Following on from the arguments made in the previous chapter, this chapter explores the friendships made by my respondents in school and beyond. Specifically, it looks at how certain friendships might have been discouraged and how certain friendships have been consciously made by my respondents to challenge the stereotypical ideas some non-Bangladeshis might have about them. Moreover how certain friendships help elucidate intergenerational relationships between respondents and their first generation parents will be explored.
This chapter looks at the impact of friendships with those who share similar cultural and familial histories as my respondents and those who do not. It will explore how such friendships impact upon respondents’ understanding of their own identities. To examine the impact of intergenerational relations on friendships, it explores how attitudes influenced by migration for one generation have the potential to directly affect the integration of another. The chapter will investigate how through establishing friendships, the young women can create spaces for self-expression. I will consider how consequently this affects the ways in which they speak from different cultural and familial historical positions.
This chapter is divided into six sections. It begins with discussing how some parents have discouraged friendships made with boys. Some respondents feel that as they grew older their friendships with boys needed to be validated somehow by their parents and this will also be explored in this chapter. Following this, we hear from different respondents regarding why they have consciously chosen to make friendships with people from different cultural backgrounds, and why, in other cases, they have felt it important to make Bengali friends. The relationship between the young women and their friends, both those who shared their cultural and familial histories, and those who did not, is discussed in relation to the young women’s sense of self. I will try to show how through their friendships these young women might be reflective of their own histories and identities. Finally, the chapter examines how, over time as the respondents grow older, relationships with both friends and to an extent, parents, change and how this can help the young women balance Bengali and British cultures.
‘Being Careful’ – Making Friendships with Boys
This section examines how in making friendships with boys, some respondents, as they were growing up, were cautioned to be ‘wary’, although this was not always verbalised. This section will begin with Soraiya. As noted in the previous chapter, Soraiya is, at the time of interview, twenty-eight years of age, the eldest child and daughter, and works as a journalist.
Soraiya:
So: Yeah… I don’t know… I don’t actually clearly remember him doing that… but I just got this feeling… and also… I think it must have been things they [her parents] said or… because I picked it up from somewhere… when I went into the first year of junior school…
Me: Mm
So: …well, they might’ve …they might’ve said you shouldn’t play with boys and then I automatically stopped playing with boys… and then I started choosing friends, Bengali friends, making friends with Bengali people…
The notion that certain Bangladeshi families, parents of first generation in particular, may somehow have influenced their daughter’s friendships with boys is brought to the fore in Soraiya’s extract. This influence was exerted at a very early age of development, perhaps even in the first year of junior school. However, since Soraiya argues that her parents ‘might have’ influenced her choice of friends there is also the possibility that she does not consciously remember her parents asking, or even telling her that she should not make non-romantic friendships with boys. But the effect of this is very instantaneous and unquestioned. This is reflective of Kakar’s argument that in an individual’s psycho-social growth, and their reciprocity with their social surroundings, immediate family (in this case Soraiya’s parents) form the ‘critical counterplayers’ (1981:2). We might view Soraiya’s acquiescence with her parents’ wishes in two ways: it might have entailed an unquestioning trust in her parents but it also might reflect an unquestionable authority of her parents over her. Indeed, Soraiya states that she automatically stopped playing with boys. She might have enjoyed playing with boys in her class in school. In this way, I argue the
histories that Soraiya carried became prominent, as she became aware of their nuances.
As she later grew older and more discerning perhaps she came to understand why her parents had vetoed such friendships. Understanding such nuances and how they relate to them becomes important for the ways in which young women might negotiate cultural boundaries. On the other hand, in junior school and at such a young age, Soraiya was not in a position to question her parents’ decision, and in some way refrained from doing so. Instead, Soraiya chose friends who might have won both her parents’ approval and support. Friends were chosen who were Bangladeshi and could therefore relate to her parents, in some way, and their histories. This might also have shaped her sense of belonging both to her family and to her friendships; as Yuval- Davis et al. argue, feeling safe and feeling at ‘home’ are vital for the emotional attachment that constitutes belonging (2006: 2).
It could be argued there is unconscious acknowledgement of this even without the use of words. This echoes Brah, who argues that the social relations we harbour penetrate into our psyche and cannot be gotten rid of so easily (1996:5). For Soraiya, her parents were not approving of certain friends and she argues that she did indeed ‘pick it up from somewhere’. However, she cannot consciously remember her parents telling her explicitly not to play with certain peers or individuals. Soraiya indicates that she stopped playing with boys without direct instruction, Bangladeshi friends were chosen consciously. Sujata elaborates on this theme below, describing how she was not allowed to do certain things. As noted in the last chapter, Sujata is, at the time of interview, twenty-eight years of age and the eldest daughter.
Sujata:
Me: You weren’t allowed?
Su: …Twelve to fourteen, I had some white friends… they were my best friends, fourteen, come fourteen, they’re going out, meeting boys and I’m not allowed to do that, I don’t want to do that…
Me: Mm
Su: …and they’re all white boys anyway… and I wasn’t ready and I wasn’t interested… but their whole culture became different… fourteen year old girls and I wasn’t allowed out with them… and my mum was, first child… she was
very Bengali… didn’t know what to do… can’t do this, can’t do that …I live in a very English area
Familial involvement in the choice of friendships can further be seen in Sujata’s extract, where this is highlighted in terms of cultural difference. For example, Sujata describes the nature of the friendships had changed because of the other girls’ romances with boys. It was a culture she was not part of, and was indeed excluded from due to her family’s boundaries. She did not have access to this culture, and in some part did not understand. Sujata highlights the tension that occurred during the time whilst she was this age. She highlights the tension that her mother felt, being in a ‘foreign’ place. What might have added more frustration and complications to the situation was that Sujata lives, in her own words, in a very ‘English’ area, in which there is a lack of Bengali and/or Asian families close by. Indeed, the feeling of not knowing what to do with one’s children in an unfamiliar cultural context, whilst living in such an area, might possibly have been accentuated. The tension highlighted by Sujata is reminiscent of Anthias’ (2006) argument that multiple identities within one person can exist in a number of different ways. Noting the relationality and intersubjective nature of identity, Anthias also insists that ‘this idea of multiple or multilayered identities, or their recognition, does not resolve the problem of identity’ (p.20).
Like Anthias, Masud Khan (1974) also emphasises the relationality of identity in his argument that in order to understand a sense of self, a relation, or an ‘other’ is needed. From within the friendships with her white friends, then, a part of Sujata’s cultural histories relating to London was more prominent, but she retains pride for her mother at the same time. This changed when her friends became romantically interested in white boys, something she was not interested in. And indeed, empathising with her mother, Sujata specifies a choice in relation to her friendships with these girls and their associations with boys. Sujata explains that she did not wish to associate with such boys. It could be argued that she is neither allowed, nor does she wish to make such friendships. However, it could be further argued that this choice is necessarily influenced by Sujata’s family (Dunn, 2006), as she stresses that in certain cases ‘she is not allowed’ to do certain things, followed by the clause that she ‘does not want to do’ these things. Indeed, she argues that she agrees with her
extent, these friends, even though Sujata points out that the girls in the extract were her ‘best friends’ at the time later in the interview.
Experiences of friendship with girls whilst at school and growing up, is also discussed by Tasneem in the extract below.
Tasneem:
T: …when I was young, I went to a girls’ school, so most of my friends were girls… school is really here, rather than Bangladesh… primary school was mixed, and yeah… most of my friends were girls, I suppose… there were boys in the class and I would speak to them…
Me: …were they your friends?
T: …I wouldn’t say they were friends or anything no… we’d speak to the boys but they weren’t my friends…one of the boys I knew in my class was a family friend and we’d walk to school together…and then I went to a girls’ school and I was really glad, because at that age I didn’t like boys (laughs)
Me: …at that age?
T: Yeah, at that age, I didn’t like boys… I thought, girls’ school, yeah… then we had family friends… I think… probably properly had boys who I was friends with when I was about seventeen, eighteen, nineteen… now I’ve got lots of close male friends, but female friends as well… probably more female friends that I’m close to but one or two close male friends as well… and my mum knows and my parents have met them… it’s not a problem… (laughs)… their just friends… and even white boys are my friends… like one of my friends, Sam, he’s been to my house, my mum’s met him, my brother knows him… you know, it’s not a big deal…
Tasneem points out that at a certain age, she did not like boys, but this has changed as she has grown older. She has some friends who are male and there are even some whom she terms as ‘close’. However, it is interesting that she points to ‘race’ as factors in these friendships, specifying that ‘even white boys’ are her friends. The legitimacy of such relationships is validated by the fact that her family (her mother and brother) have met and therefore know the one male friend whom she highlights in the extract above. Bearing in mind Harris’ (2006) argument that many young South Asian people are shaped by a sense of Britishness, whilst at the same
time incorporating their diasporic roots, this shows a visible intermixing between cultural histories. Tasneem is an example of what Ramji (2004) argues of one who is able to negotiate and renegotiate her position in the public sphere (p.232). However, this position is never established, but, as Kalra et al. (2005) argue, it is an ongoing process in which different cultures are incorporated in a ‘new production of a hybrid culture’ (p.71).
However, mindful of Kakar’s (1981) argument noted above about the importance of immediate family in the individual’s psycho-social development, I suggest that perhaps Tasneem’s familial involvement with her non-romantic friendships goes back to an earlier stage of her childhood. Earlier, she argues that whilst she did not necessarily like the company of male peers and colleagues, there was one friend with whom she walked to school. But it must be pointed out that this individual was a ‘family friend’. In other words, the friend was known to her family, whereas other male friends might not have been. Therefore this friendship might have been legitimised and gave the two friends the right to walk together to school. It might be argued that Tasneem is conscious of particular boundaries around friendship and community, i.e. interactions with ‘family friends’ are specified as being more acceptable to her parents (Papastergiadis, 2004; Yuval-Davis, 2006).
Tasneem does not class the boys in her class as friends, even though she remembers that they would speak to each other. It is interesting to note that whilst she classifies the individual she used to walk to school with as a ‘friend’ by herself, she does not describe the male classmates in this way. I argue that this suggests the influence of Tasneem’s familial ties over her friendships with male individuals whilst she was at school. The next section aims to further explore the role cultural histories play in friendships. It will explore respondents’ transcultural friendships while growing up and how these were shaped by the influence of their families.
Having Non-Bengali Friends from Different Cultural Histories
To begin this examination of my respondents experience of friendships with people from different cultural and historical backgrounds than them, we will examine an extract from Soraiya’s interview.
Soraiya:
S: …because it was a really multicultural school… so in my class, it wasn’t just that I had Bengali friends, I had… you know…
Me: …everything…
S: Yeah… they were mixed… and at that age I got on with everyone… I can’t say that I had this one particular friend… the only one particular friend I remember was Bengali and she wasn’t even in my class, she was in the year above me
Me: Yeah
S: [describing a Bengali friend] …that she was my one special friend and we used to argue all the time and then we stopped talking to each other… [laughs]… but in my class, I don’t remember anyone being… having any one particular friend, I just remember being friends with the whole class… and these are just memories I have, you know…
Me: Yeah
Me: …nobody else?
S: Oh no, obviously you talk to everyone in your class… Me: Yeah
S: …but you wouldn’t necessarily call everybody you talk to a friend… but they were the two …like you know you have your group, they were my group …they were my group of friends and they happened to be Bengali… and the other girl that I got on with …like I said I got on with other people …but out of all my friends from that time, I’m in touch with a Pakistani friend and another friend… who’s not English, she’s Czech…
Me: Ok
S: …she’s white so… I suppose …I’m not actually in touch with the Bengali friends …that’s the irony of it all… and d’you know what …I think I chose them because they were Bengali, not because they were better friends… you know…
Soraiya highlights that ‘age’ might be a factor that influences how one learns to associate with peers. This calls to mind Erikson’s (1997) stages of development as
a lifelong process, especially in an environment where there are individuals who might not be able to relate to one’s cultural and familial histories. But what is interesting is that Soraiya highlights that she does indeed remember one particular individual who happened to share the same cultural histories as her. Later, she describes her Bangladeshi friend as her ‘special friend’. Despite sharing cultural histories, however, Soraiya remembers that her friend used to argue with her and in the end they even stopped speaking to each other. It is interesting that despite sharing such cultural histories she remembers – consciously – what might be termed as negative points of the relationship. This is reminiscent of Anthias’s assertion that even though we might feel we ‘belong’ to a group, we do not always necessarily feel fully accepted (2006: 20). So it might be argued that in this particular friendship, the ‘special-ness’ somehow disappeared into nothingness. Conversely, those friends with whom she has chosen to keep in touch with do not share these cultural and familial histories – one friend is Pakistani and one is Czech.
As Yuval-Davis et al. point out, notions of trust and confidence are important for feelings of belonging (2006:4), and in this case, perhaps, they became more important than common ethnic identity. Indeed, in describing her reasons for forming friendships with those who were Bengali, Soraiya suggests she chose them precisely because they were of Bangladeshi origin, rather than for the sake of friendship in its own right. Those relationships consequently did not satisfy her own ‘needs’ for the friendships. I argue that her group of friends were chosen so that she would not be ‘alone’ in the expression of her cultural and familial histories, at that age and at that time. Latterly, however, as she grows older, Soraiya comes to realise that for her, ‘needs’ in such friendships are far more important than satisfying the memories that come with carrying her own cultural and familial histories.
Tasneem furthers this and speaks about making friendships with those who were ‘outside’ of Bengali culture.
Tasneem:
T: …yeah, because I went to a girls’ school… (laughs)… and in terms of ‘race’, I think I was probably friends with everyone… I know it sounds cheesy but… I was never part of just one group… and I was friends with the Asian girls, but also white girls as well… a few black girls but mainly Asian and white girls,
Me: Mm
T: …yeah… and two of my close friends, my best friends at school were white girls who were Goths who were into piercings and things
Me: Really?
T: …but then my other best friend who I’m still in contact with today… is Muslim, wears a hijab… and married with a child, second one on the way now… so yeah, I think if I get on with someone, I get on with them
Me: …regardless of… cultural histories… T: Yeah… yeah exactly
Me: Was that ever an issue that you know, you were from Bangladesh so they won’t be friends with you or anything like that…?
T: …no, not really …um, the Asian girls in school… I never wanted to be where I was in the clique where I’m just friends with… maybe I did that consciously,
in that I didn’t just want to be with Asian girls [my italics] and hang around
only with that gang or that group …because I think, why would I want to limit