This paper explores how women relate to the forging of new identities in a complex negotiation, which involves accommodation, assimilation, rejection, interrogation, resistance and capitulation to the dominant constructions of identity.  This specifically discussed Mohajir identity and sense of nationhood in Karachi, Pakistan. The paper tries to understand some of the ways in which ethnic and ethno-national identities come to be created, and the contradictions that may arise from other belongings, primarily those of class, religion and gender.