This book studies how marginality impacts the everyday lives of Indian Muslims. It challenges the prevailing myths and stereotypes through which Indian Muslims have come to be seen in the popular imagination. The volume engages with questions of citizenship, collective violence, and issues of civil and criminal jurisprudence. It explores the linkages between development, marginality, and citizenship – the three critical issues for modern democracies today. Going beyond the singular narrative of a community on a continuous slide, the chapters in this volume present diversities of the Muslim experience of exclusion and participation. It discusses themes such as violence and marginality among minorities; Indian Muslims and the ghettoized economy; employment aspirations of low-income Muslim men; intergenerational social mobility of Muslims; the nature of the middle class; and the question of Islam, development, and globalization to showcase the living conditions of Muslims in India. Part of the Religion and Citizenship series, this timely volume will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of political studies, sociology, political sociology, minority studies, public policy, religion, citizenship studies, diversity and inclusion studies, and social anthropology.

This book studies how marginality impacts the everyday lives of Indian Muslims. It challenges the prevailing myths and stereotypes through which Indian Muslims have come to be seen in the popular imagination. The volume engages with questions of citizenship, collective violence, and issues of civil and criminal jurisprudence. It explores the linkages between development, marginality, and citizenship – the three critical issues for modern democracies today. Going beyond the singular narrative of a community on a continuous slide, the chapters in this volume present diversities of the Muslim experience of exclusion and participation. It discusses themes such as violence and marginality among minorities; Indian Muslims and the ghettoized economy; employment aspirations of low-income Muslim men; intergenerational social mobility of Muslims; the nature of the middle class; and the question of Islam, development, and globalization to showcase the living conditions of Muslims in India. Part of the Religion and Citizenship series, this timely volume will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of political studies, sociology, political sociology, minority studies, public policy, religion, citizenship studies, diversity and inclusion studies, and social anthropology.

Social mobility research has held a central place in the sociological analysis of industrialized countries of the west, particularly with regard to the study of stratification systems, their forms, and processes. The research on India has however been mostly scattered. The lack of systematic research in this area implies that we do not have a sense of the precise amount of social mobility in contemporary India, and the changes such mobility has had on social structures over time and across demographics. This book draws on national level datasets and quantitative methods to understand the multiple strands of social mobility or the lack of it, by focusing on the overlapping identities of social class, caste, and gender in both rural and urban context. It investigates the contemporary processes and drivers of mobility, and appraises the role of education in supporting or preventing increased upward social mobility by concentrating on those groups that are disadvantaged from this very opportunity. It also takes into account the impact of liberalization on social mobility and argues that mobility today is differentially patterned on the basis of local and global identities.