06 December 2010
Afghan Women in the Diaspora: Surviving Identity and Alienation (NTS-Asia WP No. 4)
Abstract
This research will study the claims to and contestations of identity among the women of the Afghan diaspora, with particular focus on those in India and Germany. What does the concept of identity mean to these women? How do they reconcile their own sense of identity with the stereotyped, homogenised images of Afghan women and of Afghanistan held by their host communities? While analysing the constructions of identity and afghaniyat or afghanness, or the absence of the same, among the women of the Afghan diaspora, the emphasis is on how those women define their identities within the parameters of Afghanistan, India and Germany, and how they negotiate traditional constructs of identity given their experience of alienation and assimilation within their host cultures and communities. This study finds that these women in the diaspora, as a gender group, are at the margins of Afghan identity, with limited ability to play a role in defining themselves against categories that are critical to them.
Abstract
This research will study the claims to and contestations of identity among the women of the Afghan diaspora, with particular focus on those in India and Germany. What does the concept of identity mean to these women? How do they reconcile their own sense of identity with the stereotyped, homogenised images of Afghan women and of Afghanistan held by their host communities? While analysing the constructions of identity and afghaniyat or afghanness, or the absence of the same, among the women of the Afghan diaspora, the emphasis is on how those women define their identities within the parameters of Afghanistan, India and Germany, and how they negotiate traditional constructs of identity given their experience of alienation and assimilation within their host cultures and communities. This study finds that these women in the diaspora, as a gender group, are at the margins of Afghan identity, with limited ability to play a role in defining themselves against categories that are critical to them.
