Pakistani-Americans

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses that the Pakistani-American community began as a strictly Muslim and strictly Pakistani enclave of immigrants who tried to maintain their traditional customs to the highest degree possible, but as time goes by their social customs are modified by the American culture. The author points out that the Pakistani practice of keeping males and females completely segregated has worked against preserving intra-community marriage because young people have to make friends with others in the community, since they are kept away from people their own age in their own community.

Table of Content
Introduction
Immigration
Cultural Background
Kinship
Marriage Customs
A Changing Community
The Traditional Wedding
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Purdah is practiced in different ways, depending on family tradition, region, class and rural or urban residence. However, there is nowhere that unrelated men and women mix freely. The most extreme restraints are found in parts of the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan. In those locales, women almost never leave their homes except when they marry and almost never meet unrelated men. They may not be allowed contact even with male cousins on their mother's side--in a patrilinear society; these men are not classed as relatives. At the same time, women have only very formal relations with those men they are allowed to meet, which might include the father in law, paternal uncles, and brothers in law. Interestingly, poor rural women have greater mobility because they are expected to work and are responsible for transplanting rice seedlings, weeding crops, raising chickens, selling eggs and stuffing wool or cotton into comforters (razais). Women are more circumscribed once the family becomes more prosperous and begins to aspire to higher status, for then it is common to require stricter purdah among women as a first social change."

More papers on Pakistani-Americans:

• Comparison Essay # 96558 : "Americans of African and Asian Decent"
• Narrative Essay # 108251 : "Cultural Identity"
• Persuasive Essay # 147186 : "The U.S. in Afghanistan: A Losing War"

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