Muslim women in Scotland have been largely absent from research and literature concerning Islamic communities in Britain. Using empirical data consisting of 37 in-depth interviews and five focus groups across three research sites, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee, this study analyses the everyday lives and experiences of Muslim women in Scotland. This thesis opens up the nuanced ways that Muslim women practice their faith, refashion their interpretations of Islamic dress while also directing social and domestic interactions. I bring together a series of chapters which investigate how there is a growing awareness, sensitivity and acknowledgement of political and social changes led by Muslim women. I also draw attention to the struggles of Muslim women as they endure on one hand the patriarchal cultures and strict adherences born out of authoritarian interpretations of religion and, on the other hand experiencing and managing a number of social and political misrepresentations. Furthermore, the study highlights how Muslim women formulate and practice multi-layered and multi-dimensional identities alongside their experiences of community cohesion. Simultaneously, I discuss how they consider religious racism in a world dominated by negative depictions of Muslims and Islam. Using a qualitative approach, the study reveals a number of intricate abstractions that view Muslim women under a microscopic lens, reformulating and reconstructing their social and personal identities to encourage a debate on the role of faith in everyday belonging, becoming empowered through the concept of Hijab practice and speaking about the disharmonies which exist within Muslim communities. I argue that Muslim women are becoming more ‘risk-aware’ (Haw, 2009), have created spaces of responsiveness through local-level activism and are continually contributing and working to represent themselves socially, economically and politically in a post-devolved Scotland, actions that often to undetected in wider debates and discussions about Muslim women in Britain today.

This thesis examines how individual women's desires and social situations can trigger migration as well as the complex and multifaceted effects of geographical mobility on women's lives and the formation of their identities. As a growing number of people move across national boundaries and the range of contemporary migration channels have opened to new breadths, an understanding of current migration practice needs to consider one's specific status within a wide range of types. Through the case of Korean migrant women in the UK, this research challenges the simple assumption of migrants as people who move for only economic purposes as well as the victimisation and homogenisation of Asian migrant women. Based on in-depth individual interviews and a targeted ethnography of Korean communities in the UK, this study explores the experiences of Korean migrant women. The research uses the conceptual framework of "home" and is grounded on the belief that "home" is paradoxically matched with movement rather than a fixed and stable place. The findings suggest that these women's home-making is related to various power relations such as gender relations in contemporary Korea, public attitudes to immigrants and ethnic minorities in the UK, and Korean settlement patterns in the UK. This thesis reveals that the idea of the cosmopolitan/global citizen is promoted to women as a desirable lifestyle and can motivate their migration. Yet these women face certain disjunctions-between the fantasy and the reality of living in the UK; their own self-images and others' stereotypes of them; traditional assumptions about immigrants and their actual lives. Through managing these disjunctions and reshaping their relationships with their families, localities and nation, these women's migration often challenges the traditional binary gender division of masculine- public-outside-work vs. feminine-private-inside-home.

Non-sexist writing guidelines have been produced since the middle of the 20th century but often cause controversy. Taking only one aspect of such language reform, the feminisation of agentives, the present study aims to compare two similarly-structured, grammatically-gendered languages, French and Spanish, with regard to the visibility of women in the print media. After reviewing research that shows the use of masculine gendered agentives can induce, or reinforce, stereotypes which obscure female agency, prior studies of feminisation are classified by methodology and data source showing that little previous research has taken advantage of corpus techniques to analyse naturally occurring data, nor is there a significant body of contrastive research comparing feminisation strategies across languages or across countries with the same language. The collation of a cross-continental and cross-language corpus of media references to named people is therefore proposed and executed to allow both quantitative and qualitative analysis of naturally-occurring feminisations (or, indeed, their absence). Using electronic techniques, a corpus of over 5,000 references to named individuals was collated from press websites in France, Spain, Canada and Argentina. The form of the agentives referring to women was compared to strategies suggested in the UN-produced guidelines on gender neutral language, for French and Spanish, and discrepancies were classified. Classification of the agentives’ morphology was also made, to assign a 'predicted' base gender to each agentive. Quantitative and qualitative analyses performed on the data then drive the discussion of similarities and differences in feminisation strategies, across the chosen languages and countries. The study shows that prestige agentives cause feminisation difficulties across both languages, independently of morphology, whilst also identifying issues that are specific to one language group or one area. Possible reasons for both the similarities and differences are suggested and in turn suggest areas for further research using similar, corpus-based techniques.

Through an autoethnographical approach, and interviews and participant observations with forty women who migrated from Japan during the past two decades and are now living in Northern Ireland and the Republic, this thesis documents the dynamic subjectivities of individual migrants: the ways in which their emotions, perceptions and memories are formed by specific globalising forces and the peculiar dynamics of transnational families. The following questions have been considered: (1) what prompted these women to leave Japan and migrate to Ireland! Northern Ireland?; (2) how did they make adjustments to the cultural and physical distance between their own and their husbands' home country?; (3) in shifting social settings and cultural contexts, how did they recreate a sense of belonging?; and (4) how were their subjectivities shaped and reshaped in changing relationships and emotional involvements with families 'here' and 'there'? In examining these questions, this study reconsiders two themes that have been central to contemporary studies of migration, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism: the role of global imaginary in shaping people's perceptions of places as loci of possibility (or lack of possibility); and shifting and situated senses of belonging. Some theories of affect, emotion, acculturation, and perception are also applied in order to explore the links between individuals' subjectivities and social-cultural forms.

This thesis describes patterns of cross-cultural communication between Arab Muslim women from Iraq, Morocco and Yemen and London-based GPs, midwives and obstetricians within information-giving encounters in maternity services. It aims to provide a foundation of cultural knowledge on both sets of participants that maternity health professionals may use to inform communication with women from diverse Arab Muslim groups. A narrative approach to identity is taken in order to explore how both groups of participants position themselves in accounts that were structured around motherhood and the uses of information and oral knowledge on the progress to motherhood. In order to explore the meanings that the physical experiences of pregnancy, birth and motherhood have for women and health professionals, a modified phenomenological approach is taken according to which physical experience is understood to be continually framed by language and by cultural interpretations. Practices of information-giving are explored as these relate to liberal discourses of justice and to the production of a subject to whom rights attach in the public realm. Processes of the legitimisation of knowledge as information are considered as these may be perceived to function to exert power on women's bodies and selves through apparently neutral forms of communication provided by health professionals. Across Arab Muslim participant groups, perceptions of embodiment, agency and of the uses of maternity information and storytelling diverged along axes of class, nation and locality. Communication with health professionals among each of these groups rested on the manner in which the maternal body was imagined to symbolise belonging to places of origin and on the manner in which experiences of birth in London were used to imagine cultural difference. Findings for health professionals suggested that conflicts in identity . . arising from the status of the maternal body and of individual agency served to delimit communication with Arab Muslim women and with non-white women in general. Recommendations for health professionals are included in the final chapter

Women's activism in the Arab world started in the second half of the 19th century. Arab women have since been voicing and publishing their views, rejections of status quo, and demands for social change. Recognizing their activism and feminist articulations is necessary for a more informed understanding of Arab women, and calls attention to their often omitted presence in history's memory. The aim of this narrative, auto-ethnographic inquiry is twofold: to explore the history of Arab women's activism in Egypt and Lebanon; and to re-present and engage with the voices of five pioneers born in the 19th century, Aisha al-Taimuriya (1840-1902), Zaynab Fawwaz (1846-1914), Huda Shaarawi (1879 -1947), May Ziadeh (1886-1941) and Malak Hifni Nasif (1886-1918). Through poetry, the inquirer constructs a narrative understanding of the history and lives of the pioneers from the perspective of a contemporary Arab woman. She engages in an imagined poetic dialogue with the pioneers, and searches for parallels and contradictions between their lives and experiences, and what has transpired a century later. She juxtaposes life in the Arab world between the 19th and 21st centuries, exploring the consequences and struggles for Arab women who continue to be deeply submerged in patriarchal values and interests. The inquiry examines the extent to which articulations of activism in the 19th century have liberated Arab women today. This narrative inquiry 'gives voice' to a small repertoire of Arab women's powerful, though often absent, voices. It draws on contemporary experiences and observations that can lead to a public space where collective self-awareness and change in the status of Arab women can continue, or in some cases begin. The research neither seeks nor claims any definitive answers regarding women's status in society. Rather, by inquiring narratively into the pioneers' voices, the research contributes to a more rounded and grounded understanding of Arab women's position in contemporary society. In so doing, and in the tradition of feminist research, the inquirer contributes to unveiling the lives of these pioneers, and allowing the reader to hear the echoes of their appeals to society.

The Islamic veil has become one of the most controversial sartorial items of the contemporary milieu and an ultimate symbol of unwanted British otherness. Fuelled by political and media preoccupation with the subject, the resentment towards Islamic veiling is grounded in partial and often erroneous representations of a ‘veiled woman’ as on the one hand being a passive victim of patriarchal oppression and on the other hand being an active threat to British security and identity. Based upon a two-year multi-sited ethnographic study, this thesis contests such static images of the veil. By deploying ethnographic interviewing, participant observation and an analysis of the British mainstream press, social media, policies and artistic representations, it explores veiling as experienced by British Muslim women from diverse backgrounds. The central focus of this work is to accentuate the various implications that veiling carries for the everyday lives and identities of Muslim women in Britain. This thesis places a special emphasis on exploring intimate sentiments for veiling: the very reasons for adopting the hijab as well as perceptions of spirituality, modesty and beauty. Arising from these different and often contradictory perspectives held by Muslim women, the veil is not perceived as a rigid structure that is imposed on an individual. It is rather viewed as an altering, hybrid and antagonistic concept that is largely dependent on personal negotiations and appropriations. Whilst emphasising the role of female agency in shaping the semiotics of the veil, this thesis simultaneously examines how personal values, meanings and social relations are shaped by broader social, political and religious discourses regarding the veil. This thesis thus critically observes how and when the Islamic veil appears in fashion, pop culture, art, public politics, legal rhetoric and the media and the ways in which such representations influence Muslim women themselves. Subsequently, the ever-transforming meanings of the veil are observed at the intersection of conflicting processes, shaped by representations, British and European political dynamics and the women themselves. Acknowledging such divergent forces, ethnographic accounts are contextualised within the macro perspective of British society and its practical challenges. This thesis, hence, aims to contribute to the field of anthropology of religion, gender, fashion and citizenship with a timely case study. Close-up ethnographic accounts and anthropological contextualisation of the topic moreover offer a profound insight into the public polemics regarding the place of the Islamic veil in British society, with the issue being rethought from an emic perspective of women who continue to be conspicuously absent from public discourses on the subject.

Background: Intimate Partner Violence affects an estimated one in four women in their lifetime. The negative consequences on wellbeing as well as economic impact demonstrate the importance of finding ways to alleviate this widespread concern. An opportune time to intervene is in adolescence as people start forming romantic relationships. This is particularly pertinent with girls who often experience more harm from abusive relationships. Aims: To evaluate whether a bibliotherapy approach, using the book 'Twilight, True Love and You' (Deacon 2011), was effective in altering beliefs about romantic relationships that underlie dating abuse in adolescent girls. Methods: A cluster-randomised trial design was used. Eight A-level Psychology classes from different schools were randomly allocated to the control or intervention group. Participants were 16-19 year old females and those in the intervention group received the book. Measures were completed at baseline and follow-up (eight weeks) and included indicators of agreement with romantic myths, knowledge of warning signs, violent-tolerant attitudes, behavioural intentions and reported dating abuse. The intervention acceptability was also explored. Results: Participants in the intervention group were significantly more likely to disagree with romantic myths after the intervention, (p=.02; Cohen's d=.45), although this effect was not significant after adjustment for clustering. No significant differences between groups were found for knowledge of warning signs, violent-tolerant attitudes or behavioural intentions. Participants in the intervention group reported significantly more 'controlling behaviour' after the intervention compared to the control group (p=.003, Cohen's d=.95 for individual analysis & p=.03, Cohen's d=l after adjusting for clustering). Over halfthe participants read at least half the book indicating acceptability. 7 Conclusions: The bibliotherapy approach was acceptable to the participants. The intervention did not demonstrate clear effects on the study variables but there was some indication of change in attitudes regarding romantic myths and identification of controlling behaviours in relationships.

Despite a proliferation of research on Islam and Muslims in the media, very little work has focused on Muslim women, a much-debated social group that clearly merits special consideration. More specifically, no studies have approached the topic with any comprehensive methodologies, certainly not from a critical linguistic perspective. The overall aim of this thesis is therefore to investigate how Muslim women are represented in the BBe News compared to Arab News, as major 'Western' and 'Muslim' news sources respectively. The textual analyses are based on two purpose-built corpora, the BBCC (1.9 million words in 3,269 articles) and the ANC (2.2 million words in 3,111 articles), comprising all available articles mentioning Muslim women in the two news organisations' web sites from 2001 to 2007. Drawing on theory from critical discourse studies, the research employs analytical tools and concepts from the Dialectical-relational, Socio-cognitive, Discourse-historical, and Sociosemantic approaches to critical discourse analysis. These are combined with corpusbased methodologies to investigate linguistic patterns associated with Muslim women across thousands of texts in each corpus. The analysis therefore stands apart from previous studies in two respects. The first is its exhaustive approach to identifying a wide range of salient as well as underreported issues related to Muslim women in news discourse. The second is demonstrating a more integrated approach to conducting the quantitative and qualitative analyses that uniquely enhances the synergy between critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. Findings suggest that Muslim women's representations are largely restricted in terms of regional coverage. Semantic macro structures related to conflict and crime are more prevalent in the BBC than Arab News. Muslim women in Arab News also appear in a wider range of contexts reporting their achievements and concerns in areas such as education, business and employment. Another contrast manifests itself in the way the two news sources construct the religion of Islam, especially in the context of women's rights where religious and cultural practices are often conflated. The hijab is a nodal discourse surrounding Muslim women in both news sources, but it was statistically more prominent in the BBe and its discourse prosody was more negative than in Arab News. The function of the hijab as a descriptive feature in some texts is often unclear, raising serious questions about its relevance. Overall, the representations of Muslim women are often problematic. Western 'liberal' narratives supported by 'evidence' from 'moderate' Muslim voices tend to be preferred in the BBe's reporting, especially with regard to the hijab. This results in a marginalisation of a majority of female Muslim voices. A number of recommendations are made for journalists to avoid recurrent misrepresentations of the experiences, hopes and concerns of different Muslim women. Keywords: critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, Muslim women, BBe, Arab News, media, newspapers, online news

The thesis investigates the articulation of the voices of Japanese women in the U.S. in the Japanese immigrant media between 1914 and 1924 with particular regard to the idea of "home". The phrase the 'voices of women' in this thesis means discourses by women which denote varied and dynamic social practices and the meanings of utterances and cognitions (including the production and interpretation of various texts) in a socio-political economic and cultural context. This research critically evaluates the complicated roles and characteristics of the 'voices of women' as well as taking into account the authoritarian manner in which the media provided opportunities for the 'voices of women'. The research analyzes a range of published material written and spoken by Japanese women living in the U.S. Quantitative and qualitative content/textual analyses are deployed to examine the largest Japanese immigrant newspaper, The Nichibei (Japanese American Daily). The 'voices of women' challenge the dominant male discourses and Japanese 'traditional' gender ideology. However, these voices were used to construct a unified image of Japanese women in the U.S. as a series of groups, in the sense of a racial, national and ethnic group. a working-class group and groups of wives or mothers. They internalized modern hegemonic middle-class values under the influence of the developing concepts of race and nation. They were represented in connection with ideals of "good homes" and femininity. especially in the fields of romantic love; the position and roles of women in a family and society; and motherhood. The thesis concludes that women were not simply a 'voiceless' unity, nor a unity with 'voices'. Among the various women and men involved, there were complicated power relations defining the image of "'Japanese women in the U.S."