as the Young Muslim Association of Britain or the
United Kingdom Islamic Mission in Britain have
women’s sections. Sufi groups allow space for
women. The network of Women Living Under
Muslim Laws (WLUML), which advocates against
infringements of women’s human rights in Muslim
countries, has its headquarters in London.
Many activist secular associations are multieth-
nic. In the United Kingdom these include Southall
Black Sisters, which advocates against domestic
violence, and encompasses South Asian women
irrespective of religious origin, and Women Against
Fundamentalism, which recently has agitated for
women’s rights in Algeria (Lloyd 1999). During the
autumn of 1998 a caravaneof Algerian associa-
tions, with a very strong representation of women,
toured France to raise funds and present informa-
tion on the growth of civil society in Algeria.
Associations joined to defend the rights of asylum
seekers (sanspapiers) from Algeria and West Africa.
In 1996, a protest began of asylum seekers from
Mali and Senegal in which women took a leading
role. Lloyd (2003) reports that the women were in
a stronger position than men to build networked
support because they had more contacts with
neighborhood structures, such as schools, shops,
and local services, and their organizations reached
across ethnic and national boundaries. The protest
culminated in a march of 100,000 public sector
trade unionists. Such alliances have raised con-
sciousness about the plight of asylum seekers in
France, many of them from Muslim countries and
many of them women.
Conclusion
Muslim migrant women’s networks draw on cul-
tural familiars translocated from home into the
migration context, enabling migrant women despite
their marginality to create new solidarities, to sus-
tain networks for self help, sociability, and study,
and, more rarely, to mobilize for political protest.
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