Women's agency and citizenship across transnational identities: a case study of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK

Abstract

This article focuses on agency and citizenship from the point of view of Bangladeshi immigrant women who have been living in UK for the last two generations. They have a transnational identity, living between two cultures, which often have contradictory elements. On the one hand, these women identify themselves as British citizens: a status which provides them with some liberal rights. On the other hand, they practise Bangladeshi culture at home, which often entails patriarchal elements. At the junction of these two identities, religion (Islam) works as a guiding principle, and as a uniting tool in their personal as well as public lives. The present article challenges the notions that immigrant women shaped by Bangladeshi culture are victims of patriarchal ideologies, and that Bangladeshi culture hinders women from development. It rather suggests that it is not Bangladeshi culture or religion that hinders women from exercising agency, but their identity as immigrants.

Everyday Agency: Rethinking Refugee Women’s Agency in Specific Cultural Contexts

“…Despite notable exceptions (cf. Jahan, 2011 ; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016 ), female refugees are often seen as non-agentic, passive statistics. When they are seen as agents, their agency is often characterized as a strategy of an independent actor struggling against her culture.…”

Fighting back, moving forward: Refugee women's agency in stories of resistance and resilience

“…Agency can be conceptualized as an embodied capacity to act, as noted by Jahan (2011), a capacity intricately woven into speci c social structures such as states, institutions, groups, cultures, and norms at given times and places. This capacity is not con ned to individual human actors but is distributed among a variety of elements, including people, objects, and discourses, emphasizing the interconnectedness of agency with its socio-cultural context.…”

“…A critical concern raised by emancipatory feminists, anti-colonialists, and antiracist groups is the exclusionary nature of agency (Cabezas et al, 2007). Despite exceptions acknowledging agency (Kanal & Rottmann, 2021;Jahan, 2011), refugee women are often depicted as vulnerable victims, reinforcing power imbalances within displaced families (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2014). This portrayal, coupled with the con ation of women and children in research and policy, as noted by Enloe (1998) as "womenandchildren", contributes to the infantilization of refugee women in the media, presenting an image of "pure" victimhood and vulnerability (Sigona, 2014).…”