Striking lives: Multiple narratives of South Asian women’s employment, identity and protest in the UK

Abstract

This article draws on the narratives of the two groups of South Asian women (SAW) in the UK who took part in industrial disputes some 30 years apart, in order to examine the ways in which they have negotiated their way through their classed, racialized and gendered inclusion in the labour market. The comparison of the Grunwick and the Gate Gourmet disputes and the employment histories of the actors involved in these disputes enables us to explore the centrality of waged work to the social construction of a diasporic identity and the complexity of SAW’s identities in the UK. This article utilizes an intersectional framework, based on life history interviews, to reinterpret historical events by examining women’s experiences of industrial action in the context of their class backgrounds and changing class positions, and particular histories of migration and settlement.