Despite considerable attention paid to lone motherhood in academic research and policy there has been a neglect and resulting invisibility of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim (PBM) lone mothers. Indeed, lone motherhood literature has largely focused on employment and less so on everyday lived experiences, barriers and opportunities. Similarly, despite grassroot South Asian (SA) women's organisations being documented as a crucial voice for marginalised women, there is little known about the support these provide to lone mothers. Thus, conducting research in these areas is a sociological priority.
Drawing on an intersectionality lens and informed by works of black feminist scholars (e.g. Crenshaw 1991; Phoenix 1994; Yuval-Davis 2006; Bhopal 2009), the study on which this thesis is based involved participant observations conducted during eight months of fieldwork at a SA women's organisation in Northern England (SAW's Place), alongside 30 interviews with lone mothers, organisation workers and external partners.
The thesis unpacks the 'closed box' of the often homogenised 'lone mother' (Duncan and Edwards 1999) and 'SA women' categories. Some of the key topics and themes examined include the diverse routes to lone motherhood; stigma; social policy related needs and barriers (e.g. migration, employment, housing and financial barriers) and the support and resources offered by women's organisations like SAW's Place. In this way the thesis contributes to developing an intersectional theoretical approach to examining PBM lone mothers' struggles, agency, resilience, experiences of exclusion, recovery and adaptation. It demonstrates how participants' positionalities as women cut across racialised, ethnic, cultural, religious, class and migrant identities to shape experiences of lone motherhood, highlighting commonalities and differences. It also contributes to challenging perceptions surrounding PBM women, families and traditional discourses of patriarchy, and illustrating the continued vital need of SA women's organisations. The thesis delivers a range of methodological insights relating to reflexivity, researcher positionality (challenging the insider-outsider dichotomy) and conducting reciprocal research with SA women and organisations.
