Marginalisation, Islamism and The Production of the 'Other's' 'Other'

Drawing on the findings of an empirical study of working-class Pakistani Muslims in southern England, this article considers the links between marginalisation, the politics of identity and the position of Pakistani Muslim women. The author shows how marginalisation (emerging from a nexus of oppressions) reinforces 'group' identity, how women are made central to 'group' identity, and how this centrality serves to legitimate their disempowerment. In this way the border that is erected to contain the group is dependent on internal divisions, the existence of which contradicts the notion of group homogeneity.