As has been commonly observed, questions of identity and, in particular, of identity politics have become central to public deliberation and theoretical debate. It is the contention of this chapter that much debate over identity has been overly concerned with discussions around anti-essentialism and that it should rather focus on the interplay between personal and political agency and its troubled, unstable manifestation as ‘identity politics’, as Stuart Hall suggests (2000b: 16). But troubling to anti-essentialists is the fact that identity movements conflate personal and public identities and that in the act of mobilisation they cut across other social identities—and herein lies their power to challenge prevailing norms (Werbner 1997). The young woman in the above quote conflates different strands together with proud self-awareness: her Britishness, Muslimness, professionalism, international connections and cosmopolitan modern faith, rejecting what she sees as any pre-packaged multiculturalist or anti-racist identity.