ABSTRACT
Urban policy making and academic research tends to categorise the needs of different groups of people in society, based on one aspect of their identity, such as gender or ethnicity, but often ignores the effects of the intersection of other key aspects of people’s lives and identities, such as their religion, race and stage of life among others (Crenshaw, 2019). Based upon Roja’s fieldwork, this chapter challenges the mainstream discourse by emphasising the importance of religion in a collective culture like Afghan as a key factor in generating different urban life experiences for women (as against men) in a Muslim community. The chapter incorporates material from detailed interviews regarding the personal and spatial identities of eight Muslim Afghan women from a refugee background living in the global city of Auckland, New Zealand. It discusses the intersection of their affiliation to the Muslim religion, their Afghani origins, within the Hazara ethnic community, as well as their gender, and how these shape their daily lives. This discussion is set against the wider ‘colonial discourse’ and ‘Western’ attitudes towards migrants, which also regulate and shape their experiences. Through a range of semi-structured interviews, cognitive mapping and observation of daily activities and community group participation of eight Afghan women in Auckland, this research reveals a range of levels, layers and types of discourse of Afghan women about their right to the city.
