studying.Navdip’s defence of her ‘open choice’ between study and work could also be readas challenging popular assumptions, such as those underlying New Labour policy,that education is the ‘right’ choice post-16 because it can ‘cure’ social problems suchas ethnic and gender inequalities (see Gewirtz, 2000). Within Navdip’s construc-tion, she appears more liberated by having the opportunity to ‘choose somethingelse’ apart from education.

The girls’ talk can be read as indicating how ‘choice’ can be differently con-structed and valued across ‘race’ and gender. Reay & Ball (1998) point to hownotions of ‘choice’ and educational decision-making can also be grounded withinclass-based discourses. Reay & Ball suggest that middle-class models tend toprivilege the role of parental guidance, whereas working-class models favour the roleof ‘child as expert’ in educational decision-making. However, the dominance of themiddle-class discourses can entail the pathologising of working-class parents’ lesserinvolvement in their children’s educational decisions, framing it as evidence thatworking-class parents ‘care less’ about their children’s educational futures. I haveelsewhere highlighted how processes of parental/child involvement in educationaldecisions can be racialised and gendered, as well as classed (Archer et al., 2001), andthe above extract suggest that, as others such as Wong (1994) have found, experi-ences of migration and disadvantage may provide an important source of motivationunderlying parental aspirations. (As Suki says, ‘[parents] say we don’t want you toend up as we are now’ [3].) Similarly, Basit found among her Muslim respondentsthat ‘seemingly working class parents and their daughters aspired to careers whichwere unambiguously middle class and perceived education and career to be the keyto upward social mobility’ (1997b, p. 432). From this perspective, the extract withNavdip, Suki and Priya can be interpreted as pointing to alternative models of‘choice’, in which young Muslim women experience and negotiate educationalchoices within the family context, rather than as solo individuals, enjoying bothsupport from families and retaining ‘freedom’ of choice.

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The girls’ talk in the above extract can also be read as suggesting that, contraryto ‘culture clash’ theories, the girls identify more potential con� ict/disagreementbetween themselves and their Muslim male peers than with their parents. Forexample, Navdip refers to how her brothers think she is less likely/able to pursuepost-compulsory education by virtue of being female (‘they think, you know, we’reguys and they don’t think I’ll do it’). Similarly, a young Muslim woman inParker-Jenkins et al.’s study (1997) is reported as saying she got a lot of ‘stick’ fromher brothers over her choice of further education course. The mismatch between thetypes of views cited by boys and girls within this article also suggests that there maybe more points of disagreement between girls and boys than between girls and theirparents.

The explanations voiced by the young women also counter meritocratic discoursesbecause girls’ choices are located within changing structural relations and inequali-ties, not as solely issues of individual interest or ability. Girls who spoke with boththe Asian and white interviewer suggested that there have been general ‘changes forthe better’ in British society that have facilitated Muslim women’s participation inpost-compulsory education. However, the reasons given for these changes differedbetween the interviewers. Girls who spoke with the white interviewer suggested thatthey have more ‘freedom’ now because white society has become less racist:

Nazia: Thing is, now we have more of a … more freedom than they hadin the old days and [Louise: why is that?] I don’t know, it’sprobably because—I’m not really sure!

Shanaz: We’re in a different country now, yeah, ‘cos � rst we were all settledin one country … then we’re all going through one yeah.

Nazia: Thing is, right, when my sister got married she was in this countryand she didn’t get to go to college or anything.

Shanaz: Yeah, but that was the old times.Nazia: Yes but that’s ‘cos—no wonder—had like racism or like that ‘cos

they were particularly scared for the daughters and like that andnow there’s like more Asians going to the college and gettingcareers and starting up, that it’s sort of easier for the youngergenerations to do the same.

(Lowtown School)

Despite framing their post-16 choices as personal decisions, many girls suggestedthat the ‘luxury of choice’ had not always been possible for all British Asian girls. Inthe above example, Nazia explains how, in ‘the old times’, parents restricted theirdaughters’ post-compulsory educational participation because of racism withinBritish society. Her rede� nition of ‘restriction’ as ‘protection’ echoes Basit’s (1997b)� ndings that Asian parents’ ‘protection’ of daughters at school can be misinterpretedas ‘oppression’ and a lack of freedom by school staff. The girls place the ‘blame’ forpreviously restricted options � rmly within white society, not within the ‘restrictive’structures of Asian cultures.

However, girls who spoke with the Asian interviewer expressed more ambiguousexplanations for the source of changing Asian cultural attitudes concerning Asian/

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Muslim women’s participation in higher education, and these young women raisedthe possibility of cultural gender values/expectations becoming ‘fairer’:

Gulfraz: Well, things are different now … sort of … ‘cos before it was reallyunfair and all.

Tamar: Yeah? You think things have got better?Gulfraz: Yeah, like the girls weren’t allowed in university—well some

probably still like that—but girls go to university.Deepa: And college, and do well.(Lowtown School)

Gulfraz’s suggestion that ‘before it was really unfair’ hints at changes in Muslim/Asian familial and cultural values and an increasing gender equality. Although atheme of ‘gender equality’ was not explicitly stated, Tamar (the Asian interviewer)interpreted the conversation as addressing sex relations, drawing upon a ‘known’,‘shared knowledge’ or understanding between herself and the young women. It ispossible that in conversations with me, girls may have been particularly wary, notwanting to ‘criticise’ Asian culture to an unknown white woman who, it could beassumed, might ‘wrongly’ interpret these criticisms as evidence of repressive cultures(see Archer, 2002).

The young women’s talk can also be read as suggesting that the girls assert BritishMuslim femininities in which participation in post-compulsory education and ‘tra-dition’ are not mutually exclusive or opposed. This (potentially) contrasts withBhopal’s (1998, p. 149) suggestion that ‘As Moslem single women become highlyeducated, they are rejecting their parent’s [sic] culture and religion’ and are demand-ing ‘the same freedom of choice as their British counterparts’. There does not appearto be much support for Bhopal’s suggestion in the views of these young women, norfrom a study by Basit (1997a). Similarly, Parker-Jenkins et al. (1997, p. 4) reportedthat in their study, ‘the most compelling � nding was girls’ desire to achieve equalitywithin Islam not without it’. However, analysis of the boys’ and girls’ discussionssuggests that the girls may encounter resistances to their ‘choices’ from their malepeers, who may assert hegemonic forms of masculinity by reproducing notions of‘restrictive cultures’ and girls’ lack of choice as ‘tradition’.

Discussion

In this article I have suggested that the young Muslim men tended to constructyoung Muslim women in passive terms as they argued that girls’ post-16 educationalparticipation is a matter of parental, not personal, choice. In comparison, the youngwomen’s talk argued that societal changes have enabled them to experience a widerrange of post-16 choices. Although their talk also pointed to social and culturalfactors interacting with educational choices, Muslim girls asserted the centrality oftheir ‘personal choice’ within educational decision-making. Both boys and girls drewon notions of ‘change’, ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ when explaining Muslim girls’opportunities, speci� cally in relation to white/British society, but they did so in verydifferent ways. Differences also emerged between what was said to either the whiteor Asian interviewer. Boys argued that girls’ post-16 choices are restricted, drawing

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on discourses of ‘tradition’ and ‘traditional’ gender roles. Boys talking with the Asianinterviewer argued that it is ‘safer’ for young Muslim women to remain within thedomestic sphere, adhering to particular gendered traditions as compared to partici-pating in the ‘unsafe’ public world that is an increasingly dangerous and racistcontext. In comparison, girls talked about how their post-16 choices are broadening,which they explained in terms of either changes within Asian culture, as it becomes‘fairer’ to women (to the Asian interviewer) or within white/British society, which isbecoming ‘less racist’ (to the white interviewer).

It is suggested that the young Muslim women in this study can be read asformulating and negotiating their ‘choices’ within a speci� c British Muslim context.This argues against previous dualistic theories that assume all Muslim girls to be ‘incon� ict’, choosing between the demands and expectations of homogenised domi-nant and minority cultures. Just as identity and social relations can be conceptu-alised as � uid and shifting (e.g. Bhavnani & Phoenix, 1994), so the meanings of‘choice’ and the range of options available to young Muslim women are negotiatedand experienced differently across time, context and social divisions. Both boys andgirls located post-16 choices/options within wider intercultural contexts and empha-sised how ‘choice’ or ‘lack of choice’ can be related to racism and ‘safety/danger’.This � nding suggests that Muslim girls’ educational choices cannot be reduced tosimply (Muslim) ‘cultural factors’. Rather, young women’s choices can be theorisedas produced within intercultural interactions across a range of social and educationalsites.

Discourses are not simply neutral speculations about, or re� ections of, the ‘truth’;for example, analysis suggested that different discourses were produced in conver-sation with either an Asian or white interviewer and different views were voiced byboys and girls. Young people’s constructions of their educational and occupationalaspirations may bear little relation to the routes they may later follow, but this is notto say that there is little or no value in eliciting and analysing these views (Hutchings,1997). As Wetherell & Potter (1992) argue, discourses perform actions, and throughdiscourse, actors create identities and negotiate power relations. Within this articleI have attempted to dismantle notions of a singular ‘truth’ regarding British Muslimwomen, problematising explanations of their post-16 options that are based upon‘Muslim culture’, and I have attempted to demonstrate the complexity of ‘choice’.By highlighting variations between the accounts of young men and women, thearticle has attempted to disrupt conceptualisations of Muslim women as ‘passivevictims’ of patriarchal discourses, highlighting the young women’s alternative ac-counts, and contextualising the young men’s constructions within the discursiveproduction of gender identities. For example, the boys’ discourses have beendiscussed in terms of the maintenance and creation of hegemonic masculinities inrelation to their female peers. The girls have been understood as asserting andcreating British Muslim femininities that resist dominant stereotypes of women as‘passive victims’ and/or ‘in con� ict’ with Muslim culture or tradition. It has thusbeen argued that young British Muslim women and their possibilities are located� rmly within a British Muslim family context that is structured by multiple socialrelations and inequalities.

But what does such analysis ‘mean’ for widening participation initiatives and

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educational practice? Challenging particular dominant assumptions about Muslimgirls’ ‘restricted choices’ may help counter the lower teacher/professional expecta-tions identi� ed by Brah (1994) and Basit (1997b). The interpretations provided mayalso contribute to shifting widening participation policy discourses away fromnotions of ‘raising aspirations’ towards ‘challenging inequalities’, such as racism,that featured prominently in both boys’ and girls’ accounts. Like the young peoplein Ball et al.’s (2000) study, the girls’ assertions that they did have choices can beunderstood within ‘the social surge of individualisation’ (Beck, 1992, p. 87). But itis also argued that these young women’s assertions of ‘choice’ were bounded bydiasporic gendered relations. In this way, the British Muslim boys and girls of thisstudy differed from those reported by Maguire et al. (2000), who ‘saw themselves asindividuals in a meritocratic setting, not as classed or gendered members of anunequal society’; i.e. in this study, the young people’s talk constructed inequalitiesof racism/sexism as shaping and constraining choices. Finally, the analyses couldcontribute theoretically to an understanding of the persistence and re/production ofracialised sexist discourses, highlighting the emotional identity-based attachmentamong boys to perpetuating a notion of ‘restrictive cultures’ [4].

However, the article also raises important problems and questions. For example,the focus upon ‘race’ and gender could be read as tending to obscure the other‘structural and material continuities which patterned their “choices” andlife-decisions’ (Maguire et al., 2000, p. 11). In particular, the ‘lack of choice’associated with the young people’s social class positions has become invisible.Analyses within this article also suggest a problem in that the girls’ assertion of‘unrestrictive’ cultures could be read as hiding or denying the existence of any formsof inequality within Muslim families and communities. Furthermore, whilst thegirls’ talk may actively counter negative stereotypes of passive/oppressed Muslimfemininity through assertions of agency, such constructions may fail to engage withthe boys’ assertion of hegemonic forms of masculinity through the denial of women’schoice. However, the article has attempted an analysis that represents the youngMuslim people in complex and agentic ways, which, it has been suggested, may helpto counter ‘the bombardment of negative, degrading stereotypes’ (West, 1993, citedin Alexander, 1998 #81, p. 439). The article has highlighted how themes of ‘culture’and ‘choice’ are not � xed, but contested concepts, that young people employ invarious ways within the project of asserting racialised masculine and feminineidentities. It is hoped that the issues debated within the article will contribute toongoing theory and research concerning the complexity of ‘race’, gender andidentity in young people’s post-16 choices.

Notes

[1] There has been a tendency within some literature (e.g. Stopes-Roe & Cochrane, 1990) towork only at the level of ‘Asian’ identity, glossing over a range of linguistic, religious,national and cultural differences. This is not to say that the term ‘Asian’ is not useful ordoes not constitute an important identity—as Shain (2000) argues, it can be, if usedcritically (see also debates about use of ‘black’ identity, e.g. Modood, 1994). ‘Asian’ and‘Muslim’ identities were also used interchangeably and variably by young people in this

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research, although respondents stressed that they primarily identi� ed as ‘(British) Muslim’(e.g. Archer, 2001). In line with this, young people in this article are primarily identi� ed as(British) Muslim and/or (British) Asian Muslim.

[2] Potential respondents were identi� ed by teachers, but their participation was dependentupon consent. All interviewers took part in lengthy discussions with pupils so that theyunderstood what their participation would entail. We attempted to inform all respondentsabout the purpose and nature of the study (that it was for the author’s PhD) and how itwould be written up, disseminated and made publicly available. All participants wereassured anonymity and told that their data would be treated con� dentially.

[3] Basit (1997b) similarly suggests that notions of ‘freedom’ may be differently constructed byAsian and white teenage girls. For example, she discusses how dominant discourses mayinterpret white families’ acceptance of particular behaviours for adolescent girls (e.g.wearing short skirts, having boyfriends, go out late on their own) as examples of ‘freedom’,against which Asian girls may appear to lack freedom. However, Basit points to how Asiangirls do not necessarily share these constructions, regarding these behaviours as examples ofparents ‘not caring’ what happens to their children

[4] cf. Cohen’s (1988) explanation of the white emotional attachment to racist discourses interms of identity, territoriality and power.

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