British Yemeni Young People’s Experience of Body Image, Home, Food, Language, and Religion

Abstract

This paper provides an in-depth knowledge on the social practices of an under-researched ethnic group in the UK, the British Yemenis. Through an exploration of their lived activities in the context of the conduct of everyday life, this study uses photo-novella and semi-structured interviews in combination, to present five main themes which emerged from the study. These are body image, food, home, language, and religion. The paper shows how British Yemeni young people connect and disconnect, at different levels, times, and context, with mainstream British cultures and Yemeni subcultures, displaying elements of cultural hybridity that are unique to these individuals, yet at the same time provides some information on the Yemeni community. The study follows the daily activities of six British Yemeni young people in a longitudinal manner, exploring an understanding of how social structures and cultures have, and are continuously, impacting the young people’s conduct of everyday life. The study also contributes to the use of intersectionality and post-colonialism as analytic tools in the study of young people’s lived experiences.

Perspective Chapter: Understanding Young People’s Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review

“…Based on such analysis and thinking, my cumulative understanding of my research findings suggests that British Yemeni young people are young people first, and yet their lives are infused by cultural hybridity as second. Although there are emerging themes of body image, language, home, food and religion [15] that display the cultural hybridity of the young people, their age implies that they are young people first. The evidence and theorisation of the cases here suggest that it is in that (interconnected) order that one can understand and articulate the young people's experiences.…”

“…This chapter is derived from the literature review-chapter two-of my PhD thesis 1 [15] and builds off the first chapter of a larger empirical work where I explore the lived experience of six British Yemeni young people, and present data conducted over 19 months. The study of my PhD was guided by three research questions on (1) the types of everyday experiences, (2) the forms of learning and development and (3) what these experiences, learning and development suggest about the evolving social and cultural personhood of British Yemeni young people.…”

Beyond Place: Youth Belonging and Language in the Third Space

“…Place, therefore, is a limited lens through which to understand the experiences of culturally mobile youth whose identities do not and cannot be confined by the geopolitical identity politics or the cultural and linguistic boundaries that accompany the 'materiality' of place. The worlds of these young people have had rapid and significant changes over time and/or are in the process of constant flux, as are their senses of home and belonging, which must adapt and readapt to their ever-changing realities (Marcu 2014;Ahmed 2023).…”

Nuha: A study of the conduct of everyday life of a British Yemeni young person

“…In particular, it integrates Dreier's theory of a person (Ole Dreier, 2011) and Roth's ideas of personhood in practice (Roth, 2020), and uses the analytic lens of intersectionality and post-colonial theory, to enable the interlinking between agency, structures, and cultures. This article focuses on Dreier and Roth's contribution, and I elaborate more on intersectionality and post-colonial theory in another article (Ahmed, 2023). This framework emerged and evolved throughout the research process and deductive-inductive-abductive approach (Assarroudi et al, 2018;Hsieh & Shannon, 2005;Okoli, 2021) was produced, summarised in Figure 1.…”