Economy and Culture in Pakistan


Book Description

An examination of the economic and cultural implications of the massive national and international movements of ordinary people in a single Muslim society - Pakistan. Topics covered range from nationhood and nationalities to migration, death and martrydom in rural Pakistan.




Economy and Culture in Pakistan


Book Description




Undermining the Centre


Book Description

This volume studies the migration of more than one million Pakistani workers to the oil-exporting countries of the Middle East. It examines the critical role that the providing of jobs and foreign exchange play in Pakistan's economy. The author focuses on the decentralized nature of the migration to the Arab Gulf, showing what he believes to be important implications for the political, economic, and social development of Pakistan. The first book on this subject devoted solely to Pakistan, its interdisciplinary approach will make it accessible to scholars in political science, international relations, economics, sociology, as well as the general reader.







»We Are Here to Stay«


Book Description

Drawing primarily on oral sources from the author’s own research carried out between 1993 and 1997, this book outlines the settlement history of Pashto speakers in Pakistan’s Northern Areas over the last 150 years, concentrating on the decades following the opening of the Karakoram Highway in 1978. Besides this, it looks at how the migrants’ language situation had developed by the mid 1990s. It investigates how Pashto speakers communicated with each other and with members of their respective Shina-, Khowar-, Balti- and Burushaski-speaking host communities, focussing in particular on cross-dialectal communication and language shift. The book also aims to define how the trends related to Pashtun migration to the Northern Areas in the mid 1990s could develop in the near future. Interwoven with this analysis are childhood memories and life stories recounted by the Pashto speakers interviewed by the author. All interviewees were ordinary people leading ordinary lives – traders, cobblers, tea boys, farmers and porters. Their stories provide a voice to the Pashto speaking migrants themselves and give the reader a fascinating insight into their lives.




The New Pakistani Middle Class


Book Description

Pakistan’s presence in the outside world is dominated by images of religious extremism and violence. These images—and the narratives that interpret them—inform events in the international realm, but they also twist back around to shape local class politics. In The New Pakistani Middle Class, Ammara Maqsood focuses on life in contemporary Lahore, where she unravels these narratives to show how central they are for understanding competition and the quest for identity among middle-class groups. Lahore’s traditional middle class has asserted its position in the socioeconomic hierarchy by wielding significant social capital and dominating the politics and economics of urban life. For this traditional middle class, a Muslim identity is about being modern, global, and on the same footing as the West. Recently, however, a more visibly religious, upwardly mobile social group has struggled to distinguish itself against this backdrop of conventional middle-class modernity, by embracing Islamic culture and values. The religious sensibilities of this new middle-class group are often portrayed as Saudi-inspired and Wahhabi. Through a focus on religious study gatherings and also on consumption in middle-class circles—ranging from the choice of religious music and home décor to debit cards and the cut of a woman’s burkha—The New Pakistani Middle Class untangles current trends in piety that both aspire toward, and contest, prevailing ideas of modernity. Maqsood probes how the politics of modernity meets the practices of piety in the struggle among different middle-class groups for social recognition and legitimacy.




Kinship, Honour and Money in Rural Pakistan


Book Description

International migration is favoured by the governments of many poorer countries despite often well-publicized abuses affecting individual migrant workers. Not only is local unemployment reduced but also it is expected that the migrants will learn new skills, with many even becoming entrepreneurs on their return home. Meantime they are seen as a source of foreign remittances, providing needed capital for economic development. Such is the attitude in Pakistan from where thousands of migrant workers leave every year for the Gulf states especially. An anthropological study approaching this issue from a local (village) level, this book focuses on two areas of the Punjab. Describing the historical passage of rural life from pre-colonial times to the present, it shows how the rural economy of the Punjab was not transformed by the green revolution - on the contrary, it is still a subsistence economy. The resulting poverty combined with Pakistan's labour-market policies forces many Punjabi men to seek work abroad, in turn bringing changes to the economic role of the women left behind. Remittances from abroad have brought further changes on the economic and social life of the villages but not, as expected, to bring economic development let alone capital or entrepreneurialism to the area.




First Generation Pakistani Migrants in the UK


Book Description

This book reports how modern life is constantly being affected by increasing forms of mobility. These mobilities allow for people to carry out activities that form and maintain relationships and networks on a social and obligatory basis. Complex mobility systems have enabled greater movement for many at local, national and international levels. Migration theories have been influenced by the mobilities paradigm and have led to the creation of new terminology such as ‘transnational migrants’. Both the needs of post-Second World War labour shortages and the political and economic climate of Pakistan (after partition in 1947) led to significant post-colonial Pakistani migration. This directed attention to life in the UK and resulted in and created new mobility dynamics. In terms of the research on which this book is based, face to face interviews took place, with a total of twenty eight interviewees that were carried out in two parts with the Pakistani diaspora living in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne who migrated up until the 1970’s. "Zeb’s work on the migration and settlement experiences of Pakistani migrants in the north east of England sheds light on both the historical and contemporary lives of the Pakistani diaspora. Zeb’s work is relevant to not only the Pakistani community, but also helps better understanding of how migrant communities generally maintain connections and develop new ones and adapt to new environments.” - Professor Jonathon Ling, University of Sunderland, UK . Contents Foreword Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction CHAPTER 1. Mobilities Theory CHAPTER 2. Pakistani Migration to the UK CHAPTER 3. Pakistani Migrant Settlement in Newcastle upon Tyne CHAPTER 4. Pakistani Migrant’s Experiences of Public Services in Newcastle upon Tyne CHAPTER 5. Pakistani Migrant’s Experiences of Leisure and Tourism CHAPTER 6. Conclusions Appendix