Chapter 11: Intersectionalities Of Difference: Asian Women’s Experiences of Religion, “Race,” Class, and Gender in Higher Education in the United Kingdom

This paper will explore issues of intersectionality and ‘race’ with a focus on theorising difference. There is little research which has explored issues of intersectionality in the United Kingdom. The research that does exist has examined issues of class and gender (Skeggs, 1997; Reay, et al., 2001) or ‘race’ and gender (Bhopal, 2008; Gillborn & Mirza, 2000; Mirza, 2009; Shain, 2003) but has failed to engage with debates around the intersections of difference particularly in relation to ‘race’, class and gender as interlocking systems of oppression. Discourses around ‘race’, diversity and inclusion have tended to be analysed as disparate issues. ‘Race’ has been compartmentalised (in racial, ethnic or area studies), or has been emphasised as the defining characteristic of identity (in studies of national identity or in some versions of critical race theory) (see Gillborn, 2009) rather than as one aspect of a complex web of intersections, oppressions and identity formations (Bhopal, 2010). In much of the research which has explored issues of difference, discourses around ‘race’, diversity and inclusion have tended to be analysed as disparate issues. This chapter uses empirical research with Asian women (British born third generation Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women) in the United Kingdom who were studying at one particular university in the South East of England, to explore how women’s experiences of higher education are affected by their diverse identities which in turn, position them as ‘other’ within the White space of the Academy. It will focus on women’s experiences of religion, ‘race’, class, and gender and draw upon the work of Beck (1992) and Giddens (1993) to analyse how such differences interweave and intersect upon women’s lives in modern day ‘risk’ society. The chapter argues that Asian women’s experiences in the White space of the Academy are characterised by risk, racism and Islamaphobia in which their marginal status continues to be ‘othered’.