Negotiating Boundaries in the City (Studies in Migration and Diaspora)

NEGOTIATING BOUNDARIES IN THE CITY

Studies in Migration and Diaspora Series Editor: Anne J. Kershen, Queen Mary College, University of London, UK

Studies in Migration and Diaspora is a series designed to showcase the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of research in this important field. Volumes in the series cover local, national and global issues and engage with both historical and contemporary events. The books will appeal to scholars, students and all those engaged in the study of migration and diaspora. Amongst the topics covered are minority ethnic relations, transnational movements and the cultural, social and political implications of moving from ‘over there’, to ‘over here’.

Also in the series: Migration and Domestic Work: A European Perspective on a Global Theme Edited by Helma Lutz ISBN 978-0-7546-4790-4 The Cultures of Economic Migration: International Perspectives Edited by Suman Gupta and Tope Omoniyi ISBN 978-0-7546-7070-4 Writing Diaspora: South Asian Women, Culture and Ethnicity Yasmin Hussain ISBN 978-0-7546-4113-1 Food in the Migrant Experience Edited by Anne J. Kershen ISBN 978-0-7546-1874-4 Language, Labour and Migration Edited by Anne J. Kershen ISBN 978-0-7546-1171-4 A Question of Identity Edited by Anne J. Kershen ISBN 978-1-84014-558-8

Negotiating Boundaries in the City Migration, Ethnicity, and Gender in Britain

JOANNA HERBERT Queen Mary, University of London, UK

© Joanna Herbert 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Joanna Herbert has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Herbert, Joanna. Negotiating boundaries in the city : migration, ethnicity, and gender in Britain. - (Studies in migration and diaspora) 1. South Asians - Great Britain - Social conditions 2. Sociology, Urban - Great Britain 3. Great Britain Ethnic relations I. Title 305.8'914'041 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Herbert, Joanna Negotiating boundaries in the city : migration, ethnicity, and gender in Britain / by Joanna Herbert. p. cm. -- (Studies in migration and diaspora) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-4677-8 1. Leicester (England)--Emigration and immigration--20th century. 2. Immigrants-England--Leicester--History--20th century. 3. Leicester (England)--Social conditions--20th century. 4. South Asians--England--Leicester--Social conditions. 5. Africans--England--Leicester--Social conditions. 6. Great Britain--Emigration and immigration--20th century. I Title. JV7695.L45H47 2007 304.8'42542054--dc22 2007025292 ISBN 978-0-7546-4677-8

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.

Contents Preface Acknowledgements

Introduction: Narratives of the City

vii ix

1

1

The Background to South Asian Settlement

13

2

Constructions of Whiteness

31

3

Transitions

61

4

The Household

75

5

The Neighbourhood

109

6

Education and the Workplace

141

7

Conclusion: Complexities and Connections

169

Appendix: Biographical Details of Interviewees Bibliography Index

179 185 221

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Preface In the aftermath of the race riots which combusted in the northern cities of Bradford, Burnley and Oldham during the summer of 2001, Leicester was put forward as the exemplar of a city which had overcome racial disharmony to become a role model for multicultural cohesion. Thirty years since it was deemed the most racist city in Britain, and with a South Asian population which represents 30 per cent of the total, Leicester now has the reputation of being one of the most ethnically diverse and harmonious cities in Europe. However, ‘peaceful co-existence’ did not just happen. It resulted from, amongst other processes, the negotiation and renegotiation of spatial and social boundaries by native and immigrant alike, the defining of their ‘whiteness’ by working class men and women who had not recognised the need before, and the adoption of coping strategies by Asian women who felt increasingly disempowered in an alien environment. It is the journey taken to achieve that perceived harmonious end that is admirably put under the microscope in this book by Joanna Herbert. In order to comprehend how Leicester moved from being ‘the most abominable place [for a South Asian immigrant] to live in the country’ to one in which the nonwhite population is now economically and socially well established, the author listened to and recorded the narratives of those who experienced, and in many instances contributed to, the transition. In contrast to the majority of books on the migrant experience, this one adopts a binary structure which enables us to hear both sides of the story. For whilst anchoring the book securely in theoretical foundations, it puts meat on the bones by introducing us to white working class and non-white voices of both genders. As the result of the author’s in depth interviews we are able to explore the roots of racism, rather than, as so often is the case, merely gazing at a landscape of racist activity. And whilst we encounter expected white negativity which perceives ‘the other’ as a threat to housing, the welfare system and maintenance of white power, we also hear how the South Asian arrivals offered friendship to their white neighbours which, as time passed, enabled increasing interaction between outsider and insider. The author identifies the immigrant group she has put under the microscope as South Asian. Yet, she does not leave it at that rather broad and, what can be, unsatisfactory term. She adds further depth to the study by highlighting the variations in the experiences of East Africans, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis as well as those of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Some of the ‘loudest’ voices we hear are those of immigrant females who have overcome the cultural strictures imported from home and further reinforced over here, and by so doing have transformed their lives, gaining financial and social independence. This book highlights the complexity of the processes of migration, settlement and integration. It juxtaposes white and non-white, friendship and hostility, empowerment and loss of power, belonging and displacement. In addition it confirms that the assessment of the migrant community, its success or failure, its integration

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or separation, cannot be made with the first arrivals; it takes time – sometimes up to three generations – and understanding, to arrive at the portal of community cohesion. Through the combination of theory and empiricism, the author demonstrates that simplistic labels such as racist, racial harmony and ethnic segregation are often inexact and require deconstructing in order for readers and observers to comprehend how interaction and harmony can be achieved. It is a book which informs, enlightens and should be taken as a template for further studies of the evolution of multicultural cities. Anne J. Kershen Queen Mary, University of London Spring 2007

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many people whom I have interviewed who showed considerable hospitality, gave me access to their lives and were willing to tell me their stories. I would like to thank all the staff and colleagues with whom I have worked with at the Urban History Centre, the School of Historical Studies and the Post Colonial group at the University of Leicester. I am especially grateful to Richard Rodger for his insights, criticisms and suggestions; they are much appreciated. I am also grateful to Clare Anderson, Jack Barbalet, Lucy Faire, Sally Horrocks, Syd Jeffers, Nick Jewson, Chris Pole and Keith D.M. Snell. I would also like to acknowledge the comments provided by Mary Chamberlain, the help of Peter Benson and a special thank you to the advice provided by Gurharpal Singh. Thanks also to my colleagues from the Global Cities at Work ESRC project at Queen Mary, University of London – Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Jon May, Cathy McIlwaine and Jane Wills. I would like to thank Cynthia Brown for her valuable advice and support and other staff at the East Midlands Oral History Archive, the National Sound Archive, British Library and Highfields Library for their help. I am indebted to Mohammed Bashir, Kip Phillips and Peter Driver and sincerely grateful to Richard Courtney for the inspiring discussions and all his support. Grateful acknowledgements for financial support are due to the University of Leicester, the Meiji University International Exchange Programs Fund and the Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship (grant no: 026-27-268). I am also most grateful to Anshuman Mondal who has provided invaluable help and support during the revisions to the text. Finally I would like to thank my family for their support and encouragement and the memory of Alice Louise Weddell, to whom this book is dedicated.

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Introduction

Narratives of the City With the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s, Britain and North America witnessed the economic decline of older, industrial cities and the emergence of a small number of global cities which serve as command and control centres of the global economy. In urban studies, academic interest has, over the past twenty years, tended to focus on these elite global cities, yet there is a growing recognition of the need to consider a wider range of cities which fall outside the remit of the privileged few and have evaded critical attention.1 Indeed, since the 1990s the cities that were once regarded as having been left behind and dominated by decline have been reinventing themselves. Attempts to achieve this have been made both through the physical redevelopment of city centres and the re-branding of their identity in an attempt to sell the city and regenerate the local economy.2 Birmingham has cast itself as the ‘meeting place of Europe’, Sheffield as the ‘the city of sport’, whilst Bristol has adopted a maritime identity.3 Within this context, the image of Leicester has been transformed, from an English provincial city to one of Britain’s main Asian cities. South Asians are not imagined as outsiders but rather they are presented as integral and vital to the city’s identity. The city council have promoted and celebrated ethnic diversity as a valuable asset and a key tourist attraction. As Jewson observed: ‘Tourists are urged to come to Leicester because of the city’s diverse and lively ethnic communities.’4 In particular, ‘The Golden Mile’ in the Belgrave area, home to South Asian shops and annual festivals such as the Mela and Diwali, is seen as a main tourist attraction, with the potential to develop into an ‘Asia Town’, akin to London’s Chinatown.5 Clearly, Leicester’s ethnic diversity and, in particular, its distinctive South Asian character have been seized upon as attractive and exciting selling points for the city 1 J. Robinson, ‘Global and world cities: a view from off the map’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26, 3 (2002), 531–54. 2 G. Kearns and C. Philo, (eds), Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present (Oxford: Pergamon, 1993). 3 N. Henry, C. McEwan and J.S. Pollard, ‘Globalization from below: Birmingham – postcolonial workshop of the world?’, Area, 34, 2 (2002), 117–27, I. Taylor, K. Evans and P. Fraser, A Tale of Two Cities: Global Change, Local Feeling, and Everyday Life in the North of England: A Study in Manchester and Sheffield (London: Routledge, 1996), D. Atkinson and E. Laurier, ‘A sanitised city? Social exclusion at Bristol’s 1996 international festival of the sea’, Geoforum, 29, 2 (1998), 199–206. 4 N. Jewson, ‘Migrant populations, community divisions and ethnic mobilisation’, in N. Jewson, Migration Processes and Ethnic Divisions (Leicester: The Centre for Urban History and The Ethnicity Research Centre, University of Leicester, 1995), 109. 5 ‘Creating golden smiles out of the Golden Mile’, Leicester Mercury, 13 April 2001.

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and marketed as pleasant and welcoming spaces for tourists and professionals to consume. Leicester is not unique here. As Eade has shown, London has also been promoted as a prosperous multicultural city and successful melting pot of different migrant groups.6 The reputation of Leicester as a tolerant multicultural city was given a significant boost following the disturbances in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in 2001 when, due to the absence of ethnic unrest in Leicester, the city was labelled Britain’s most ethnically harmonious city and praised as a European model of multicultural success. Articles in the local, national and international press contrasted the apparent tolerance and genial character of Leicester with the northern cities and sought to reflect on why Leicester was successful. The discourse that Leicester was an exemplary model, from which lessons can be learnt, was reproduced in both official reports on the 2001 riots and academic analysis.7 Drawing on Walton’s analysis of Monterey, the current discourse about Leicester can be seen as a narrative; a constructed story.8 This is not to suggest that it is invented or untrue, rather it is one interpretation of the city. It is important to recognise that there may be competing discourses about a place at particular times and as one discourse becomes dominant other stories and histories are silenced. This book seeks to provide a radically different story about Leicester, one that draws on the interpretations of local white and South Asian inhabitants of the city to reveal the nuances of their experiences and urban social worlds, which are lost in Leicester’s story of its multicultural success. Boundaries are a key motif of the book. On their arrival in Britain, whites effectively relegated South Asian migrants to the margins of society, defining where they could go, what they could do and how far they were accepted.9 In the case of South Asian women, boundaries were imposed by both post-colonising forces and the patriarchal systems within the South Asian communities. This intricate set of relations prompts significant questions: did whites always erect boundaries to exclude South Asians? On what basis were these boundaries formed and were these borders rigid or permeable, static or malleable? How did individuals within South Asian communities live within these constructed boundaries? How were their lives 6 J. Eade, Placing London: From Imperial City to Global City (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000). 7 T. Cantle, Community Cohesion, A Report of the Independent Review Team (London, 2002). A. Amin, ‘Multi-ethnicity and the idea of Europe’, Theory, Culture and Society, 21, 2 (2004), 1–24. 8 J. Walton, A Storied Land: Community and Memory in Monterey (London: University of California Press, 2001). 9 South Asian is used as a shorthand to describe those who can trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent; namely, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir. The label ‘South Asian’ is problematic as it ignores the cultural diversity within communities and how caste, religion, regional, or even kinship classifications may be more important forms of identity. ‘White’ denotes those who are of white skin colour and British origin. This term also suggests an undifferentiated group, although it has not been subject to the same scrutiny as other categories. This reflects the hegemonic position of whiteness, which acts as a privileged viewing point to view ‘others’, whilst whiteness itself evades inspection and qualification.

Introduction: Narratives of the City

3

confined? How did they create viable lives? Were they the passive recipients of marginality? Did they develop strategies to resist, challenge and subvert constraints? In addition, how did the boundaries of race, gender and class overlap and intersect? Did migration open up new opportunities for women to resist patriarchy? Which were the most important dimensions shaping individuals’ lives? Moreover, what were the historical processes behind these complex relations? In addressing these questions this book seeks to show how migration created challenges for both whites and South Asians, for both male and female migrants, and explores how they perceived and navigated boundaries within the local contexts of their everyday lives. The book has three other main objectives, which need elaboration. The first is to unpack white ethnicity and go beyond the study of a minority ethnic group as somewhat isolated within the host society, to reveal the relations between the white and South Asian inhabitants. With the recent bourgeoning in whiteness studies there is an increasing awareness that focusing solely on minority ethnic groups only serves to problematise them, whilst white ethnicity as a silent and unacknowledged ‘norm’ remains untouched at the centre. The need to deconstruct white identity is not intended simply to correct academic bias in the urban ethnicity literature, rather it is also recognised as an important project that can help end white privilege and develop anti-racist strategies.10 It seems an anomaly that whilst there is substantial research documenting the tradition of racial prejudice in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain and the study of discrimination has been identified as the greatest success within ethnic and racial research, there has been a distinct lack of analysis into the roots of racism.11 Indeed as Dench et al. have observed, it is an issue that has been avoided by researchers.12 Consequently, scholars have called for a deeper understanding into why racial discourses are used as well as the vital need to examine those situations when prejudices are absent and co-operative inter-ethnic relations are fostered.13

10 R. Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (London: Routledge, 1993). 11 See for example T. Kushner and K. Lunn, (eds), Traditions of Intolerance: Historical Perspectives on Fascism and Race Discourse in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), R. Samuel, (ed.), Patriots: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, 3 Volumes (London: Routledge, 1989), M. Banton, ‘Progress in ethnic and racial studies’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24, 2 (2001), 173–94. 12 G. Dench, K. Gavron and M. Young, The New East End: Kinship, Race and Conflict (London: Profile, 2006). 13 A. Bonnett, ‘Constructions of whiteness in European and American anti-racism’, in R.D. Torres, L.F. Mirón, and J.X. Inda, (eds), Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 200–18, A. Rattansi, ‘“Western” racisms, ethnicities and identities in a “post-modern” frame’, in A. Rattansi and S. Westwood, (eds), Racism, Modernity and Identity: On the Western Front (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 15–86, M. Banton, ‘The race relations problematic’, in E. Cashmore and J. Jennings, (eds), Racism: Essential Readings (London: Sage, 2001), 293. T. Kushner, and K. Knox, Refugees In An Age of Genocide: Global, National and Local Perspectives During the Twentieth Century (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 402.

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The call to understand the nature of inter-ethnic relations has also been given added impetus following recent developments in Britain including the ‘riots’ in the northern cities, the growth of Islamophobia after September 11, the rise of identity politics, and the resurgence of the British National Party among certain white communities. These issues have sparked considerable debate about the realities of multicultural British society, focusing, in particular, on what is perceived as fragmentations and divisions between ethnic communities, and the urgent need to foster an integrated, cohesive society. Within these debates there is often an assumption that one way to suppress racism and promote respect and tolerance between ethnic groups is through inter-ethnic contact. This was an underlying premise of the Cantle Report, which criticised ethnic groups that have no meaningful exchanges with each other and consequently lead ‘parallel lives’. It is also a view supported by substantial research which has highlighted how racism is deeply entrenched in predominantly white areas.14 Others have suggested that contact may simply reinforce racial stereotypes and antagonisms; yet, despite these debates, there is very limited qualitative research that actually examines these issues. Consequently, scholars such as Vertovec have called for more research into local negotiations of ethnic difference and the effects of contact between groups.15 Here the emphasis is firmly on the local. That is, for academic study to move away from public political discourse and for generalisations to emanate from local, specific and historically grounded analysis that shows how particular localities produce particular kinds of racialised identities.16 This book represents a response to these developments. Yet it is also vital to note that the research draws on narratives of a white working class group. Depictions of the white working class both in the media and academic domain are typically negative and sometimes stigmatised.17 Part of this negative identity is the assumption that white working class people are invariably racist and lack the agency or capability

14 For an overview see R.V. Kempen and A.S. Özüekren, ‘Ethnic segregation in cities: new forms and explanations in a dynamic world’, Urban Studies, 35, 10 (1998), 1631–56. For Britain see B. Troyna and R. Hatcher, Racism in Children’s Lives: A Study of Mainly-White Primary Schools (London: Routledge, 1992), J. Agyeman, ‘Black people, white landscape’, Town and Country Planning, 58, 12 (1989), 336–8, P. Kinsmen, ‘Landscape, race and national identity, the photography of Ingrid Pollard’, Arena, 27, 4 (1985), 300–10. For recent comment see Y. Alibhai-Brown, ‘The countryside’s a no-go area for black Britons’, The Independent, 2 October 2002. 15 S. Vertovec, ‘The emergence of super-diversity in Britain’, Working Paper no. 25 (Oxford: Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 2006). 16 J. Solomos and L. Back, ‘Conceptualising racisms: social theory, politics and research’, in Cashmore and Jennings, Racism: Essential Readings, 354. See also P. Bhachu, ‘The multiple landscapes of transnational Asian women in the Diaspora’, in V. Amit-Talai and C. Knowles, (eds), Re-Situating Identities: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (Ontario: Broadview Press, 1996), 286. 17 C. Haylett, ‘Class, culture and urban policy: reconsidering equality’, Antipode, 35 (2003) 55–74. B. Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture (London: Routledge, 2000). See also J. Wills, ‘Work, identity and new rhetorics of mobilisation’, paper presented at ESRC-seminar Working Class Lives, London, 20–21 October 2005.

Introduction: Narratives of the City

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to question their own prejudices.18 This book seeks to provide a critique of such assumptions by showing that whilst working class perceptions did not fit with the vision of a completely genial and tolerant Leicester, neither were the local white population endemically racist. Rather, their ethnic identities were negotiable. Gender is also a key theme of the book and like ethnicity it is viewed as a dynamic process rather than a fixed entity. Whilst it can no longer be asserted that the study of gender and migration remains under-researched, the topic is often sidelined within mainstream immigration studies. The aim here is not only to counter this marginalisation, but more specifically to contribute to a deeper understanding of the gendered experiences of migration and women’s agency. In particular, the book seeks to engage with an on-going debate that seeks to ascertain whether migration is a source of female empowerment or whether it enhances masculine privilege and creates new forms of exploitation and disadvantage for women. Many accounts of migrant women have been blamed for representing women as essentially disempowered victims, suffering endemic disadvantage and double jeopardy.19 Research on South Asian women has been cited as particularly guilty here and has been heavily criticised for presenting women as oppressed by their religious and ethnic cultures.20 This book is, therefore, part of the shift in academic attention which highlights the agency of women and their ability to take action to improve their position. It seeks to engage with and advance these current developments. The book draws on Bourdieu’s model of agency, which is seen as more complex and subtle than those described by other structural theorists, such as Foucault.21 In particular, Bourdieu goes beyond simplistic paradigms of dominance and resistance and permits a consideration of the complexities of negotiation processes.22 Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ is also employed and was formulated to overcome what he perceived to be a false dichotomy between the individual/society or objectivity/ subjectivity. It is a particularly useful notion for conceptualising the predispositions, aspirations and common sense worldview of particular groups, gained through experience. It encapsulates how the active residue of a person’s past that is grounded in their group’s collective history functions within their present.23 Although for Bourdieu habitus serves to reproduce social structures, the concept integrates the role of competence and improvisation, emphasised by Bourdieu’s analogy of people as players in a game, actively pursuing their own goals. Therefore habitus does not 18 K. Tyler, ‘Racism, tradition and reflexivity in a former mining town’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27, 2 (2004), 290–309. 19 See N. Puwar ‘Melodramatic postures and constructions’, in N. Puwar and P. Raghuram, (eds), South Asian Women in the Diaspora (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 21–41. 20 F. Ahmad, ‘Still “in progress?” – methodological dilemmas, tensions and contradictions in theorising South Asian Muslim women’, in Puwar and Raghuram, South Asian Women in the Diaspora, 43–65. 21 J.M. Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 117. 22 L. McNay, ‘Gender, habitus and the field. Pierre Bourdieu and the limits of reflexivity’, Theory, Culture and Society, 16, 1 (1999), 105. 23 See P. Bourdieu, ‘Social space and symbolic power’, Sociological Theory, 7, 1 (1988), 18–26.

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strictly determine actions as a fixed structure; rather it provides a set of guiding principles, which individuals deploy in changing contexts. Feminist scholars have complemented and developed Bourdieu’s theories. Ethnocentric concepts which equate agency with autonomy and western views of independence, have recently been questioned and rejected in favour of a more relational and multi-dimensional theory of agency.24 Here male–female relations are seen as fluid and agency is viewed as creative, generative and variable, involving imagining, planning and strategising. This approach encompasses the resourcefulness and cognitive capacity of the individual to adapt to constraints and develop different strategies. It also important to note, however, that whilst the agency of the women is a key dimension of the book, the focus is also on the experiences of male migrants. This is most significant considering some recent warnings that the focus on women in studies of migration has sometimes led to the neglect or simplification of men’s experiences.25 There is also a widespread recognition that gender cannot be studied in isolation and that identities are situated. The work of black British feminists have highlighted how individuals are located within power hierarchies and interlocking inequalities in which class, gender and race are not autonomous spheres but enmesh to create a matrix of domination.26 From this perspective, individuals experience race, gender and class differently depending on their social location within the intersecting hierarchies. Men and women experience both constraint and opportunity depending on their class and race. So for instance, South Asian men may experience a loss of power due to racism, yet their experience of racism will vary according to their class. This book seeks to build on these concepts by showing how experiences, subjectivities and ultimately stories were shaped by these variables, but also a host of other social dimensions including language ability, position within the family hierarchy, timing of arrival, education, religion and household type. The life course emerged as an important differential as the women, in particular, revealed how they adapted at different stages of their life: from daughter, to daughter-in-law, to mother, to mother-in-law; roles which have important implications for access to power. As we shall see, what emerges is the complexity of experiences and stories that are not heard in Leicester’s dominant narrative. It should be noted that others have also made progress here by providing alternative representations of the city. Chessum’s study of the African Caribbean population reveals that they were a minority group within Leicester who were compared unfavourably with the perception of successful South Asians, whilst Burrell has sought to highlight the experiences of European migrants as white minorities who have also been deemed as peripheral to the city’s

24 L. McNay, Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). 25 S.J. Mahler and P.R. Pessar, ‘Gender matters: ethnographers bring gender from the periphery toward the core of migration studies’, International Migration Review, XL, 1 (2006), 50–51. 26 M.B. Zinn and B.T. Dill, ‘Theorizing difference from multiracial feminism’, in Torres, Mirón and Inda, Race, Identity, and Citizenship, 103–11.

Introduction: Narratives of the City

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identity.27 Nevertheless, there has been no comprehensive study exploring the experiences of different South Asian migrants and their relationships to the local white residents, despite the city’s strong South Asian identity and its status as a model for progressive multiculturalism. Interviews The research here draws on 44 interviews from existing oral history archives and 45 of my own life story interviews.28 Overall, 59 of these interviews were with South Asians. The South Asian respondents were aged between about forty and seventyfive and were first generation migrants, although the sample also included those who attended secondary or sixth form schooling in Britain and have been classified as the ‘half-way generation.’29 Approximately half of the respondents (52 per cent) had been born in or had migrated to East Africa, although there was diversity here. For instance, my own interviews included ten respondents from East Africa and five from India, and also two from Southern Africa and one from Fiji. This diversity was not only reflected in country of origin, but also in other factors such as gender, occupation, education, religion and timing of arrival, although the majority came to Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.30 The participants were contacted through various ‘gatekeepers’ within Highfields and although this may present problems regarding the representativeness of the group interviewed, it did prevent possible suspicion from the respondents. As an ‘outsider’ overcoming suspicion was the main difficulty encountered when potential participants were contacted by myself and the help of the gatekeepers in establishing mutual trust between the respondent and myself proved invaluable. The bulk of the interviews were conducted in the respondents’ homes and followed a life-story method. This method takes a holistic approach to the respondent’s life and is not based on the pursuit of generalisations for statistical analysis or accurate objective knowledge; instead, the uniqueness of the subject is valued. The interviews therefore do not represent the views of all white or South Asian people living in 27 L. Chessum, From Migrants to Ethnic Minority: Making Black Community in Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), K. Burrell, Moving Lives: Narratives of Nation and Migration among Europeans in Post-War Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 28 These archives were from The East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) and The British Library National Sound Archive (BLNSA), Millennium Memory Bank collection (MMB). For further details see R. Perks, ‘The century speaks: a public history partnership’, Oral History 29, 2 (2001), 95–105. 29 T. Modood, S. Beishon and S. Virdee, Changing Ethnic Identities (London: PSI, 1994), 13. This also reflects the relatively young South Asian population in Leicester. See Chapter 2 for more details. 30 Minority South Asian religions such as Christianity were not included. The religion of the respondents in the archives was not always stated, however in my own interviews 47 per cent of the respondents were Muslim, 37 per cent Hindu and 16 per cent Sikh. Biographical details including gender, date of birth, place of birth and date of migration to Britain are given in the appendix and further details are available from the online catalogues on the EMOHA and BLNSA websites.

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Leicester. This is not to suggest that they simply celebrate individualism, but rather that personal narratives are anchored in social history and provide a unique insight into how the social and political penetrate people’s lives. The interviews followed a basic chronology of the respondent’s lives and rather than imposing a rigid interview structure they were encouraged to freely discuss issues they felt had been important in their lives and to explain meanings in their own terms.31 The white respondents were aged between 60 and 80 and the majority had lived or were still living in Highfields, in close proximity to South Asians. A small number from Northfields were also interviewed within a focus group. The aim here was to gain a glimpse into the attitudes of the local white population who lived on the outskirts of the city and had minimal contact with migrant groups. White respondents were also asked to talk about their life course and how they had experienced changes in Leicester, with more specific questions on how they felt about immigration and their relations with people from South Asian backgrounds. Prompting whites to articulate their feelings towards South Asians may have been construed as colluding with racist views, empowering racists and reproducing white supremacy, as opposed to challenging their beliefs.32 Nevertheless, although I may have found some views objectionable, the actual aim of the research was to ascertain white people’s perspectives and gain insights into the motivations that underpin racist attitudes.33 Furthermore, the interview questions were not designed to incite reactionary remarks; instead, respondents often expressed racist views without provocation. The benefits of using oral history in research have been widely discussed elsewhere yet it is worth reiterating a few points here.34 Oral history allows an exploration of certain themes; it produces a specific kind of knowledge. That is, one that is attentive to the diversity of experiences, that focuses attention on social networks, family and household dynamics and privileges the agency of the respondents. Rather than being positioned as the object of the research, the respondent is seen as actively 31 Ibid., 103. K. Anderson and D.C. Jack, ‘Learning to listen: interview techniques and analyses’, in R. Perks, and A. Thomson, (eds), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), 170. Due to financial constraints the interviews were conducted in English. Conducting interviews in the respondents’ second language may have prevented individuals from expressing themselves freely and confidently, however, there was only one interview where a respondent possessed a limited English vocabulary and despite this, their sentiments and feelings were clear. 32 C.A. Gallagher, ‘White like me? Methods, meaning, and manipulation in the field of whiteness studies’, in F.W. Twine and J.W. Warren, (eds), Racing Research, Researching Race (New York: NYU Press, 2000), 35–66 and K.M. Blee, ‘Evidence, empathy, and ethics: lessons from oral histories of the Klan’, The Journal of American History, 80, 2 (1993), 596–606. 33 See R. Jenkins, ‘Doing research into discrimination: problems of method, interpretation and ethics’, in C. Wenger, (ed.), The Research Relationship: Practice and Politics in Social Policy Research (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 144–60, L. Back and J. Solomos, ‘Doing research, writing politics: the dilemmas of political intervention in research on racism’, Economy and Society, 22, 2 (1993), 178–99. 34 The main text here is Perks and Thomson, The Oral History Reader. See also R. Rodger and J. Herbert, (eds), Testimonies of the City: Identity, Community and Change in a Contemporary Urban World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).

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engaged in the process of constructing their own narrative, within which they bestow particular events and characters with meanings as they attempt to evaluate and make sense of their past. The focus is on the essence of human creativity and subjectivity, including motivations, perceptions and feelings; in short, on the ‘human element which cannot quite be reduced to a scientific norm’.35 Oral history has also been seen as particularly valuable for research on migrants, whose experiences are simply not available through conventional documentary sources.36 The respondents’ stories represented what they decided to tell. This was shaped by a myriad of factors including current events and anxieties; the norms and expectations of the society, such as gender roles, which may inhibit the narrator; as well as unconscious factors, such as the need to portray a vision of how their past should have been. The respondents may bring their own motivations and expectations to the interview. They may simply relay a story that has been told many times before, or they may develop and emphasise certain aspects to prove a point. The performance and identity of the interviewer is also crucial to the construction of the narrative.37 A detailed reflection on my experiences of cross-cultural interviews has been discussed elsewhere; however a few points warrant attention.38 Firstly, despite the view that the social location of interviewer and respondent should be as closely matched to eliminate power hierarchies and create trust, my experience revealed that ‘insider’/’outsider’ boundaries were negotiable. My white identity and working class background was not synonymous with complete trust and many white women were reluctant to speak, often stating that they had nothing worthwhile to offer. In particular, some responded to the topic of immigration with unease and sought to avoid the subject for fear that they would be labelled racist. This was clearly apparent in an early interview with one white woman. I asked her if she had any previous knowledge of Asians before they migrated to Leicester. Oh no, not until this lot came in, you’ve got to be careful what you say these days haven’t you? How did the people in Leicester feel about Asian immigration? Well when they started to come in a lot there were quite a few arguments going off. Not arguments, just people saying what they thought, you might say. What did people think at that time? I really couldn’t say, we used to talk among ourselves but as I say you have to keep your thoughts to yourself sometimes. I hope nobody’s going to sue me for this.39

35 Chiari quoted in K. Plummer, Documents of Life: An Introduction to the Problems and Literature of a Humanistic Method (London: Routledge, 1983), 1. 36 There are an abundance of studies; for an overview see A. Thomson, ‘Moving stories: oral history and migration studies’, Oral History 27, 1 (1999), 24–37. See also, R. Benmayor and A. Skotnes, (eds), Migration and Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 37 A. Portelli, ‘Oral history as genre’, in M. Chamberlain and P. Thompson, (eds), Narrative and Genre (London: Routledge, 1998), 23–45. 38 J. Herbert, ‘Negotiating boundaries and the cross-cultural oral history interview’, in Rodger and Herbert, Testimonies of the City. 39 Doris 14 March 2002.

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Her response may reflect an awareness that racism is unacceptable, yet it also shows how my white identity did not guarantee openness, perhaps my university education and generation represented social divisions which may have inhibited her.40 This defensive reaction was overcome in future interviews by employing a more subtle approach rather than using direct questions to elicit information, such as asking them to describe their relationships with their neighbours. Alternatively, once the gatekeeper had alleviated any possible suspicions, I was able to establish rapport with the South Asian respondents based on a variety of criteria and my university status seemed to accord me a degree of respect, especially from the South Asian men. Women, in particular were extremely open and honest and some women openly stated that they would talk candidly to me ‘as another woman.’ As an ‘outsider’, South Asian women were able to disclose information which was critical of their own communities and I was able to ask ‘naïve’ questions and seek clarification. Whilst my ethnic identity did not inhibit trust, my ‘outsider’ status undoubtedly influenced what the respondents decided to reveal. This was evident from the ‘silences’ in the interviews. In particular, topics such as caste or differences within South Asians were not brought to the fore in the interviews. For instance, at the time of the research there were indicators of tension between religious communities in Highfields, but the respondents chose not to focus on these themes in their interviews. A consideration of how life-stories are constructed, particularly by the cross-cultural context of the interview, is interwoven throughout the book and is reflected upon at length in the concluding chapter. Outline Chapter 1 provides the context for the interviews and background information on demographic and geographical patterns of South Asian settlement at the national and local level. It also discusses the causes of migration, the role of immigration legislation and the extent of local hostility to South Asian immigration. Chapter 2 draws on interviews with the white respondents and examines their views of South Asians living in Leicester. It elucidates the importance of the colonial legacy and Enoch Powell in shaping world views and it highlights why the respondents used racial discourses to interpret the changes they experienced at the neighbourhood level. The white respondents’ narratives of inclusion are also explored, including relations with South Asians as neighbours and the benefits of this interaction. This highlights how the respondents consistently attempted to reconstruct a white identity, though this process was essentially dynamic and in flux. Chapters 3 to 6 focus on the narratives of the South Asian respondents. Chapter 3 analyses the personal motivations for migration and the decision making process. In particular, the significance of perceptions and expectations of Britain is stressed. The rupture of migration is also examined and this reveals the importance of habitus and the lived body as vital facets of the migratory experience. Chapter 4 focuses

40 For ‘race’ as a taboo in interviewing see Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters, 32–5.

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on the respondents’ experiences of finding a new home in Leicester and the impact of migration on power relations within the household. A core theme of this chapter is the various social constraints recalled by the female respondents and the coping strategies they developed, which were mediated by their specific stage within the life cycle. Chapter 5 develops the themes of exclusion and inclusion as discussed in chapter 2. Focusing on the sphere of the neighbourhood, this chapter seeks to avoid the homogeneity and obscuration which has characterised previous studies of social exclusion by dissecting who was excluded and included and by whom or what.41 This chapter also highlights the positive and negative ramifications of specific forms of social capital and reveals how respondents encountered racialised spaces within particular geographical sites. Chapter 6 casts light on how the respondents experienced racist discourses within educational institutions and the workplace. This includes a discussion of the key themes of hard work and the loss of status which dominated the male narratives, and the positive dimensions of employment stressed by the female respondents. Finally, chapter 7 looks at the South Asians’ reflections on ‘home’, in the context of their life-story and will draw together the main themes. In particular, the aim is to show the significance of the findings beyond the specificity of Leicester.

41 According to Ratcliffe these questions are rarely tackled. P. Ratcliffe, ‘Housing inequality and “race”: some critical reflections on the concept of “social exclusion”’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22, 1 (1999), 1–22.

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Chapter 1

The Background to South Asian Settlement The National Context: South Asians in Britain The twenty-first century has been hailed as the ‘age of migration’, yet migration is not unique to contemporary society; instead the arrival of newcomers is part of a long established process and an enduring feature of global history.1 Although the mass migration of South Asians to Britain began after the Second World War, it is important to recognise their presence in Britain prior to 1945. The nineteenth century witnessed the initial influx of South Asians composed mainly of sailors (lascars) who worked for the East India Company, as well as servants and nannies (ayahs), who accompanied their imperial adventurers and administrators on their return from India to Britain. Others included Indian students, exiled princes and politicians; thus the newcomers did not form a homogeneous mass, but originated from a diversity of backgrounds.2 In the first half of the twentieth century, migration continued as South Asians employed on British merchant lines decided to settle in seaport cities such as Newcastle, Liverpool and London. Similarly, a small number of Indian soldiers who were recruited mainly from the Punjab and were expected to return home after the wars also stayed on in Britain. During the 1920s and 1930s, these early pioneers set up door-to-door selling in areas such as the Midlands and other industrial cities.3 Nevertheless, this South Asian population was relatively small and transient. The post-Second World War era heralded a new phase in the history of immigration. Migration increased significantly in volume and included mass movements of European refugees to Western Europe, the large-scale migration of qualified personnel from Europe to North America and Australia, and the 1 S. Castles and M.J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 3, J. Lucassen, R. Pennix and W. Willems, ‘Migration studies in The Netherlands: a plea for a structural and interdisciplinary approach’, in N. Jewson, (ed.), Migration Processes and Ethnic Divisions (Leicester: The Centre for Urban History and The Ethnicity Research Centre, University of Leicester), 13, L.P. Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe Since 1650 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 2 R. Visram, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: Indians in Britain 1700–1947 (London: Pluto Press, 1987), 10, R. Visram, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002), 2. 3 For further details of Asians in Britain before 1945 see P. Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984), R. Ramdin, Reimaging Britain: Five Hundred Years of Black and Asian History (London: Pluto Press, 1999).

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migration from former colonies to Britain, France and the Netherlands. South Asian communities have figured most prominently in these migration processes and by the last quarter of the twentieth century, nine million from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were residing outside their country of origin.4 Britain was their single most important destination.5 The reasons for this are well documented and include a demand for more labour in Britain in an era of post-war reconstruction and economic expansion.6 As indigenous white workers progressed from menial jobs to the white collar sector, the numbers of Irish and Eastern European migrants could no longer fill the gap in labour shortages, so Britain turned to its former colonial territories, including the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent, for a cheap workforce whose residents were citizens of the United Kingdom. The colonial legacy had effectively secured the colonies’ role as ‘economic peripheries of metropolitan colonial power’ or as Brah has noted, from once being a source of cheap raw materials, the colonies were now a source of cheap labour.7 Within these broad macro explanations, earlier approaches in migration literature conceptualised migrants as either passively moving to meet the needs of capitalism and exploited in the neo-colonial relationship or as autonomous and rational decision makers motivated by the search for higher wages. These economic incentives were seen as corresponding with several ‘push’ factors in their country of origin associated with problems of underdevelopment, poverty and pressure on the land. In the case of South Asian migration, a crucial factor was the partition of the Indian subcontinent following independence in 1947, which led to the division of the Punjab, Bengal and Kashmir and created considerable economic and social distress, including the displacement of over 10 million people.8 Many moved between India and Pakistan, whilst others came to Britain, particularly as the 1948 Nationality Act opened up this opportunity. The precise interplay of the factors has been contested and whilst it is important to acknowledge these explanations as factors that drive migration, the structural explanations are now seen as overly deterministic, failing to consider the agency

4 J.M. Brown and R. Foot, (eds), Migration: The Asian Experience (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994), 1. 5 C. Peach, ‘Three phases of South Asian experience’, in Brown and Foot, Migration: The Asian Experience, 48. 6 This was argued in S. Castles and G. Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). The demand for labour was in the region of 1.3 million at the end of 1946. J. Bourke, Working Class Cultures in Britain 1890–1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity (London: Routledge, 1984), 193. 7 Z. Layton-Henry, The Politics of Race in Britain: Immigration, ‘Race’ and ‘Race’ Relations in Post-War Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 11. A. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora (London: Routledge, 1996), 21. 8 J. Martin and G. Singh, Asian Leicester (Stroud: Sutton, 2002), 8. A further 100,000 were dislocated as a result of the Mangla dam project in the 1960s. V.S. Kalra, From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks: Experiences of Migration, Labour and Social Change (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 65.

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of the migrants and the role of household, family and social networks.9 As a result, migration has more recently been viewed as a process of network building.10 This emphasises the process of chain migration, whereby once immigration has been triggered it establishes a momentum of its own as friends and relatives encourage others to migrate. Networks include household, kin and community ties, and these links shape migration flows by influencing the type of migrants and the availability of destinations. From this perspective the early South Asian settlers who worked as peddlers carved the trajectory for other migrants to follow. They were, as Ballard contends, the foundation of mass South Asian migration.11 This explains why British South Asians are drawn from a limited number of areas, most notably Punjabi Sikhs from Jullunder Doab, Muslim Punjabis from Mirpir, Jhelum, Rawalpindi and Gujrat Districts, and Bangladeshis, mainly from District Sylhet.12 Corresponding with this, attention to migrant networks has also influenced theories of migration and transnational communities so that migration is no longer perceived as a linear process whereby the migrant is transplanted from the old to the new. Rather, migrants are part of complex relationships in which the settlers continue to function in the economic, social and political life of the sending and receiving countries.13 Less debatable are the reasons for East African Asian migration, generated as it was between 1968 and 1972 as a result of political circumstances, namely the Africanisation programmes in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi, as these governments sought to eradicate the economic dominance of South Asians that had developed under British rule.14 Most notable was the expulsion of some 30,000 South Asians from Uganda by General Idi Amin in 1972.15 The explanations for South Asian migration are clearly manifold and more complex than a simple interplay of ‘push–pull’ factors. This theme will be explored in greater depth in Chapter 3, which 9 The influence of economic determinants is debated. See V. Robinson, Transients, Settlers and Refugees: Asians in Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 27, R. Ballard, (ed.), Desh Pardesh: South Asian Presence in Britain (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994), 9–11, C. Peach, ‘Three phases of South Asian Experience’, in Brown and Foot, Migration: The Asian Experience, 49. For criticisms see A. Portes, ‘Immigration theory for a new century: some problems and opportunities’, International Migration Review, 31 (1997), 799–825. 10 For proponents of migrant network theory see for example, I. Light and P. Bhachu, (eds), Immigration and Entrepreneurship: Culture, Capital and Ethnic Networks (London: Transaction Publishers, U.S., 1993). 11 R. Ballard, ‘The South Asian presence on Britain and its transnational connections’, in B. Parekh, G. Singh and S. Vertovec, Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2003), 201. 12 Ibid. The other main group in Britain are Gujaratis. 13 P. Kivisto, ‘Theorizing transnational immigration: a critical review of current efforts’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24, 4 (2001), 549–77. 14 W.G. Kuepper, G.L. Lackey and E.N. Swinerton, Ugandan Asians in Great Britain: Forced Migration and Social Absorption (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 18–40. 15 J. Seliga, ‘A neighbourhood transformed: the effect of Indian migration on the Belgrave area of Leicester, 1965–1995’, Local Historian, 28, 4 (1998), 228, V. Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989), chapter one, for causes of expulsion.

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focuses on the decisions and motivations for migration at the personal level and in relation to the migrants’ worldviews; an aspect that is often neglected in macrostructural discussions of migration flows. British legislation had an immense impact on South Asian immigration to Britain. The British Nationality Act 1948 conferred on all British citizens, including those based in the colonies, the right to freely enter, work and settle with their families. Yet this guarantee was challenged by a series of Immigration Acts which sought to exclude minority ethnic immigration, irrespective of the economic costs.16 It is important to note that immigration legislation was not new; it had an important precedent in the early twentieth century with the Aliens Act of 1905, directed at the destitute Jew.17 In the 1960s however, the ‘undesirable Jew’ was replaced by the ‘Commonwealth black.’ The Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962 introduced a voucher system designed to curb ‘coloured’ migration, though paradoxically this increased immigration as many attempted to evade tighter controls and ‘beat the ban.’18 The Commonwealth Immigration Act 1968 passed in response to the influx of East African Asians, restricted migration further by denying entry to those whose parents and grand-parents were born outside Britain. Similarly this prompted a surge in migration from parts of East Africa particularly, Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam, although many Kenyan Asians who arrived after 1March 1968 were sent back to their last port of embarkation.19 The Immigration Act 1971 served to consolidate preceding legislation. Virginity tests were introduced for prospective South Asian brides and government powers of deportation were extended. Consequently, primary immigration from the New Commonwealth effectively ceased and additional controls secured Britain’s status as ‘one of the most impenetrable forces on earth.’20 The initial impetus for these acts has been consistently debated, with some arguing that public pressure impelled immigration controls and others asserting that government hostility to commonwealth migration was evident prior to legislation and that politicians actually instigated British racism.21 Nevertheless the effects were unequivocal and had profound implications for South Asian immigration and 16 Freeman argues that Britain suffered economically compared to other parts of Europe as a result of limiting immigration. G.P. Freeman, Immigrant Labour and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies: The French and British Experience, 1945–1975 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 17 The Aliens Act was extended in 1914, 1918 and 1919. See C. Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871–1971 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988), 84–114. 18 I. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain (London: Routledge, 1997), 129. 19 Ibid., 141. 20 P. Panayi, An Ethnic History of Europe Since 1945: Nations, States and Minorities (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 205. 21 For the strength of public opposition see, for example, Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society. For the government leading British racism see K. Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Post-War Era (London: Cornell University Press, 1997).

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settlement. The type of immigrant was transformed from temporary male workers, who had intended to return ‘home’ once sufficient funds had been accumulated, to families who began to settle in Britain on a permanent basis. Moreover, government policies attracted considerable academic criticism and immigration controls came to be seen as part of the ‘racialisation’ of immigration and the institutionalisation of racism.22 That is, policies were governed by a principle of racial exclusivity which sought to regulate the immigration of dark skinned migrants whilst allowing whites from the Old Commonwealth and South Africa to enter freely. The practical effects were the creation of human shuttlecocks, as families were transferred from airport to airport. Reports also surfaced that many South Asians had encountered harassment by the immigration service and suffered a violation of their basic rights.23 Overall, black communities and South Asians were deemed undesirable outsiders, their presence was widely regarded as a problem and, despite their legal nationality, their Britishness was contested.24 The symbolic boundaries of the nation had been redefined and were irrevocably fixed. Whilst British legislation served to classify all South Asians as ‘coloured immigrants’, it is important to appreciate the internal differentiation and diversity of experiences within different South Asian groups. The timing of arrival into Britain varied between ethnic groups. The main influx of migrants from India and Pakistan was between 1965 and 1974 with 134,000 Indians and 68,000 Pakistanis entering the UK.25 The arrival of East African Asians was particularly rapid, rising from 6,000 in 1965 to 31,600 in 1967, with a further 27,000 entering Britain in 1972.26 Conversely, the peak of arrivals from Bangladesh was from 1980 to 1984, when a total of 23,000 arrived into Britain.27 Patterns of settlement also differed and were influenced by the changing availability of employment and existing social and kin networks. East African Asians settled mainly in Leicester and northwest London, whilst Indians were most numerous in the northwest Midlands, London and west 22 A. Phizacklea and R. Miles, Labour and Racism (London: Routledge, 1980), N. Glazer and K. Young, (eds), Ethnic Pluralism and Public Policy: Achieving Equality in the United States and Britain (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1983), Fryer, Staying Power, Layton-Henry, The Politics of Race in Britain, B. Carter, M. Green and R. Halpern, ‘Immigration policy and the racialization of migrant labour: the construction of national identities in the USA and Britain’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 19, 1 (1996), 135–57. This view has recently been challenged by Hansen who argues that policies were ‘rational.’ See R. Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain: The Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 23 For recent comment see C. Puzzo, ‘Instruments of British and French immigration policy in the 1970s: a comparative analysis’, Contemporary European History, 12, 1 (2003), 71–92. 24 The British Nationality Act 1981 actually abolished citizenship rights for various categories of colonials and ex-colonials. ‘Black’ is used in this book to refer to people of African and African Caribbean origin. 25 C. Peach, (ed.), Ethnicity in the 1991 Census: Volume Two, The Ethnic Minority Populations of Great Britain (London: HMSO, 1996), 10. 26 Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City, 6. 27 Peach, Ethnicity in the 1991 Census, Volume Two, 10.

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Yorkshire. Pakistanis clustered in the northern mill towns such as Bradford and Manchester, whilst Bangladeshis tended to settle in Inner London Boroughs.28 These groups brought with them diverse skills, social capital, expectations and histories, as well as different levels of economic capital, which had a vital impact on their experiences and prompted them to follow different trajectories and achieve contrasting fortunes. In particular, East African Asians as ‘twice migrants’, exhibited specific characteristics that distinguished them from South Asians who had migrated directly from the Indian subcontinent.29 East African Asians were mainly of urban, middle class and Gujarati speaking background. In Africa they formed the privileged minority within the colonial system having established themselves as a socially exclusive intermediate stratum between the African and British elite. As middlemen, they developed valuable transferable skills, including business acumen, language capabilities, expertise in urban and bureaucratic institutions and familiarity with English lifestyle through the British imperialist presence. Moreover, the circumstances of their migration, involving forced migration as complete family units, resulted in the propensity for them to make long term commitments, to invest in property and settle indefinitely in Britain. In contrast, the majority of South Asians migrated with economic and family ties in the homeland and subscribed to the ‘myth of return’. Consequently, they were orientated towards their country of origin rather than the prospect of life in Britain.30 The fusion of these factors facilitated the considerable economic and social success which is associated with East African Asians and enabled them to emerge from one of the poorest minority ethnic groups to one of the richest.31 Nevertheless, it is worth stressing that despite these shared characteristics there are important differences within the East African Asian category. For example, although the majority were Gujaratis, there were also Goans and Punjabis. Moreover, evidence suggests, that the most meaningful and definitive criteria for community organisation and affiliation was not ethnic labels such as Indian or Pakistani, but caste for Hindus and sect for Muslims. The Patidar and Lohana castes dominated in Uganda and marriage ties have enabled the reproduction of these networks in

28 S. Smith, The Politics of ‘Race’ and Residence: Citizenship, Segregation, and White Supremacy in Britain (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 27, D. Owen, South Asian People in Great Britain. Social and Economic Circumstances (Warwick: Warwick Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, 1994), 7. 29 For the term ‘twice migrants’ see P. Bhachu, Twice Migrants: East African Sikh Settlers in Britain (London: Tavistock 1985), 3. The term has recently been criticised on the basis that many East African Asians were born in Africa and therefore did not migrate twice. See J. Mattausch, ‘After “ethnicity”: migration, identity and political economy’, Immigrants and Minorities, 20, 3 (2001), 68. 30 M. Anwar, The Myth of Return: Pakistanis in Britain (London: Heinemann Educational, 1979). 31 Mattausch, ‘After “ethnicity”: migration, identity and political economy’. For further details and comparative data see Cabinet Office, Improving Labour Market Achievements for Ethnic Minorities in British Society (London: Cabinet Office, 2001).

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Britain.32 In short, the South Asian presence in Britain is highly complex and defies simple generalisations.33 The Local Context: Leicester The history of Leicester is marked by successive waves of immigration, including the Jewish and Irish in the early nineteenth century, a small number of Italians from the late 1890s and around 900 Belgian refugees as a result of the First World War.34 In the aftermath of the Second World War Leicester received migrants from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, particularly refugees from Poland, and small groups from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and the Ukraine. A second wave of migration from Ireland began in the 1930s and the 1940s, and the 1950s witnessed the arrival of the city’s African Caribbean population. The largest groups originated from Antigua and then Jamaica, but also included Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago.35 Recent migration has included a small number from Vietnam and the former Yugoslavia, and an influx of Montserrat refugees between 1995 and 1996. Asylum seekers have also settled in the city; in particular, Kosovans, Bosnians, Iraqis, Iranians, Afghanis and Zimbabweans and there has also been internal migration of Somalis from other British cities and the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. Leicester as a host city was therefore accustomed to diverse minority ethnic groups, although public opinion towards migrant populations varied. The Irish, for example, encountered discrimination and attacks, whilst the Jewish appeared to have settled without much difficulty.36 Nevertheless, it is important to note that Leicester’s population is one of the most ethnically diverse in the European Union and this has 32 A Special Correspondent, ‘Asian minorities in East Africa and Britain’, New Community, 1, 5 (1972), 417, M. Michaelson, ‘The relevance of caste among East African Gujaratis in Britain’, New Community, 7, 3 (1979), 389–415 and Mattausch, ‘After “ethnicity”: migration, identity and political economy.’ This is also substantiated by informal discussions at Highfields Youth and Community Centre. 33 For further discussion see R. Ballard, ‘Migration and kinship: the differential effect of marriage rules on the processes of Punjabi migration to Britain’, in C. Clarke, C. Peach and S. Vertovec, (eds), South Asians Overseas: Contexts and Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 219–49. 34 D. Nash and D. Reeder, (ed.), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1993), 184, C. Brown, ‘Immigrant communities in Leicester’, Women’s History Notebooks, 3, 2 (1996), 8. 35 Afrikan Caribbean Support Group, Research Project, J. Benyon et al., African Caribbean People in Leicestershire (Leicester: Centre for the Study of Public Order, University of Leicester, 1996), 36. For the Irish see H. O’Connor, ‘The Irish in Leicester: an invisible community?’ in N. Jewson, (ed.), Migration Processes and Ethnic Divisions (Leicester: The Centre for Urban History and The Ethnicity Research Centre, University of Leicester, 1995), 47–65. 36 R. Ash, ‘Jewish migration and community development in nineteenth century Leicester’, in Jewson, Migration Processes and Ethnic Divisions, 31–46. M. Elliot, Victorian Leicester (London: Phillimore, 1979). For hostility towards the African Caribbean population

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prompted conclusions that perceptions of ethnic difference were less pronounced as there was no simple dichotomy between a white and non-white population.37 Why has Leicester become home for these diverse migrant groups? Leicester’s prosperity has been an enduring attraction for immigrants. Leicester’s range of industries, particularly hosiery and footwear manufacture, provided plentiful employment for men and women at all skill levels and this encouraged both migration from the Indian subcontinent and internal migration from other towns such as Coventry, Birmingham, London, Yorkshire and Blackburn.38 Apparently, employment opportunities were a vital consideration for East African Asians who had not managed to transfer their savings to Britain, whilst those with savings chose Manchester and London.39 Other incentives for migration to Leicester were the abundance of cheap housing, the lack of strikes and the central location of the city, which facilitated communication between South Asian families and businesses throughout Britain. This was combined with the apparent absence of open hostility towards immigrants and Leicester’s reputation as a safe city, a view promulgated by the local press.40 Migrant networks also played a fundamental role in South Asian migration flows as many newcomers informed others of the promising prospects in Leicester. This process influenced both early migration and subsequent flows from East Africa. Reflecting the trend in other British industrial cities, the first permanent South Asian settler in Leicester, a Punjabi Muslim, arrived in the 1920s and was joined by two Punjabis in the 1940s. These early settlers established businesses as market traders and returned to the Punjab in the late 1940s, informing friends and relatives of their newfound success. Consequently, the presence of these pioneers has been directly linked to the arrival of a further forty-five Punjabis by the early 1960s.41 Similarly, for the East African Asians, the decision to settle in Leicester was often based on the preference to live near friends and relatives and many had contacts already resident in the city.42 Furthermore, East African Asians were attracted to the established social, see L. Chessum, From Migrants to Ethnic Minority: Making Black Community in Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 37 According to the Cantle report this may explain Leicester’s multicultural success. T. Cantle, Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team (London: Home Office, 2002). 38 S. Narain, ‘Sikhs in Leicester’, in Jewson, Migration Processes and Ethnic Divisions, 90–91 and R. Hill, ‘The housing characteristics and aspirations of Leicester’s inner city Asian community’ (unpublished University of Leicester Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 166. 39 M. Banks, ‘Jain ways of being’ in Ballard, Desh Pardesh, 242. 40 See Leicester Mercury, 28 August 1958, which contrasted the racial violence in Nottingham to the tolerance of Leicester. See also Brown, ‘Immigrant communities in Leicester’, 9. Asians also supported this view and cited evidence of racial harassment in other large cities, such as London, Blackburn and Nottingham. See A. Sills, M. Tarpey, P. Golding, ‘Asians in an inner city’, New Community, 11 (1983), 39–40. 41 V. Davis, ‘A sweet prison: aspects of the origin and establishment of the Leicester Asian community’ (unpublished University of Leicester MA thesis, 1993), 20, 77. 42 Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City, 9. This is also testified by interviews: see Highfields Library (HL), Highfields Remembered Archive (HRA), A.S. Johl, T. Hansrani and

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cultural and religious facilities which served the existing South Asian population, such as food and clothing shops, mosques, temples and other religious and cultural associations.43 The South Asian Population The growth of the South Asian population in Leicester was considerable and radically transformed Leicester’s ethnic profile. In 1951 there were approximately 636 South Asians living in Leicester. This rose to 3,566 in 1961, 9,805 in 1971 and 38,162 in 1981.44 The rapid increase from 1971 to 1981 was largely attributed to the influx of the East African Asians, as approximately 20,000 East African Asians arrived in Leicester between 1968 and 1978.45 By 1991, 39,164 South Asians had migrated to the city and a total of 63,994 were defined as ethnically ‘Asian.’46 As Table 1.1 demonstrates, the ethnic composition of Leicester was distinct from the national profile. The proportion of white people in Leicester was conspicuously lower than the national picture, with 71.5 per cent white in Leicester and 94.5 per cent white in Britain. This compared with a minority ethnic population of 5.5 per cent in Britain and 28.5 per cent for Leicester; thus Leicester boasted the highest percentage of minority ethnic population, outside the London boroughs.47 By 1991, Leicester ranked fifth as the local authority with the highest number of minority ethnic communities and second to Birmingham for the highest number of all South Asian groups.48 However, Leicester ranked first for its population of Indian descent, with Indians representing 22.3 per cent of the total population and 78.3 per cent of the total minority ethnic population.49 By 2001, the population of Leicester D. Alam. 43 Hill, ‘The housing characteristics and aspirations of Leicester’s inner city Asian community’, 62. 44 This is taken from the decennial census cited in A. Andrews, ‘A history of South Asian migration into Leicester: an essay on Hindu/Muslim segregation’ in Jewson, Migration Processes and Ethnic Divisions, 70. The figures are according to place of birth from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and East Africa. They need to be treated with caution as they include whites born in India. In 1971, apparently one-third of those born in India and living in Britain were white. See Peach, Ethnicity in the 1991 Census, Volume Two, 2. 45 D. Phillips, ‘The social and spatial segregation of Asians in Leicester’, in P. Jackson and S. Smith, (eds), Social Interaction and Ethnic Segregation (London: Academic Press, 1981), 108. 46 ‘Ethnically Asian’ included second and third generations who were born in Britain. Leicester City Council, Leicester Key Facts: Census 2001 Ward Profiles, Population, Age, Ethnicity, Religion (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 2003), , 8. 47 Tower Hamlets in East London had the highest percentage for the Asian population with 24.7 per cent. Ibid. 48 Birmingham had the highest number of ethnic minorities (206,767) and Asians (129,899). Ibid. 49 Brent located in northwest London followed second with an Indian population of 17.2 per cent. Ibid.

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was estimated to be 279,921, of whom 36 per cent were from an ethnic minority background and 30 per cent were classified as ‘Asian.’ The Indian population numbered 72,033 and comprised 25.7 per cent of Leicester’s population.50 It has been predicted that Leicester will be the first British city, outside the London boroughs, to have the first non-white majority population by 2011.51

Table 1.1 Ethnic group composition of the population of Leicester and Great Britain, 1991 Leicester

Great Britain

Ethnic Group Per cent

Number

Per cent

Number

100.0

270,493

100.0

54,888,844

White

71.5

193,502

94.5

51,873,793

Ethnic minorities

28.5

76,991

5.5

3,015,050

Indian

22.3

60,297

1.5

840,255

Black Caribbean

1.5

4,112

0.9

499,964

Other Asian

1.0

2,570

0.4

197,534

Pakistani

1.0

2,644

0.9

476,555

Black Other

0.6

1,756

0.3

178,401

Bangladeshi

0.4

1,053

0.3

162,835

Chinese

0.3

770

0.3

156,938

Black African

0.3

745

0.4

212,362

Other

1.1

3,044

0.5

290,206

Total population

Source: Leicester City Council, Leicester Key Facts: Ethnic Minorities 1991 Census (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1995) 1, Commission for Racial Equality, Ethnic Minorities in Britain (London: Commission for Racial Equality, 1999), 1.

The numbers of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Leicester was considerably lower compared to the proportion of Indians, although the Pakistani and Bangladeshi contingent in Leicester was similar to the national composition. By 2001 the Pakistani population numbered 4,282, 1.52 per cent of the population of Leicester, whilst 0.7 per cent of the population were Bangladeshis (193 persons).52 Nevertheless, Leicester local authority recently admitted that their records on the number of Pakistanis in 50 Office for National Statistics, Census 2001. Key Statistics for Local Authorities in England and Wales (London: TSO, 2003), 89. 51 O. Wright, ‘Leicester to be first city with ethnic majority’, The Times, 8 December 2000. 52 Office for National Statistics, Census 2001, 89.

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23

Leicester were essentially incomplete and that an increase in the Pakistani population had largely gone unnoticed.53 In addition, the census data presented in Table 1.1 obscures the actual size of the East African Asian population. East African Asians were incorporated into the category of ‘Other-Asian’, though this underestimated the number of East African Asians, as many would have selected ‘Indian’ instead.54 More reliable data is provided by the Survey of Leicester, which shows that in 1983, 22,477 people were born in East Africa, compared with 22,414 from India, 2,530 from the Caribbean, and 3,023 from the rest of Europe.55 The East African Asians therefore constituted a main sub-group within the South Asian category and it is this dimension which distinguished Leicester from other British cities. It is also worth noting that compared to the white population the South Asian population in Leicester was comparatively younger. In 1991, the average age of white residents was 38.9 years compared to 28.2 years for South Asian residents and overall South Asians tended to fall in the 0–40 age range. This age structure reflects the immigration of young South Asian families who are now approaching middle age.56 Settlement in the City It is important to consider the spatial patterns of South Asian residents in Leicester as these dimensions not only shaped experiences, but they also have implications for wider debates about intercultural contact and ethnic segregation within British cities. In the 1960s and 1970s South Asian newcomers settled in the inner-city area of Highfields, a typical ‘zone of transition’ which had previously housed immigrants from Ireland and Eastern Europe and was an established conduit for immigrants.57 It was generally deemed undesirable by the white population, following postwar neglect. It contained large Victorian houses and terraced cottages that were inexpensive, albeit deteriorating, and the area was located close to the city centre, the foundries, traditional hosiery mills and new factories. Cheap accommodation was also available in the Belgrave area, to the north to the city, due to threats of redevelopment, including the planned demolition of over 1,000 properties to build a motorway.58 It has been assumed that this area was pioneered by East African 53 Leicester City Council, Research into the Needs of the Pakistani Community in Leicester (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 2002), 9. They estimated that the Pakistani population currently numbered about 6,000. 54 D. Owen, ‘The Other-Asians: the salad bowl’, in Peach, Ethnicity in the 1991 Census, Volume Two, 203. 55 Leicester City Council, Survey of Leicester 1983: Initial Report of Survey (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1984), 20. 56 Leicester City Council, Leicester Key Facts: Ethnic Minorities, 1991 Census (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1995), 2–3. This is also reflected nationally. The average ages were Europeans: 37; Indians: 31 and Bangladeshis: 18. K. Sunder ‘The truth about multicultural Britain’, The Observer, 25 November 2001. 57 R.E. Park and W.E. Burgess, (eds), The City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925). The area encompassed the Wycliffe, Spinney Hill and Charnwood wards of the city. 58 Belgrave included the wards of Belgrave and parts of Abbey and Latimer. Hill, ‘The housing characteristics and aspirations of Leicester’s inner city Asian community’, 59. For

24

Negotiating Boundaries in the City

Asians, who sought to buy property to house large extended families, yet research has confirmed that over sixty Sikhs and Hindus were already resident in Belgrave by the early 1960s.59 Overall, minority ethnic populations remained highly concentrated in the inner wards of the city, with seven out of the city’s twenty eight wards containing a minority ethnic population of 50 per cent or more in 1991.60 Nevertheless, there were important changes within South Asian groups. The Indian population, originally congregated in the centre of the city, but had moved mainly to the north of the city by 1981 and to the more affluent wards to east of the city by 2001.61 East African Asians followed a similar centrifugal pattern although initially they were more widely dispersed throughout the wards and later they shifted rather than dissipated, to the northern wards of the city. 62 Conversely, whilst Pakistanis had exhibited signs of dispersal between 1971 and 1981, by 1991 they had returned to the inner city and likewise the Bangladeshis, a relatively new immigrant group, have tended to remain in the central wards of the city. The 2001 census showed that the main inner-city ward of Spinney Hills contained the largest number of minority ethnic groups, with 82.5 per cent from a minority ethnic background.63 Overall then, despite some changes, the South Asian and white population of Leicester was sharply divided. This was also evident in the working class estates on the outskirts of the city which were characterised by a prevalent white population.64 In 1991 Eyres Monsell contained a black and minority ethnic (BME) population of only 1.9 per cent and the corresponding figure for North Brauntsone was 2.8 per cent.65 Thus Leicester was typically viewed as a South Asian city, with an outer ‘white highlands’, a pattern that has emerged in other British cities.66 Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to imply that the South further details of Belgrave see J. Seliga, ‘The role of religious institutions in the Belgrave area of Leicester 1965–1995’ (unpublished University of Leicester MA dissertation, 1996), 8–13. 59 Based on the electoral register in 1962 there were 26 Sikhs and 34 Hindus cited in Davis, ‘A sweet prison’, 37. 60 Leicestershire County Council, Ethnic Minority Groups Living in Leicestershire. Census 1991 (Leicester: Leicestershire County Council, 1997), 9. 61 The north of the city refers to Rushey Mead, Abbey and Belgrave wards. The more affluent wards refer to West Knighton and Evington. The Indian population in Evington had increased from 18.1 per cent of the total ward in 1991 to 30.97 per cent in 2001. See H. O’Connor, The Spatial Distribution of Ethnic Minority Communities in Leicester, 1971, 1981, 1991: Analysis and Interpretation (Leicester: The Centre for Urban History and The Ethnicity Research Centre, University of Leicester, 1995), 15, Leicester City Council, Leicester Key Facts: Census 2001. 62 Particularly to Rushey Mead, whereby in 1991 they numbered 2,294 and represented 20 per cent of the ward population. Ibid., 20. 63 Leicestershire County Council, Ethnic Minority Groups Living in Leicestershire, 9. 64 This was an outcome of Leicester City Council policy on housing lists. 65 Data from e-mail correspondence with Leicester City Council, 11 March 2003. 66 P. Winstone 7 June 2002. Winstone claimed the term ‘white highlands’ was typically used by South Asians in Leicester to refer to the outer estates. It reveals the spatial symbolism of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Birmingham exhibited a minority ethnic inner city and a peripheral city area ‘as white as Torquay.’ J. Rex, The Ghetto and the Underclass: Essays on Race and

The Background to South Asian Settlement

25

Asian communities have simply supplanted the white population in Leicester, as this ignores the continued white presence in both Highfields and Belgrave.67 A salient facet of the spatial distribution within South Asian groups was the emergence of religious segregation between Hindus and Muslims in the city. Hindus have tended to reside in the north of the city whilst Muslims prevailed in the innercity of Highfields.68 The number of Muslims in Spinney Hills rose from 3,706 in 1983 to 11,886 in 2001; thus Highfields has evolved into a predominantly Muslim area which was largely self contained and autonomous.69 This was reflected not only in the proliferation of mosques, but in the commercial structure of the area, in driving schools and estate agents and the location of community organisations and Islamic schools.70 The reasons why religious groups have clustered in certain areas can be attributed to elements of both forced and voluntary segregation. The development of Belgrave involved a process of East African Hindus attempting to distance themselves from other South Asians by only selling property to members of their own sub-group, thus excluding Pakistani Muslims.71 Other evidence suggests that religious spaces were carved into the city, because areas served as vital spaces where religious groups could express and cultivate their culture. This was particularly applicable to Muslims whose social and spatial ties were highly localised and dependent on the mosque.72 However the narratives of the respondents in Chapter 5 also provides further explanations. Leicester is also seen as a Hindu city. In contrast to the national profile in which the number of Muslims exceeds Hindus, Hinduism is the dominant South Asian religion. In 1983 Hindus represented 62.1 per cent of the religions, compared to 18.4 per cent Muslims and 16.7 per cent Sikhs.73 By 2001, Leicester’s Hindu population Social Policy (Aldershot: Avebury, 1988), 31. For other examples see J. Eade, The Politics of Community: the Bangladeshi Community in East London (Aldershot: Avebury, 1989), 28–9. 67 S. Kalogirou, ‘Spatial distribution of ethnic and age groups, residential mobility and trends in population movement in the Leicester district’ (unpublished University of Leicester MSc thesis, 2000), 53. 68 Sikhs were less segregated, although they were present in all wards with a significant South Asian population, bar Latimer. 69 Leicester City Council, Leicester Key Facts: Census 2001. 70 Andrews, ‘A history of South Asian migration into Leicester’, 78. Similarly, Hill claimed that Belgrave was ‘close to achieving institutional self sufficiency’, Hill, ‘The housing characteristics and aspirations of Leicester’s inner city Asian community’, 256. 71 Phillips, ‘The social and spatial segregation of Asians in Leicester’, 111. 72 Hill found that Muslim men tended to attend the mosque daily whilst only 23 per cent of Hindus visited the temple weekly. Hindus also have places of worship within the home. See Hill, ‘The housing characteristics and aspirations of Leicester’s inner city Asian community’, 346–8. 73 Leicester City Council, Survey of Leicester 1983, 33. The 1991 census did not ask a question on religion due to the misconception that religion was a private concern and had little relevance within the public domain. See S. Brown, ‘Religion and economic activity in the South Asian population’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23, 6 (2000), 1037. It should be noted that there were also Christians within the Leicester Asian population with origins in Gujarat, Punjab, Bengal and Goa.

26

Negotiating Boundaries in the City

of 41,248 people was the second largest in England and Wales.74 In addition, the majority of Hindus and Muslims have their origins in Gujarat.75 Gujarati speaking Hindus were therefore the main language and religious group with an estimated size of 36,100 in 1983 and some 46,000 in 1996.76 This was the major group in the northern wards of the city and represented more than half of the total in population in some areas. In 1983, Gujarati Muslims numbered about 5,200 in and around Highfields and approximately 9,600 Punjabi Sikhs resided in the surrounding areas of Highfields.77 Mirroring the national level, the majority of Bangladeshis were Bengali Muslim, whilst Pakistanis were either Punjabi or Urdu Muslim.78 There were also smaller communities within these categories who followed different religious practices, including both Sunni and Shi-ite Muslims and the Mistrys and Patels were the main castes in Leicester. In 1978, 31 out of 56 Gujarati Asian organisations in Leicester were jati (sub-caste) specific and it has been claimed that caste associations were the most significant South Asian bodies in Leicester.79 Local reactions What was the local reaction to the arrival of South Asian migrants? In September 1972 the city was infamously branded the most ‘unwelcoming’ in the country due to the city council advertisement placed in the Ugandan Argus, warning potential settlers to stay away.80 Leicester quickly surfaced as a focal point for National Front activity, which exploited the council’s failure to deflect the exodus and the city emerged as a centre for organised racist activity. Leicester’s National Front evolved from a coalition of anti-immigration groups and the leaders consisted of middle class lawyers, led by a solicitor Anthony Read Herbert, who commanded respect from the political parties and local police. The Front came close to election victories, most 74 After Brent (45,228). The Sikh population in Leicester was the eighth largest in the country (11,796) and the Muslim population, the tenth largest (30,885). See National Statistics, . 75 This is in contrast to areas with Muslim populations, such as Bradford and Manchester where the Muslims were mostly Pakistani. 76 Leicester City Council, Survey of Leicester 1983, 34 and R. Goodwin et al., Social Support and Marital Well-Being in an Asian Community (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1997), 7. 77 Leicester City Council, ibid. 78 Commission for Racial Equality, Ethnic Minorities in Britain (London: Commission for Racial Equality, 1999), Leicester City Council, Research into the Needs of the Pakistani Community, 31. 79 Banks, ‘Jain ways of being’, 245 and P. Winstone, 7 June 2002. Caste associations prefer to be defined as ‘communities’ and castes have been sustained via arranged marriages. For a list of caste sub-sects in Leicester see ROLLR, House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Race Relations and Immigration Sub Committee Session 1980 –1981. Racial Disadvantage Minutes of Evidence, 13 March 1981 Leicester (London: HMSO, 1981), 1047. For religious diversity see J. Dwyer, ‘The formal religious nurture in two Hindu temples in Leicester’ (unpublished University of Leicester Ph.D. thesis, 1988). 80 Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City, 222.

The Background to South Asian Settlement

27

notably in 1976, when they took 29 per cent of the vote in Abbey ward and 18 per cent of the poll throughout the city.81 The headquarters of the National Front were based in Highfields and the city was one of the central National Front strongholds outside London.82 Yet this racism was met with a considerable anti-racist backlash and it was this combination of both racist and anti-racist tradition that was a defining characteristic of Leicester.83 Anti-racist organisation took the form of student protest, the Anti-Nazi League and a broad coalition of groups, named the Inter-Racial Solidarity Campaign, who received financial support from Jewish industrialists.84 The 1970s witnessed a series of confrontations between the National Front, black communities and South Asians and anti-racist activists, including the Imperial Typewriter strike in 1974 and a National Front demonstration in 1979.85 The latter was successfully thwarted by anti-racists and signalled the end of the National Front in Leicester.86 Other notable disturbances were the riots which erupted in Highfields in July 1981. However, as in other parts of Britain, this did not involve a clash between racists and their opponents but emanated from a myriad of social problems, including social injustice, relative deprivation and mistrust of the police.87 Moreover, following the riots, inner city funds were opened up and Labour developed policies to promote equality and ethnic diversity. Other studies have focused on the racist content of the Leicester local press. From 1945 to 1962 the Leicester Mercury gave tacit support to Cyril Osborne, an Enoch Powell sympathiser who campaigned relentlessly against immigration and overall, articles were framed by a consciousness of the empire in which South Africa was 81 Nash and Reeder, Leicester in the Twentieth Century, 107–8, S. Ranger ‘Belgrave: a study in prejudice and political affiliation in a working class ward’ (unpublished University of Leicester dissertation, 1979), 21. 82 The headquarters were based on Spinney Hill road; see PC Phillips 19 March 2002. B. Troyna and R. Ward, ‘Racial antipathy and local opinion leaders: a tale of two cities’, New Community, IX, 3 (1982), 454. 83 M. Fitzgerald, ‘Racial harassment in Leicester’, Black Housing, 4, 3 (1989), 7. 84 See The Sunday Telegraph, 3 September 1972 and East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), Community History Collection (CHC), CH/095/0104 P. Winstone. 85 The Imperial Typewriter strike is seen as a pivotal event in Asian resistance against racism. See R. Moore, Racism and Black Resistance in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1975), chapter five. However, an investigation found no unlawful discrimination within the factory. See Bulletin of Race Relations Board, Race Relations, 20, Autumn 1974, 8–9. 86 This is well documented in Chessum, From Migrants to Ethnic Minority, 220–2. Marett alleged the demise of the National Front was due to the efforts of the Inter Racial Solidarity campaign and the increase in Asian councillors within the Labour party. Ibid., 59. 87 G. Gaskell and P. Smith, ‘Are young blacks really alienated?’, Race and Riots ’81: A New Society Social Studies Reader (London: New Society, 1982), 8, J. Benyon and J. Solomos, (eds), The Roots of Urban Unrest (Oxford: Pergamon Press 1987) and J. Benyon, Crime, Disadvantage, Politics and Disorder: Social Disintegration and Conflict in Contemporary Britain (Leicester: Scarman Centre, University of Leicester, 1993). PC Phillips 19 March 2002, also recalled the disturbances. He claimed the riots were ‘copy cat’ rioting as a result of the riots in Brixton and Toxteth and only a few Asians were involved. There were further riots in Highfields on 10 October 1985 following a football match between Leicester and Derby.

28

Negotiating Boundaries in the City

presented as an acceptable model.88 During the 1970s the Leicester Mercury gave considerable coverage to the activities of the National Front, which were presented outside the agenda of racial relations and instead were related to issues of democracy and freedom. News in the Mercury consistently focused on incidents of racial conflict and tension and unequivocally depicted minority ethnic groups as a problem.89 The attitude of the public has prompted mixed interpretations. Some have claimed that there was an initial absence of hostility due to the lack of direct competition and that Ugandan Asians were accepted with ease ‘at least on the surface.’90 The lack of racial hostility was also indicated by the absence of racial attacks, compared to other cites such as Coventry, Birmingham and London.91 However, others have stressed that attacks in Leicester were mostly unreported due to fear of the police and that racial prejudice was actually ubiquitous.92 As one white anti-racist campaigner recalled, ‘what disturbed me most was the gut level hatred of black people that I experienced on the buses, in pubs, in neighbourhood centres, everywhere I went.’93 Several social surveys have also provided an indication of the local reaction. Research conducted in 1975, involving 238 white people, demonstrated that 65 per cent of those who lived in an area of ethnic concentration felt that there were ‘too many coloured people’ and 86 per cent agreed the area had ‘gone down hill.’94 Similarly in 1978, a survey of 250 whites revealed that ‘too many immigrants’ was perceived to be the main problem afflicting the city and 47 per cent believed that ‘race relations’ constituted an important local problem. In contrast, the corresponding figure for Manchester was a mere 5 per cent, where ‘race relations’, was seen as a minor concern. Moreover, a significant 90 per cent of the Leicester sample expressed negative attitudes to immigrants.95 The context provided here of the South Asian presence in Britain and Leicester is most important for the following chapters. The causes for migration were manifold, yet the explanations presented here are not the whole story and this theme will be explored from the perspective of the newcomers in Chapter 3. Legislation had a profound impact on immigration and settlement and was essentially part of the 88 L. Chessum, ‘Race and immigration in the Leicester local press 1945–1962’, Immigrants and Minorities, 17, 2 (1998), 36–56. 89 B. Troyna, Public Awareness and the Media: A Study of Reporting on Race (London Commission for Racial Equality, 1981). 90 Davis, ‘A sweet prison.’ 82–3 and T. Wilkinson, ‘Resettlement of Ugandan Asians in Leicester’, New Community, 3 (1974), 148. 91 Troyna and Ward, ‘Racial antipathy and local opinion leaders’, 455. This is also supported by a review of the Commission for Racial Equality newsletter, New Equals, 1977– 1987, in which Leicester is rarely mentioned. 92 M. Grigg, The White Question (London: Secker & Warburg, 1967), 96–101. 93 EMOHA, CHC, CH/095/0104 P. Winstone. 94 Community Relations Council, Housing Choice and Ethnic Segregation: An Attitude Survey (London: Community Relations Council, 1979), 41–2. 95 Troyna, Public Awareness and the Media, 52–55, 82, 57. See also Ranger, ‘Belgrave: a study in prejudice’, 22, 29, who has shown that in 1979 about 35 per cent of whites agreed with the National Front and support was higher in Latimer than Belgrave. However research was limited to forty questionnaires.

The Background to South Asian Settlement

29

process of protecting what was imagined to be a homogeneous white nation by defining and excluding ‘others.’ At the local level, Leicester was characterised by a high minority ethnic and Indian population. Within this category there were many layers of differentiation, though the main sub-group were the East African Asians and in particular, the Gujarati Hindus. These differences were reflected spatially and although there has been a recent trend since the 1990s towards suburbanisation for Indians and East African Asians, the inner city wards still contain the highest concentration of minority ethnic groups. Despite Leicester’s reputation for multicultural success the city is characterised by ethnic and religious divides. Yet, it would be erroneous to infer that this segregation was ‘chosen.’ It was intrinsically tied to the actual experiences and perceptions of different areas within the city, held by South Asians and this will be discussed in Chapter 5. Finally, whilst surveys provide an indication of the opposition towards South Asians at particular times, this is also only a snap shot and fragment of the picture. Hence, Chapter 2 will elucidate the underlying conditions that foster white racism and chapters five and six will examine how the migrants themselves experienced and responded to this hostility.

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Chapter 2

Constructions of Whiteness The white respondents of Leicester witnessed its transformation into one of Britain’s main South Asian cities. How did they interpret these changes? What issues were posed by South Asian migration? Did they have contact with South Asians and if so, what was the nature of this contact and how did this shape their views? The aim is not to simply label specific examples as racist, for a focus solely on racism implies a rigid and deterministic mode of thinking which obscures the complexities and contradictions that may accompany racist perceptions.1 Neither does it seek to provide a single underlying explanation for racism. There is a recognition that there is not one monolithic racism, but a diversity of racisms, which are historically specific and variable.2 The focus here is to elucidate how and why people use racial narratives, and the mechanisms which white people employ to include South Asians and refrain from reproducing racism will also be discussed. Mapping World Views The respondents shared a collective location which framed their knowledge and attitudes and shaped their world views, that is, their frames of reference used to comprehend, interpret and interact with reality. They had all been born in Leicester, were from a working class background and were of the same cohort.3 A defining facet of the historical context which they shared was the legacy of colonialism. The influence of the empire on British identity has received considerable academic

1 This was recognised by D.T. Wellman, ‘Portraits of white racism’, in E. Cashmore and J. Jennings, (eds), Racism: Essential Readings (London: Sage, 2002), 163–72. Furthermore, as Billig notes, people do not possess a simple cognitive framework but hold complex and contradictory views. See M. Billig, ‘Rhetorical psychology, ideological thinking, and imagined nationhood’, in H. Johnston and B. Klandermans, (eds), Social Movements and Culture (London: UCL Press, 1995), 64–84. 2 P. Gilroy, ‘One nation under a groove: the cultural politics of “race” and racism in Britain’, in D.T. Goldberg, (ed.), Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 264–5. 3 The term ‘cohort’ refers to a defined population who have lived through the same historical period and experienced specific events such as the Second World War. See J. Pilcher, Age and Generation in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 6. Bourdieu has emphasised how people’s dispositions are shaped by living in particular cultures. See P. Bourdieu, ‘Social space and symbolic power’, Sociological Theory, 7, 1 (1988), 19 and N. Crossley, ‘The phenomenological habitus and its construction’, Theory and Society, 30, 81 (2001), 81–120.

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attention.4 Studies have shown that from the late nineteenth century, life in Britain was infused with popular representations relating to the empire which helped to forge ideas regarding what it meant to be British and how colonial people were different. It is argued that these ideas were disseminated through advertising, education and popular literature and constructed binary notions of inferior and superior, uncivilised and civilised, which essentially pervaded western consciousness. British feelings of paternalism and superiority over imagined child-like savages who must be civilised was both reinforced and acquired new meanings during decolonisation, when the boundaries between the colonised and the coloniser were dissolved. Whilst there is debate regarding the precise impact of racist ideology on the working classes, the interviewees did recall being taught about the empire and, in particular, they remembered Empire Day. As Phyllis recalled, On Empire Day you were dressed to represent the different countries and sing you know songs like that represented them. Somebody represented Canada and Australia and India and everywhere and we were taught the sun never sets on the empire, it’s always shining somewhere, the sun never sets, but you see we’ve not got the empire now.5

This illustrates how education effectively promulgated notions of imperial greatness and worldwide superiority. Indeed, evidence that these feelings were internalised is revealed by Phyllis’s explicit and assertive response when she was asked how South Asian immigration had prompted her to consider her own ethnic identity: ‘I felt superior because I was Leicester born and bred and they weren’t (laughs). I felt all right. You know I was sorry for them that they’d had to come to find a better place you know.’6 Thus whilst she felt sympathy for South Asians, colonial discourse was clearly evident in the conception of her ‘self’. Another experience which fashioned the interviewee’s world view was the speeches of Enoch Powell throughout the 1960s, culminating in his apocalyptic ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968. Powell had a profound and lasting impact on how people thought about race and this is already well documented.7 Essentially he was instrumental in constructing a new form of hegemonic racism, or cultural racism, 4 C. Hall, Civilising Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (London: Polity Press, 2002), S.R. Bald, ‘Images of South Asian migrants in literature: differing perspectives’, New Community, 17, 3 (1999), 413–31, J. Hopkins, ‘Rules of thumb: British history and “imperial culture” in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain’, Women’s History Review, 3, 4 (1994), 483–501, J.M. MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) and E. Lawrence, ‘Just plain common sense: the “roots” of racism’ in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, (eds), The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 47–94. 5 Phyllis 29 April 2002. 6 Phyllis 20 May 2002. 7 A.M. Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality: Britain, 1968–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). A.R. Brown, ‘“The other day I met a constituent of mine”: a theory of anecdotal racism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22, 1 (1999), 23–47, P. Gilroy, ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London: Hutchinson, 1987).

Constructions of Whiteness

33

which was seen as central to the success of Thatcher and the New Right. Powell’s metaphors of urban decline and anarchy caused by the invasion of black strangers were resonant throughout the interviews. Immigrants were ‘the enemy within’: they were not totally excluded but ‘unassimilated and unassimilable’. The legacy of Powell is irrefutable as he was consistently mentioned by the interviewees without any prompt. As Marge claimed: We didn’t live there when it was as bad as it was now really, but you can’t imagine really one extreme to the other you know and as I said, Enoch Powell said, he said he was real he was against it from the start and he said ‘if you let one in you’ll have them all here and they’ll rule you in the end, they’ll take over’ and they are, aren’t they?8

This replays Powell’s warnings of the ‘black man holding the whip hand over the white man’, an inversion of the slave metaphor which served to absolve colonial guilt, whilst generating white fear.9 Yet the perception of Powell as ‘real’ is most insightful. Indeed he was typically hailed as the valiant truth teller. According to Stan, ‘he was looked upon as a bit of a rabble rouser at the time but his words have come true really because we can’t cope with all these people coming into the country, we’re only a small country.’10 In essence, this vision of Powell’s can be seen as a direct result of the Labour government’s suppression of racism which, rather than directly challenging the rationale of racists, enabled Powell to emerge as the saviour of ‘the people’s repressed truths’.11 Although Powell is cited for making racism respectable, his speeches were pivotal in the sense that they provided a new framework for articulating racial difference. Overall, this demonstrates that racism was neither ‘out there’, nor can it be reduced to individual behaviour as some have surmised.12 Instead it was historically rooted and central to an individual’s ways of seeing and understanding the world, enabling them to classify and define themselves in relation to others. Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to imply that individuals were passively imbued with racist rhetoric; instead, racist narratives provided categories of everyday thought and practice, a lens through which to see the world, express their own real world concerns, and make sense of contradictions. In this sense it was part of their class habitus, which did not strictly determine actions as a fixed structure, but provided a set of guiding principles and stock of knowledge which individuals deployed in changing contexts.13 8 Marge 30 January 2002. 9 Gilroy, ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’. 10 Stan 21 March 2002. 11 Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality, 146. 12 Cashmore asserted that racism is a product of natural conservatism. See E. Cashmore, The Logic of Racism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987). 13 This approach has structured the work of other researchers, most notably Back, who has examined how competing racial discourses were employed to give meaning to the landscape in different London estates. See L. Back, New Ethnicities and Urban Culture: Racisms and Multiculture in Young Lives (London: Routledge, 1996). Frankenberg employed a similar perspective for research in America. See R. Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The

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Before discussing these discourses it is first necessary to conceptualise racism, for despite the plethora of racisms, some common features can be delineated. Racism encapsulates the attempts of a dominant group to exclude, subordinate or exploit subordinate groups. This is achieved and justified by representing a difference to categorise the racial group which signifies an ‘otherness’. The boundaries for locating difference are based upon biological and cultural traits. The latter was used by Powell and is particularly pervasive. Based on the premise that different cultures and lifestyles are incongruous, segregation is justified to avoid cultural conflict. Yet it does not simply identify difference. Cultural racism constructs a hierarchy, in which national values supersede non-national values. The racialised group is consigned to the margins of society and the superior national community is reinforced. The connection between ‘race’ and ‘nation’ are clearly apparent. As Miles explains, ‘racism is the lining of the cloak of nationalism, which surrounds and denies the boundaries of England as an imagined community.’14 Thus whilst ‘race’ is a tool to define minority groups, ‘nation’ differentiates and encompasses ‘us’.15 Hage adds an important and enlightening psychoanalytical dimension to this schema in his notion of ‘white nation fantasy’, which encapsulates the imagined ideal national order in which whites occupy a privileged position. This is essentially a fantasy in the sense that it is something some people yearn for and yet it is ultimately unrealistic. Moreover, as a fantasy it gives purpose to life and enables the nationalist to exist as a meaningful person. As Hage explains: ‘People don’t have fantasies. They inhabit fantasy spaces of which they are a part.’16 The desire to belong to this space is deeply rooted in feelings of disempowerment. They feel the state is not working for them and that they ought to be more empowered. Thus it acts as a fantasy of empowerment. This therefore offers a valuable insight into why racist discourses may be particularly attractive to certain people. ‘Whiteness’ also warrants definition and clarification. Whiteness is a culturally constructed position of social privilege and power, which presents itself as natural and ‘normal’. It is a place to look at ourselves and view others and in the process, mark and racialise others. Thus when individuals employ racial discourses, they are implicated in a process of naturalizing and reifying whiteness. Here I prefer conceptions which highlight that white identity is not a defining characteristic which motivates and links all white people, but is part of a process which is always being made and constructed.17 Social Construction of Whiteness (London: Routledge, 1993). Here she defined discourses as ‘repertoires’, 16. 14 R. Miles, Capitalism and Unfree Labour: Anomaly or Necessity? (London: Tavistock, 1987), 38. 15 For further discussion see Gilroy, ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ and R. Samuel, (ed.), Patriots: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, 3 Volumes (London: Routledge, 1989). 16 G. Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Kent: Pluto Press, 1998), 70. 17 J. Hartigan, ‘Establishing the fact of whiteness’, in R.D. Torres, L.F. Mirón, and J.X. Inda, (eds), Race, Identity and Citizenship: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 183–99. For further discussion of definitions see J. Solomos and L. Back, Racism and Society (London: Macmillan, 1996), particularly 1–29.

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Narratives of Exclusion One dominant discourse which was implemented to interpret the changes within Leicester was that South Asian immigration prompted a crisis of whiteness. South Asians were perceived by whites as a threat to their economic and social status. Thus whiteness ceased to confer superiority. Scholars have provided ample evidence to demonstrate that the working classes were not always considered white and in the nineteenth century the urban poor were categorised as racially distinct from the middle and upper classes. They were a feared ‘other’ of darkest England.18 Consequently, whiteness was a not a naturally given, mass identity but had to be acquired. It was in the post-Second World War era that a new consciousness and sense of security and solidarity for the working classes was defused. The strong demands for labour served to fortify their bargaining power and this was coupled with a prevalent belief that post-war reforms would rectify injustice and poverty and ensure a better way of life. The advent of the welfare state was articulated within a nationalist discourse with a focus on meeting the needs of ‘our people’. This was accompanied by a government publicity campaign which emphasised that social services were not ‘free’ but had to be earned through hard work.19 Furthermore, from 1911 to 1948 health services were supported by private contributory insurance schemes which were swallowed up in 1948. Within this context, immigration came to be seen as a threat to working class ‘gains’.20 Hence, throughout the interviews South Asians were seen by whites as collectively usurping resources, for which they had not worked for and which were not rightfully theirs. One woman from Northfields whispered, ‘they’ve come into the country and the government have gifted them and they’ve given what is ours and we’re worse off than them.’21 Others claimed that South Asians had taken jobs from ‘our own men’ within the transport industry or had come to Britain to use the health service. As Trevor exclaimed, ‘they’re getting health care for nought, they wouldn’t get any in their own country.’22 Consequently South Asians were seen to be the source of problems within the National Health Service.23 However, undoubtedly, the main site of contention was over social security. Typical comments included: 18 See for instance, A. Bonnett, White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives (Harlow: Addison-Wesley Longman, 2000). 19 R. Lowe, ‘The Second World War, consensus and the foundation of the welfare state’, Twentieth Century British History, 1 (1990), 178–9. For further details on the welfare state see R. Lowe, The Welfare State in Britain Since 1945 (Basingstoke: Macmillian, 1998). 20 For more details on how the working classes have been fixed and defined see R. Colls and P. Dodd, Englishness and Political Culture 1880–1920 (London: Croom Helm, 1986). The influence of the welfare state is also noted in Samuel, Patriot, xi. For on overview of changes in working class status see A. Marwick, British Society Since 1945 (London: Penguin, 1996). For other examples of how whiteness first excluded certain white European groups and incorporated them later see D. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991). 21 Alice 9 July 2002. 22 Trevor 21 March 2002. 23 Ibid.

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Negotiating Boundaries in the Cities They were coming into the country and getting benefits and having paid nothing into it, that seems to still be the main concern of most people, that they’re getting hand outs and they’ve put nothing into the pot.24 We’ve paid all our lives for it and even your grandad, fought during the wars for it and look what they’ve got, nothing.25 It causes a lot of friction when you see what they’re doing and getting money like that and you’ve worked all your life and what do you get? It’s just not fair. But they’re brazen with it.26

No credible evidence was presented for these claims, but anecdotes were presented as essential truths. Indeed, approximately two and a half million left India to fight for Britain in the Second World War, whilst during the 1960s more than 18,000 doctors from India were imperative to the expansion of the health service.27 These doctors came fully trained and saved Britain approximately over £300 million.28 Clearly, whites’ ownership of the nation was at stake and the racial advantage which whites had come to expect as ‘normal’ was challenged. The identification of South Asians as ‘brazen’ is most insightful as it conveys a concern that the national hierarchies and the imagined ideal order were disrupted. South Asians had agency and free will, they were demanding, and had transgressed, therefore, their place on the margins. This discourse orchestrated around the welfare state corresponded with numerous studies conducted in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in cities such as Birmingham and it also resonates with more recent research on white people’s narratives.29 As Tyler has suggested, the discourse was influenced by current media representations which tend to classify all migrants as ‘benefit scroungers’, yet as Dench et al. have revealed it was also related to the particular experiences of the older generation.30 In their research, the respondents also felt that immigration was a challenge to their admission to the nation, which they had earned through the war effort. They too

24 Stan 21 March 2002. 25 Trevor 21 March 2002. 26 Marge 30 January 2002. 27 ‘There were no parades for us’, The Guardian, 6 November 2002 and ‘How Asian doctors saved the NHS’, BBC News, 26 November 2003, . 28 B. Parekh, ‘South Asians in Britain’, History Today, 47, 9 (1997), . 29 J. Rex and R. Moore, Race, Community and Conflict: A Study of Sparkbrook (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), J. Rex and S. Tomlinson, Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A Class Analysis (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), P. Ratcliffe, Racism and Reaction: A Profile of Handsworth (London: Routledge, 1981), J. Henderson and V. Karn, Race, Class and State Housing: Inequality and the Allocation of Public Housing (Aldershot: Gower Publishing, 1987) and S. Smith, The Politics of ‘Race’ and Residence: Citizenship, Segregation, and White Supremacy in Britain (Cambridge: Polity, 1989). 30 K. Tyler, ‘Racism, tradition and reflexivity in a former mining town’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27, 2 (2004), 290–309 and G. Dench, K. Gavron and M. Young, The New East End: Kinship, Race and Conflict (London: Profile, 2006).

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felt that the Bangladeshi residents were over-riding their rights. However, these studies have consistently highlighted housing as the key source of tension and loci for anti-immigration hostility, yet this issue was strikingly absent from the Leicester experience. Perceived conflict for public housing was recently recognised as fuelling considerable resentment in Burnley.31 Similarly in Bethnal Green, the policy of granting social housing to those most in need was seen as favouring Bangladeshis and dividing white working class families, as younger white people sought accommodation outside the local area.32 Arguably, the propensity for South Asians to live in private accommodation combined with the private housing renewal programmes in Leicester have appeased possible racial antagonisms and contributed to Leicester’s relative success as a multicultural city. The contention that South Asians had not earned their place within the nation was reinforced by the white people’s construction of themselves as worthy, because their lives had been dominated by struggle. Typical remarks were: ‘Still you had to struggle ‘cause none of us were working you see, my mum just had to bring us all up, you know we always had food on the table you know, and we were always clean and everything, but it was a struggle, a real struggle, you know it was.’33 Their moral worth was further emphasised by anecdotes of having to save money and make sacrifices. As Stan explained, I was brought up that you couldn’t have anything until you had the money for it you see and my father wouldn’t allow me to buy anything on the never never. If you wanted a bat and ball, then you took the money out of the money box. It wasn’t the done thing to have things before you could afford them; now we have things and pay later. So when it came to having a house, I never altered, I put money away and waited until I’d got money to do that you see and worked hard and saved and did without. That was the point, we did without and my wife accepted that. She didn’t clamour to have the new things until we could go to the shop and buy it and put the money on the counter and that was our way of life.34

The context here was the legacy of depression in the 1930s, which created a saving ethic and a climate of uncertainty. Yet, crucially, these narratives were used to construct an identity for themselves. Their life was penetrated by their material constraints, they emphasised the daily grind, conditions of hardship and the shared experience of struggling and self help. They had to be disciplined and stoic and their personal integrity was born out of their material conditions which had provided them with self reliance, endurance and a strong work ethic. In sharp contrast, South Asians were defined as unworthy because they did not play the rules; they were crafty, cheating and cunning. William asserted: ‘That is I think, that’s the crux of the matter they seemed so conniving so and sos you know as 31 Burnley was afflicted by race riots. For a discussion of housing, see ‘Divisions over woeful spoils’, The Guardian, 12 December 2001 and ‘What the poor whites are telling liberal Britain’, The Sunday Times, 26 May 2002. 32 Dench et al., The New East End. 33 Marge 30 January 2002. 34 Stan 21 March 2002.

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Marge said all the DHSS things, they know a damn sight more than what we know and they seem to get the full benefits and not only that they’re the best fiddlers I’ve yet to meet.’35 These accusations were based on newspapers articles and ‘lessons’ learnt from the war: ‘oh they’re the most light fingered people you could yet to meet, you wouldn’t leave anything laying about ‘cause it would be gone in a flash, you see, they live by their wits a lot of them do.’36 Another founded her observations on the rapid rise of East Africa Asians from refugee status to middle class success, signalled by their home ownership and suburban residence: ‘They’re supposed to have come in without any money and then they got money all of a sudden they were able to buy these big houses in Evington, but you read in the paper a lot of these up Evington were twisting the government out of money.’37 This stereotype of South Asians as astute, shrewd and unscrupulous was actually a typical ethnic representation, used to define the corrupt ‘nature’ of slaves and the supposedly criminal Chinese.38 The realisation that whiteness no longer represented a privileged position and the injustice felt at this, also underpinned accusations that South Asians received ‘preferential treatment’ from the local council. As Marge stated: I think the council were to blame for a lot of trouble because if there was a job going and you went for it and an Asian went for it you wouldn’t get it, they couldn’t turn them away they weren’t allowed to turn them away. Why? It was racist.39

Another even took offence to Diwali celebrations on the grounds that ‘we’re not allowed to have the road shut off … they do they get treated better by the council’.40 To them, ‘coloured councillors’ were unequivocally to blame. Thus whites professed themselves as the losers in anti-racist politics.41 These claims, which equated equal opportunities policies with ‘reverse discrimination’, conveyed the sentiment that white people have endured endemic disadvantage and discrimination. Yet affirmative action policies were clearly employed to remedy racial inequalities 35 William 5 March 2002. 36 Ibid. 37 Marge 30 January 2002. 38 S. Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 262 and J. Herbert, ‘The construction of London’s Chinatown 1900–1990’ (unpublished University of Leicester MA thesis, 2000). 39 Marge 30 January 2002. 40 Christine 21 March 2002. 41 For further examples see: Commission for Racial Equality, Stereotyping and Racism (London: Commission for Racial Equality, 1998) and R. Hewitt, The Routes of Racism: The Social Basis of Racist Action (London: Trentham Books, 1996). Hewitt claimed anti-racism was responsible for youth grievances in London. For American examples see M. Lamont, The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class and Immigration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).

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and by doing so, whites felt that they had lost their racial advantage. Therefore claims of unfairness and injustice were underscored by fundamental issues of power and advantage. This sense of white defeat was a salient and recurrent theme throughout the interviews. It was evoked by the language used to describe the settlement of South Asians. William described living in Belgrave in the 1970s: ‘When we went there, everybody was white, everybody was white and it seemed that overnight, it seemed to change. As I say eventually all the white people moved out and we were left there on our own.’42 The conception that the neighbourhood drastically altered portrayed a feeling that they had no control over the situation; they were passive and helpless and left as the isolated white family. Another described the process of white flight: ‘But as I say, somebody, gets itchy feet and they move and they’re like vultures “oh we’ll have that one”, that’s how it went on you see.’43 Here the use of the term ‘vultures’ projected an inhumane, threatening and savage-like image, of scavenging and picking over flesh, which denoted that whites felt under siege. Once again it implied that South Asians were not acting according to their rightful place, but were impulsive and problematic. The perception that South Asians had reversed the power hierarchy was an enduring and recurrent theme, evident in assertions that South Asians ‘took over’ and came ‘to take everything from us’.44 One woman stated this explicitly: ‘I mean they’re in power aren’t they? They’re everywhere.’45 Evidence for this was based on observations that South Asians owned shops and were therefore economically successful: ‘They’ve got every business going, there’s not one business they ain’t got: they’ve got post offices, they used to be all white; they’ve got paper shops, which were all white.’46 This obscures the actuality that South Asians turned to corner shops particularly in the 1970s because racism excluded them from other forms of employment.47 Furthermore, developments including competition from supermarkets and the changes to law in 1994 relaxing Sunday trading undermined the profitability of the corner shop so that workers incurred long hours for low pay.48 The claim that shops used to be ‘all white’, manifests how South Asians signified white decline. This was also implied by those who claimed that the area had ‘gone down hill’, suggesting an awareness that whilst others were socially mobile they had been left behind.49 In Christine’s words: ‘To me I’ve lived here since 1970, although we only lived down the road, we used to go up Charnie even as a kid, I think since the coloureds have come in it’s gone down hill, it’s scruffy, it never used to be like it is now.’50 42 William 5 March 2002. 43 Stan 13 May 2002. 44 Christine 21 March 2002. 45 Marge 30 January 2002. 46 Trevor 21 March 2002. 47 For instance, in 1978 20 per cent of Asian shopkeepers were graduates. ‘Family run Asian shops disappear’, The Guardian, 5 January 2002. 48 ‘I would be better off on the dole’, The Times, 5 January 2002. 49 Also noted by A. Brah, ‘The scent of memory: strangers, our own and others’, Feminist Review, 61, 1 (1999), 4–26. 50 Christine 21 March 2002.

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The view that South Asian gains had resulted in whites’ loss also informed claims that South Asians exhibited greater affluence and emblems of success. In Bourdieu’s terms their status was validated by their accumulation of symbolic capital. As one respondent stated: ‘You look at all of them now, they all drive about in decent cars, BMWs, you know, because a car to them is a symbol, it’s a big symbol is a car and to get a house, well that’s another big symbol in their life, it puts them in at a different level from the riff raff if you like.’51 Another claimed: ‘They’ve got more than what ever any white person has. If there’s two or three in a house they’ve all got a car each. They’ve all got two or three cars, we haven’t got well I haven’t got one, you know what I mean?’52 Mosques also symbolised the power and wealth South Asians had attained and whilst they recognised that these buildings were ‘fantastic’ and ‘beautiful’, they simultaneously conveyed a sense of white failure.53 As Marge stated, ‘they took over the churches you see but whose fault is that? It’s ours ‘cause we stopped going to church.’54 In reality, redundant churches were used only partly due to a decline in white religious observance. More significant was the dissipation of the white population from the city centre to the outskirts, in pursuit of the suburban dream.55 Clearly, the local landscape had acquired new meanings and no longer sanctioned the authority of the dominant white culture. The mosque proclaimed the permanent presence of Muslims and was a visible and stark reminder of their identity and solidarity, and of their demands on public space. It signified a space for collective expression and belonging which white people felt they had lost.56 Perhaps this sense of loss was shaped by economic and social changes in the twentieth century which transformed social life. Put simply, higher incomes, coupled with cheaper transport and suburbanisation have led to the erosion of traditional occupational neighbourhoods and larger and more comfortable homes combined with more time for social activities has arguably reduced social interaction. This decline in social cohesion was further influenced by various factors such as geographical mobility, slum clearance, housing schemes and the onset of Conservatism, which has prompted some scholars to conclude that working class collective identity and solidarity has declined, particularly since the 1970s.57 51 William 5 March 2002. 52 Christine 21 March 2002. 53 William 5 March 2002 and Gladys B 2 May 2002. 54 Marge 5 March 2002. 55 R. Gale, ‘Pride of place and places: South Asian religious groups and the city planning authority in Leicester’, paper in the School of City and Regional Planning, 172 (Cardiff: Cardiff University, 1999), 9. 56 For research on the conflict over urban space in relation to mosques see J. Eade, ‘The political articulation of community and the Islamisation of space in London’, in R. Barot, (ed.), Religion and Ethnicity: Minorities and Social Change in the Metropolis (Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1993), 28–42. This shows that the debates were centred on the need to preserve English national identity, rather than religion. 57 This is argued by E. Hopkins, The Rise and Decline of the English Working Classes, 1918–1990: A Social History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991). See also R. Colls, ‘When we lived in communities’, in R. Colls and R. Rodger, (eds), Cities of Ideas: Civil Society

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However, the respondents displayed the familiar device of romanticising this past community life.58 They referred to the ‘good old days’ when ‘everybody was on the same level’, ‘everybody mixed’ and they occupied autonomous spaces.59 For example, William recalled his wife’s fondness for Highfields: ‘She really loved it round there. She knew everybody and Charnwood Street, well it was a mecca.’60 St Barnabas church was also a central meeting place and was used for dancing on Saturday night. According to William: ‘As far as we were concerned that was our dance place, keep out, you know.’61 This reveals how space was contested and viewed in territorial terms, a consciousness evident in other studies of working class racism.62 This competition over space was exemplified by the experiences of one woman who persistently claimed ‘I mean you go in town, you have to move out of their way for them they will not move.’63 She continued to relay a detailed example whereby she was forced to step off the path into the road for a South Asian man. Arguably, this seemingly inconsequential encounter was experienced as traumatic because it triggered latent fears regarding her imagined powerlessness. She subsumed the role of the vulnerable and defenceless white woman and racialised the South Asian man as inherently violent and dangerous; he became the typical aggressive black male.64 This is later testified by her remarks: ‘It was safer to walk the streets till these all came in, definitely.’65 Furthermore, this was not a unique experience but has been acknowledged as a ubiquitous feature of modern society, which has been termed ‘image repertoire’. That is, people draw on crude stereotypes when they encounter strangers to minimise further stimulation and feelings of anxiety and therefore reduce the complexity of the urban experience.66 and Urban Governance in Britain, 1800–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 287–307. It is important to note however that the extent of change is debated. See for instance, G. Marshall et al., Social Class in Modern Britain (London: Hutchinson Education 1989) and G. Crow and G. Allan, Community Life – An Introduction to Local Social Relations (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994). 58 R. Samuel and P. Thompson, The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 1990), 8. This has been noted in other community studies. According to Cornwell the romantisation of a past community life was a coping strategy to deal with the problems in the present. See J. Cornwell, cited in Crow and Allan, Community Life, 20. 59 Gladys B 2 May 2002 and Gladys 13 March 2002. 60 William 5 March 2002. 61 Ibid. 62 S. Good, ‘White working-class women’s reactions to Asian settlement: 1945–1990’, Black and Asian Studies Association Newsletter, 34 (2002), 7–12. 63 Marge 30 January 2002. 64 For the relationship between fear and prejudice, see K. Day, ‘Embassies and sanctuaries: women’s experiences of race and fear in public space’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 17 (1999), 309–28. For the racialisation of the inner city and the threat of the black man to white women, see V. Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London: Verso, 1992). 65 Marge 30 January 2002. 66 R. Sennett draws on the work of a range of scholars including R. Barthes, K. Lynch and E. Goffman to support this theory. See R. Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City

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In general, this discourse of the loss of white power was voiced by those who had minimal contact with South Asians. Indeed it was most conspicuous in the interviews with those living in Northfields, a predominantly white estate, north-east of the city.67 Here they protested that they were the voiceless victims. Comments included, ‘I’m not saying anything, you can’t even speak now, you can’t even speak, it’s not a free country, it’s not what it was.’68 ‘What I’ve got against it is if we say anything we’re in the wrong, if they say it, it doesn’t matter and that’s what I don’t like.’69 In this case, it can be surmised that these feelings emanated from their lack of access to a civil society. This parallels Charlesworth’s research of working class communities in Rotherham, where the demise of trade unions contributed to the erosion of any civic culture.70 Trust is seen as a vital facet of civil society, yet during the interviews they warned me to trust no one and to look after myself only.71 They also exhibited a sense of disenfranchisement with mainstream politics, for them ‘it ain’t England any more’.72 Hence it can be argued that although they were not affected personally by South Asian immigration, in the absence of what constituted a civil society, the white nation fantasy offered a sense of identity and belonging. Moreover, Northfields has been identified as an area blighted by pockets of deprivation and high levels of crime.73 With this in mind, Scheff’s statement that ‘people choose imagined communities over real ones when they are desperately humiliated’ appears to be most pertinent.74 Hitherto, it has been argued that whites voiced the negation of their power because South Asians were seen to threaten the superiority which whites were socialised to expect. They therefore mobilised and reconstructed their white identity when it was decentred and its privileges threatened. Essentially they did not want to relinquish the benefits of whiteness and were defending what was considered ‘normal’ to them. in Western Civilization (New York: Faber and Faber, 1994), 356–66. 67 Northfields was located in the ward of West Humberstone, which in 1991 contained a white population of 79.8 per cent. Leicester City Council, Leicester Key Facts: Ethnic Minorities 1991 Census (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1995), 9. 68 Alice 9 July 2002. 69 Joan 9 July 2002. 70 S.J. Charlesworth, A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 71 For a definition of civil society and its relationship to tolerance see C.H. Persell, A. Green, and L. Gurevich, ‘Civil society, economic distress, and social tolerance’, Sociological Forum, 16 (2001), 203–30. 72 Joan 9 July 2002. 73 P. Winstone discussed the resentment of the white estates as stigmatised communities in interview 7 June 2002. West Humberstone is in the ten per cent of the most deprived wards nationally. Leicester City Council, Leicester Wards: Index of Multiple Deprivation 2000, . See also Leicester Partnership Against Crime and Disorder, . 74 T. Scheff, ‘Emotions and identity: a theory of ethnic nationalism’ in C. Calhoun, (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994), 301. For an analysis of racial discourses in Beaumont Leys, a satellite town of Leicester, see S. Jeffers, P. Hoggart and L. Harrison, ‘Race, ethnicity and community in three localities’, New Community, 22, 1 (1996), 111–26.

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For those who lived in Highfields, racist discourses were also adapted to interpret changes within their immediate locality. Previous studies have revealed the crucial role of the neighbourhood in shaping residents’ identities. Neighbourhoods were seen to contribute to the definition of who a person is and locate their belonging in society.75 Moreover, it is recognised that neighbourhoods may be particularly valuable for the older person’s sense of self as they often have a long association and investment in a particular area. Furthermore, in the absence of paid employment and consequently relationships within the public sphere, the neighbourhood may be highly valued. Yet the neighbourhood also functioned as an ‘agent enforcing conformity to accepted standards of behaviour’.76 Thus interviewees stressed the values of pride and respect which governed their communities and the importance of traditions.77 For example, on the day of a funeral, people would lay out the dead: ‘it was a neighbourly thing and the whole community of that street was there.’ ‘The men would raise their hats’ and this was ‘the correct thing to do’.78 In Bourdieu’s terms these ‘rules’ constituted their ethos, that is, their specific embedded morality which operated at a practical level. These actions are taken for granted and people only become conscious of them once they cease to be part of the social world. Thus South Asians were seen to displace their ethos and disrupt the order of the neighbourhood. Trivial complaints included the alleged unpredictable way South Asians parked their cars, which was ‘anywhere they want’ and even stalls outside the shops were seen as an irritant as they disregarded the conventions and regulations.79 Doris complained, ‘they’ve got all the things outside, that weren’t allowed when the other people had them they weren’t.’80 This disruption impinged on people’s private spaces such as their garden. Phyllis claimed her neighbours were opportunistic: I went on me holiday once and when I’d come back they’d chopped all me flowers off in the garden and I were looking for me prop to put my washing out … and then I looked over the wall and there it was stuck in the garden with something growing up it you know my prop (laughs) so ever so cheeky like you know. They did knock me back wall down and they were made to put that up, they were sort of making us all into one place; they thought they could just take over.81

75 T. Scharf et al., ‘Ageing in socially deprived areas: perceptions of the neighbourhood’, paper presented at British Sociological Association Annual Conference, 25–27 March 2002, C. Phillipson et al., ‘Older people’s experiences of community life: patterns of neighbouring in three urban areas’, Sociological Review, 47, 4 (1999), 715–43 and M. Young and P. Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957). 76 E. Roberts, ‘Neighbours: north-west England 1940–70’, Oral History Journal, 21, 2 (1993), 38–45. 77 Marge 30 January 2002 and Alice 9 July 2002. 78 Marge 5 March 2002 and William 5 March 2002. 79 Trevor 21 March 2002. 80 Doris 14 March 2002. 81 Phyllis 29 April 2002.

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According to these accounts South Asians subverted the boundary markers and challenged the spatial ordering of the neighbourhood.82 Others complained that South Asian clothing such as turbans and saris would often colonise the washing line and shared back yard, whilst one man described the invasion of smells and noise from cooking.83 For example, the ‘terrible’ smell had forced him to leave the house and this was coupled with the ‘bang bang bang doing the chapattis’ all at ‘ten o’clock at night’.84 At first glance these incidents appear to be conflicts over space. Scholars have noted how with the racialisation of public space, the home became a defended and guarded white space where a sense of order was maintained.85 Yet incidents were also inextricably linked to developments in the post-war era. Greater affluence amongst the working classes prompted a new home centeredness. With more comfortable homes and attractions such as the radio and later the television, the home represented a site of leisure and consumption, and encouraged a retreat into privacy. This was facilitated by neighbours who were aware of the disparaging effects of gossip and began to distance themselves from their fellow neighbours. According to some scholars this focus on the home in the 1950s was part of a process of reworking and redefining national identity.86 In the climate of decolonisation, the Englishness once signified by white male adventure was transformed into the ‘quiet street and the privet hedge’.87 Within this context, South Asians did not adhere to their norms and values, specifically with regards to quietness and privacy, but instead blurred the boundaries between the public and private domain. Another facet of the neighbourhood order was a gendered dimension. Skeggs has uncovered the centrality of respectability as an organising principle and focus for class identity and social superiority. This originated from nineteenth century conceptions that the potentially dangerous working class could be suppressed by casting mothers into the role of civilisers for their family. Thus working class women were educated in bourgeois domesticity, a role which gave them moral significance and status, encapsulated in the term ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’. Consequently, women judged other women by standards of cleanliness; uncleanliness was synonymous with immorality and low social standing.88 White women interviewees were keen to be associated with the domestic ideal. Phyllis stressed, ‘I was always scrubbed and clean. I can never remember being 82 For a discussion of the ‘order’ of the western street and the ‘disorder’ of the Indian street see T. Edensor, ‘The culture of the Indian street’ in N.R. Fyfe, (ed.), Images of the Street: Planning, Identity and Control in Public Space (London: Routledge, 1998), 205–21. 83 Christine 21 March 2002 and Marge 30 January 2002. 84 Stan 21 March 2002. 85 P. Cohen, Home Rules: Some Reflections on Racism and Nationalism in Everyday Life (Dagenham: New Ethnicities Unit, University of East London, 1994), 7. 86 W. Webster, Imagining Home: Gender, ‘Race’ and National Identity, 1945–64 (London: UCL Press, 1998). 87 Ibid., 65. 88 See B. Skeggs, Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable (London: Sage Publications, 1997) and also J. Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain 1890–1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity (London: Routledge, 1994), 161.

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dirty or having dirty hands or anything like that. I can never remember being dirty.’89 Similarly, Marge claimed, ‘cause years ago people were clean, they scrubbed their step, their front door step, every week you cleaned your window seal and all that.’90 Consequently, they appraised their South Asian neighbours by these standards. Marge observed ‘they didn’t know really how to put curtains up properly do they? The nets and that everywhere looked really sullen you know.’91 Another disclosed, ‘I used to think I wish some of them would ask me how to put a net curtain up you know. I mean Indians never seemed to know how to put the curtains up straight you know (laughs) no they never asked you nothing like that.’92 Phyllis claimed her Bangladeshi neighbours ‘seemed a scruffy lot’ because ‘when they came next door to me they chucked all their rubbish in the yard, in the back yard, stinking rubbish, then they’d have a bonfire. They didn’t look clean and they weren’t clean.’93 Others took offence to their toilet habits, including the Indian toilet, which was ‘unhygienic’, and other intolerable habits, including spitting and chewing gum, which were ‘dirty.’94 For one woman the sight of a Muslim woman blowing her nose outside her house had impelled her to call her a ‘dirty pig’.95 Some presented ‘Asian’ as analogous with ‘dirt’ in contrast to ‘white’ and ‘clean’. Marge claimed, ‘there were no coloured people then, it was all white and everywhere was so clean.’96 This revealed a connotation of South Asians with litter, suggesting an underlying desire to expel them from the neighbourhood. This discourse was echoed in the local newspaper in the 1960s where their cultural habits were a prime source of discontent. ‘It’s not their colour I object to, it’s their habits.’97 These included spitting, the smell of their cooking and even leaving the toilet door open, thus defining them in terms of bodily characteristics, which became the object of disgust: dirty, uncouth and contaminated. The association with dirt and disease has played an eminent role in the construction of stereotypes; it not only marks an ‘other’ as imperfect and uncivilised, but also signals the threat of contagion and the infiltration of personal, local and national space. In Kristeva’s words, it is based on the ‘simple logic of excluding filth’.98 The potency of dirt and disease as a symbol permitting demarcation cannot be overstated. Scholars have charted its various nineteenth and twentieth century guises stressing the bourgeois fear of working class diseases and the scientific discourses which 89 Phyllis 29 April 2002. 90 Marge 30 January 2002. See also testimonies in B. Willbond, A Home of Our Own: 70 Years of Council House Memories in Leicester (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1991), 29–31. 91 Marge 30 January 2002. 92 Doris 14 March 2002. 93 Phyllis 20 May 2002. 94 Spitting was a social taboo due to fears of tuberculosis. See ‘Here’s one in the eye’, The Guardian, 6 November 2003. 95 Christine 21 March 2002. 96 Marge 30 January 2002. 97 ‘A house divided’, Leicester Mercury, 18 July 1968. 98 Quoted in D. Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West (London: Routledge, 1995), 14.

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correlated disease with ‘race’.99 Nevertheless, the interviews reveal that this familiar discourse was gendered. Moreover, women did not draw on this rhetoric arbitrarily; instead it was grounded in their historical reality and related to their socially constructed version of white femininity. South Asians were seen to defy the values in which they had invested and which whites perceived as universal. This enabled them to criticise South Asians for their ‘failings’, the process of which actually enhanced their self worth and status and reinforced their position of respectability. At the crux of the white interviewees’ anxieties was that South Asians represented a threat primarily to the privileges conferred by whiteness, and to their norms and values which constituted their self identity and white culture. This echoes facets of Elias’s and Scotson’s work on boundary construction in a study of a suburb in Leicester.100 Elias noted: ‘The very existence of interdependent outsiders who share neither the fund of common memories nor, as it appears, the same norms of respectability as the established group, acts as an irritant; it is perceived by the members of the latter as an attack against their own we-image and we-ideal.’101 Consequently, what Elias calls ‘the established’ – that is, the long term residents – responded by rejecting the newcomers and casting them into the role of the outsiders. The powerful felt attacked; they were motivated to attack in return. As Elias explained, ‘it was a weapon of defence as well as attack.’102 This was achieved through networks of gossip which functioned to praise the established’s superior status and further integrate their group, whilst the outsiders were stigmatised as immoral, and in essence ‘uncivilised’. Thus the ‘group charisma’ of the established was inextricably linked to the ‘group disgrace’ of the ‘outsiders’. Moreover, they concluded that this strategy operated at an entirely unconscious level. This reading of Elias clearly contains important parallels to the experiences of the white respondents. To summarise, the contours of whiteness have been mapped. The interviews reveal that whilst whites did not uniformly harbour racist feelings they were all engaged in a process of defining and excluding South Asians and constructing a white identity. This is proved by the racial discourses they employed which were interwoven and shaped by their experiences of class and gender. Whites saw themselves as disciplined and domesticated, whilst South Asians were marked as corrupt and unworthy. These discourses bore little resemblance to the tangible reality of South Asians, but connected to the subjective lived experiences of white 99 Ibid. For Douglas, dirt is at the crux of social order: see M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966). For the use of association of dirt and South Asians in East End London, see V. Ware, ‘Island racism: gender, place and white power’ in R. Frankenberg, (ed.), Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (London: Duke University Press, 1997), 283–310. See also P. Jackson, ‘Construction of “whiteness” in the geographical imagination’, Area, 30, 2 (1998), 103. 100 Named Winston Parva. N. Elias and J.L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders (London: Sage Publications, 1965). 101 Ibid., 76, xlvi. 102 Ibid., 104. For further discussion see F. Dalal, Taking the Group Seriously: Towards a Post-Foulkesian Group Analytic Theory (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998).

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individuals. In short, these discourses stemmed from the anxiety they felt regarding their position in society. Equal opportunities policies and South Asians’ access to state resources ultimately challenged white privilege, whilst the behaviour of South Asians did not comply with ‘normal’ white culture and was, therefore, classified as deviant. Nevertheless, whites did not always act in a manner that was consistent with their designated racial identity. They often included South Asians and acted in ways which blurred the boundaries. Narratives of Inclusion The interviews reveal that despite initial fears that South Asian immigration would prompt imminent chaos, in reality encounters were far from problematic. The form, quality and extent of relations with South Asians were multifarious and diverse. Some developed networks with South Asians within the realm of work, whilst others discussed more informal relations as friends. This involved visiting each other’s houses and attending special celebrations such as birthdays. Some forged intergenerational relationships. As Phyllis described, There used to be a little [South Asian] girl come in our shop, she didn’t come for nothing but she knew, you knew I were friendly and she used to come in and she liked reading and she was a good little reader and she were only about so big you know and she’d go to the library twice a week and get a children’s book and she’d come in and read a bit to me like you know, ask me if it were right like you know and she were a nice little girl … So anyhow she came in at Christmas with this little brass crucifix so she said I brought you a present she said for Christmas she says because we’ve been told, I should have thought she’d been told at school or something, this was our god, she said and I couldn’t part with that, it’s standing on top of the wardrobe now, it’s a little brass crucifix … I couldn’t part with it like, this little girl said she’d been told that this is your god.103

The affective bond between the white woman and the South Asian girl clearly transcended racial boundaries and the respect shown by the girl through the gift was highly valued and cherished. It could be surmised that this was due to the South Asian girl’s life course position within childhood. Western notions of childhood conjured up a constellation of social attributes such as innocent, vulnerable and dependent, which rendered her less threatening than her South Asian elders. Undoubtedly the most recurrent basis of interaction was as neighbours. Many praised their neighbours highly. Comments included, ‘our neighbour is a Muslim and she is one of the best neighbours God ever made’, whilst one man stressed of his neighbour Mr Patel, ‘you couldn’t wish to have a better friend’.104 Sometimes, neighbourhood friendships were built on mutual need, as Phyllis stated of her neighbours from East Africa,‘they’d got nobody and I’d got nobody really you see’.105 It was within this role as neighbours that South Asians provided crucial practical support. One man was particularly impressed when his neighbours were 103 Phyllis 6 May 2002. 104 Christine 21 March 2002 and William 5 March 2002. 105 Phyllis 6 May 2002.

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forthcoming and offered assistance during a blackout. ‘We had a power cut and I was out at the time, but they came round to see if I wanted any candles, now unprompted, I was out but they went to my neighbour next door to me and asked them, and very good it shows, friendliness.’106 They therefore provided help in times of need and this was also demonstrated following a death within the family: The people next door to her are Asians they’re marvellous couldn’t do enough for her when her husband died, you know really nice. She said they’re very nice they’re very helpful when her husband died and that. What did they do? Well they sent flowers and that they asked if there was anything she wanted doing you know they always shouted over even now to see if she’s all right and knock at the door.107

Another recalled: ‘when my wife passed away I’ve still got the cards, and there was about a dozen houses round there that all contributed to flowers and I didn’t know half these people, but they did that, which I thought was very nice, very nice and touching it was really.’108 The importance of traditions such as the funeral within a street has previously been discussed, thus despite anxieties, South Asians did not attempt to displace the values held by the whites but reinforced them and in the process, effectively revitalised and enriched the old neighbourhood community. This is supported by studies conducted in the 1950s and 1960s which reveal that the traditional role allocated to neighbours was to fulfil an intermediary role by offering help in ‘emergencies’ and to be friendly.109 The friendliness of South Asians was also noted. There’s a greater tendency for them wanting to make contact with you. Very often, when I go just down here to the post office, a single one an Asian or something, either he’ll nod, or we’ll exchange good morning with one another which they didn’t do two or three years ago, they would sort of not look at you, now they want to look at you to recognise that they belong in the neighbourhood and that’s the difference I’m noticing at the present moment and if I go into any of their shops I don’t go into a lot, but they’re very very helpful, well they’re very, very kind to you if you go into any of their shops.110

Although this increased assertiveness, responsiveness and civility was described as a relatively recent phenomenon, it illustrated how South Asians were, in effect, recreating and regenerating the community atmosphere and fulfilling the criteria of

106 William 5 March 2002. 107 Marge 30 January 2002. 108 William 5 March 2002. 109 Phillipson et al., ‘Older people’s experiences of community life’, 725. 110 Stan 13 May 2002.

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the model neighbour. Indeed local shops functioned as an important site of sociability, particularly for women, but from the 1960s were fading from other towns.111 Moreover, these everyday occurrences had significant ramifications for how whites viewed South Asians. This is exemplified by Stan’s reflections: But there’s good and bad in them the same as us. I mean we’re not whiter than white and there’s some very nice. I suffer with my heart and sometimes when I go out I get an attack and I’ve stood several times on a road trying to get my breath waiting while the pain goes and I’ve had five or six white people pass me and just go by but the next coloured person that came would always say; ‘Are you all right? Can I do anything?’ Now that’s very noticeable and not once has that happened, several times, the white person, my own colour wouldn’t bother about me, but the coloured man or woman would, very noticeable. I didn’t expect it but I accepted that was done with great thought and great caring for me.112

The aid offered to him in an emergency, dispelled any myths of the threatening, aggressive ‘other’ and prompted him to be reflexive.113 That is, their actions effectively challenged his expectations and preconceptions and forced him to reflect, to question and reinterpret his racial discourses which were enmeshed in his world view. Moreover, as an older man and also suffering ill health, he occupied a marginal space within society.114 Older people have been classified as ‘immigrants in time’ and ‘strangers in their land’.115 That is, their culture and values are deemed out of date and strange by modern society. Arguably, Stan was not in a position to effectively subjugate and racialise South Asians, as he was also positioned on the margins. Similarly, contact with South Asians spurred others to be reflexive and reject dominant stereotypes. Evidence revealed that South Asians were not inherently sly or cunning, but proved to be honest, trustworthy and reliable. Doris noted this when she worked in a local shop: They never owe you anything; if they were a bit short of change and you’d say ‘don’t worry’, if it were a few coppers ‘you can drop it in when your passing’ you know if you were short of change at the weekend. I’ve known them a man say perhaps an Indian or a foreign man to come and I’d say ‘you’d needn’t bother’ and I could bet nearly always, they never owed you anything they’d send the wife or send somebody straight down when they got home. Never tried to do you out of money, although they’re acute business people you see but they wouldn’t try to twist you out of anything.116

111 Roberts, ‘Neighbours: north-west England 1940–70’, 42 and C. Brown, Wharf Street Revisited: A History of the Wharf Street Area of Leicester (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1995). 112 Stan 13 May 2002. 113 See A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997) who developed the concept of reflexivity to capture human agency. 114 Pilcher, Age and Generation in Modern Britain, 98–117. 115 Ibid. 116 Doris 14 March 2002.

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The language of South Asians was identified within racial discourses as a mark of an inferior characteristic and was typically seen as archaic.117 Yet Cynthia refused to label their language as a sign of their primitiveness, for her it signified an aptitude, which white people lacked. The first ones I remember were in Prebend Street, because there was one lady there I used to speak to as I came home and she’d got a girl, it struck me as strange really a little girl she’d be about eight, nine, she’d go along the street and meet me and start chatting away to me and her mother was outside, she’d run and start talking to her mother in their language and I thought you know, I know we’re not now so much now, but we were very backward really, we were only taught one language where as they spoke English and also spoke their mother tongue, that was strange. I don’t think there was the resentment.118

A further example of this admiration for South Asians included a respect for their family values. According to Pauline: ‘They think a lot of their family I mean the young ones go out to work and their parents bring their children up that’s their way and they never leave the elderly.’119 This was supported by Stan: I think they look after their old far better than what we do. I’m not saying that I’m not, I mean I’m very fortunate but there’re a section of older people where the family have either ignored them or sort of let them get on with their life, well it’s nothing to do with us type of thing. I think the Asian population and people from those different countries they take care of their old, I think you can see that in many instances, they take care of their old better than what we do. I think we’re better at it now through the health service. There are still a lot of people who would like to get rid of the old and get them in a home, because really they’re a bit in the way, they upset your life and that’s the attitude of the white people.120

Once again, considering the marginalised position of older people in British society, the tradition of close knit families, and in particular caring and respecting elders, was an enviable custom. Nor did South Asians incite chaos and violate the principles of white culture, but appeared to adhere to traditional British values of courtesy and privacy. As Cynthia and Pauline discussed, I think they’re quieter all together. And they’re so polite they teach them good manners and politeness and everything. I think the Asians were accepted more than the Africans to be honest. Well I don’t think it sounds funny but I don’t think the English sort of accepted the Africans with their long hair. And they were louder. Because they do speak very loudly don’t they?121

This implies that South Asians were accepted on the strict basis that they monitored their behaviour, and aspired to and assimilated British norms. However, new racism 117 Leicester Mercury, 18 July 1968 and Leicester Mercury, 16 December 1968. 118 Cynthia 28 May 2002. 119 Pauline 28 May 2002. 120 Stan 13 May 2002. 121 Cynthia 28 May 2002 and Pauline 28 May 2002.

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worked on the basis of including some aspects of black or South Asian cultures, to legitimate the exclusion of other traits which were deemed unassimiliable. This differentiation of ‘otherness’ was at the core of New Right discourse.122 In the interviews, the appearance and behaviour of the African Caribbeans was perceived as too alien and bizarre, hence they were collectively excluded and defined as the ‘other’. This was substantiated by others who associated African Caribbeans with drugs and crime.123 This exposes the hierarchy of national cultures which underpins cultural racism, in which some cultures are defined as more threatening than others. For one woman, the immigration of South Asians was unremarkable and clearly did not prompt fear; instead, for her, the Chinese posed an ominous danger. According to Phyllis, There was about one China man, Chinese man, a laundry man, Sam Lee I think his name was and he married a girl, Belgrave way and I used to cross the street because I was frit of him. I fritted China men. (laughs) I mean as a kid I was bought up that you feared China men because they had these opium dens and they murdered people (laughs).124

Clearly, the parameters of racial stereotyping were not dislodged or overturned but were ever present and all pervasive. Moreover, scholars have contended that despite the offer of acceptance in exchange for assimilation, this was never possible and was a ‘phantom acceptance’.125 Despite this, overall, contact did help to erode negative judgements of South Asians by prompting individuals to amend their beliefs in the context of specific experiences and therefore contributed to the construction of a more positive collective identity.126 Contact with South Asians had further benefits. It enabled whites to learn about South Asian communities. They were able to differentiate between the different religions. Christine noted: ‘There’s the Muslims, the Hindus and then there’s the Sikhs’, whilst one woman had been informed how the surname of Hindus signified their caste and therefore occupation.127 There were some Patels, used to bring the laundry to me and everybody seemed to be named Patel you know, but with an initial first, and I said to them one day when they 122 Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality. 123 For the multitude of conceptions of African Caribbeans’ criminality in opposition to Asians’ supposed passivity see P. Gilroy, ‘Police and thieves’, in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, (eds), The Empire Strikes Back, 143–82. This diverges from Good’s study in which the African Caribbeans were accepted to a greater extent than the South Asians, because they shared common Christian values. Good, ‘White working-class women’s reactions to Asian settlement: 1945–1990’. 124 Phyllis 29 April 2002. 125 This is Goffman’s terminology. See E. Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964), 120–22. See also Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality, 102. 126 See S.R. Pitchford, ‘Image-making movements: Welsh nationalism and stereotype transformation’, Sociological Perspectives, 44 (2001), 45–65, for more discussion of transforming stereotypes. 127 Christine 21 March 2002.

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Negotiating Boundaries in the Cities came in for some laundry, I said, ‘oh there’s a lot of you at your house so you know all Patels’ so he said ‘oh yes’ he says, ‘we’re all brothers.’ Well me thinking he meant blood brothers you see and I said, ‘oh dear how many sisters have you got like?’ So he said ‘no not living with us but’, he said, ‘we’re all brothers there’s twenty two of us’ he said, you know I thought, bit queer that is having twenty two sons, she must have got some daughters somewhere and then we got the conversation sorted out. No, they were all named Patel and that was what they were and the Patels were mostly workers you see they were workers. The Khans, ‘cause there were few of them, they kept shops like butchers shops … It takes you a bit to learn it, to understand it, if you don’t ask any questions you don’t know. It seems as if the Khans were mostly shopkeepers, the Patels were workers, factory workers, and I don’t know what the Chars were, perhaps they were a bit better class, but that’s how it was you see, you know it’s like in England there’s upper class, lower class and medium class ain’t it?128

They therefore attempted to grasp the internal differences and diversity often encapsulated within the single, mythical ‘Asian’ community. This understanding was most important, considering stereotypes and prejudices were grounded in the conception of a homogeneous ‘out group’.129 A sharp contrast is provided by those who did not live in a predominantly South Asian area and essentially conflated different categories. Alice contended: ‘Listen, Asians come into the country; Indians came into the country, now we’ve got these Muslims.’130 Whites were also able to absorb important knowledge about the background of different South Asian communities. Some acknowledged the different class and status backgrounds and therefore did not make the typical assumption that all minority ethnic groups shared a working class position.131 William clarified: ‘A lot depends on their type of background they had in their own country. These people I’m telling you about that live facing me, they had quite a big high standard of living, they had a maid, someone to do the cleaning, somebody to do the garden, they were up the tree a little.’132 William’s friend explained that South Asians from East Africa were predominantly from a commercial class and therefore possessed valuable entrepreneurial experience, which they transferred to Leicester. He said that Asians are work people, they’re shop keepers you see. And I think that’s what they were, they come over to this country they perhaps had a market stall or something or a small place somewhere and I think that’s where they sort of built on …

128 Phyllis 20 May 2002. 129 A. Celious and D. Oyserman, ‘Race from the inside: an emerging heterogeneous race model’, Journal of Social Issues, 51 (2001), 149–65. 130 Alice 9 July 2002. 131 For the tendency to associate ethnic minority groups with working class status see T. Reynolds, ‘Black women and social-class identity’ in R. Munt, (eds), Cultural Studies and the Working Class: Subject to Change (London: Cassell, 2000), 82–97. 132 William 5 March 2002.

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He said ‘we’re a nation of shop keepers. We’re not a nation of soldiers and warriors.’ I remember him saying that. ‘We’re shop keepers’ and that sort of thing, which makes it right, therefore that’s why I think they’re that way in shops.133

These anecdotes illustrated that the rapid upward mobility of some East African Asians was not grounded in their cunning strategies but determined by their previous experience and resources. Others learned about the conditions preceding their immigration and, in particular, the expulsion from Kenya and the preparations this entailed. They’d explained to me he was the eldest son and he’d come over to England with his young wife and baby and that his family were still in Nairobi or somewhere. He used to tell me about how they’d got a shop on one of these nature parks where there’s animals and that they’d got lorries …Then as it went on and they got more friendly, I’d always been a good listener, like I like to know about how people go on in different countries, and he said ‘you know that there was a lot of trouble there?’ I mean, we didn’t particularly know there was any trouble there and they’d sent the oldest out and they were getting the money all out you see. Then you know the time they said they’d thrown them all out with nothing, two or four days to get out, there was four more men big brothers come and two daughters and their husbands and the mother and dad and within a fortnight every one of them had bought a house in Leicester, paid cash for it. Every one and they said they’d come in with nothing; they did come in with nothing, but it was all here before. That’s when they first came in, when what’s his name Amin somebody chucked them out like, you know.134

Some were enlightened to the networks of support and mutual dependence, which operated to meet imperative material needs. William explained, oh yes it was common knowledge in the first instance, that they were big families, lot of brothers, and they’d all pool the money and they’d buy a property and all live in that property and all chip in you see and when that place was nearly paid they’d buy another one, then for the next one you see.135

Likewise, Muslims pooled resources together to finance mosques: ‘well of course you see these people unlike Christians and what not, they’ll give their last farthing to the cause you see.’136 They also gained insights into various facets of South Asian cultures. This included details of Ramadan, and Hindu and Muslim funerals and marriages.137 Phyllis remembered Indian cooking techniques. For example, chapattis, she explained, were put ‘on the steps to dry and then they have chapattis for every meal, but then, we don’t understand you see, they don’t eat bread, see, not when they first come’.138 She also expressed admiration for her neighbour’s clothing: ‘When she 133 Ibid. 134 Gladys 13 March 2002. 135 William 5 March 2002. 136 Ibid. 137 Phyllis 29 April 2002. 138 Phyllis 29 April 2002.

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went out she looked beautiful in this jewellery and lovely saris and that, I mean she looked beautiful.’139 Her neighbour even dressed her in a sari. I like nice material, I love to feel a bit of silk or satin years ago. Material ain’t so nice as it was, nothing is, nothing’s improved. I suppose I said how beautiful it was, you know, the lovely embroidery or the sequins, when I’ve seen the lady in the paper shop once stitching sequins on so I said, ‘oh do you do all that yourself?’ ‘Oh yes’ she said ‘I do all saris you see’ … and she said would I like to and she’d show me like when they get married, the girls father they have so much dowry to go to the husband and the husbands family and they take so many saris with them like. It’s a red one you marry in like and all this and she said, ‘would I like to put one on?’ ‘Oh no but I think they’re lovely like.’ She said, ‘I’ll put one on for you like’, took my frock off and put a long cotton skirt on you see and then they put it round and tucked in it in this waisted cotton skirt tucked it in to start with and pulled it round and then pleating it in like and showing me where it goes and all this that and the other and yes and as I say there’s seven yards of them, and it’s a good idea really ‘cause fashions come, fashions go, you (laughs) got them all forever ain’t you? 140

Elsewhere the appearance and strange dress of South Asians was stigmatised and often caused outrage.141 Yet for Phyllis, the ‘exotic’ and novel South Asian clothing was normalised and naturalised; it had a practical purpose. This example could be viewed as providing tacit support for Bhabha’s ‘hybridity’. This concept is based on the premise that ethnic identities are not fixed but change and that sharing a social space enables the fusing of disparate cultural elements. This occurs within a ‘liminal’ or in-between space, where structures of authority are undermined and rendered ambivalent. Thus, the constructed boundaries of the nation are contested.142 Whilst this concept is attractive, proposing a positive and progressive outcome from the exchange of cultures, it has attracted considerable criticism.143 Critiques have claimed that hybridity must involve the transposition of ethnic cultural symbols.144 Considering this, inter-racial mixing in Highfields was not transformative, as it did not produce significant and permanent changes to white identity. In addition, ambivalence has been proved vital to racial discourses. South Asian women, for example, have signified both desire and alleged backwardness, and even when stereotypes appear to bestow approval they serve a restrictive function.145 To 139 Ibid. 140 Phyllis 6 May 2002. 141 Leicester Mercury, 16 February 1968 and letter in Leicester Mercury, 14 April 1968. 142 See H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). This concept has typically been applied to youth cultures. See Back, New Ethnicities. 143 See for example, N. Yuval–Davis, ‘Ethnicity, gender relations and multiculturalism’, in Torres, Mirón and Inda, Race, Identity and Citizenship, 120 and for further limitations, P. Werbner. ‘The limits of cultural hybridity: on ritual monsters, poetic licence and contested postcolonial purifications’, Royal Anthropological Institute, 7 (2001), 133–52. 144 F. Anthias, ‘New hybridities, old concepts: the limits of “culture”’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24, 4 (2001), 619–41. 145 A. Rattansi, ‘“Western” racisms, ethnicities and identities in a “post-modern” frame’, in A. Rattansi, and S. Westwood, (eds), Racism, Modernity and Identity: On the Western Front (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 68–9.

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illustrate, Powell declared a grudging respect for South Asians and India which ultimately served to reinforce their ‘otherness’ and obscure the underlying inequality of power.146 The historical roots of these contradictory attitudes have been identified by Said, who has shown how, from the late nineteenth century, Europeans were able to admire and simultaneously demean the ‘Orient’, which principally acted as the antithesis to the West.147 Despite these arguments, the very existence of meaningful relations between South Asians and whites demonstrates that whites were able to suppress their hostility and antagonisms, to differentiate people from the constructed stereotype, and to treat people as individuals.148 As Trevor reflected: ‘How did I feel about it, well I didn’t feel any hostility towards them at all, not at all, because I used to speak to them you see, so I didn’t feel hostile towards them at all.’149 Some recognised that it was their responsibility to overcome their negative perceptions. As Gladys stated: ‘You got to give and take ain’t you? There’s no good being funny with people when I can get nasty, but otherwise what’s the point?’150 William confirmed, ‘if I’m walking up there and I see them I always pass the time of day with them, I won’t just ignore them, I’ll speak, I’m a man, I’ll speak to anyone and my philosophy is if you don’t speak to them, they won’t speak to you, you see that’s how you make friends, I think so anyway.’151 Moreover Phyllis’s involvement in the ‘culture’ of South Asians reveals how she actively embraced the cosmopolitan dimension within her locale. For her it was an opportunity to engage, to yield fascinating information and consequently was a source of enjoyment and empowerment. She summarised; ‘I found it very interesting and I learnt a terrible lot about other people.’152 Collectively, these glimpses into the everyday experiences of the white people who lived in Highfields, defy Sennett’s contention that diversity within cities prompts people to distance themselves from difference, to avoid contact, manifesting in indifference. That is, ‘individuals create something like ghettos in their own bodily experience when confronted with difference’.153 Whilst this may have constituted an initial response, the evidence from the interviews suggests that over time, both whites and South Asians did not withdraw into closed and isolated communities, but showed willingness to overcome ‘difference’ to engage and interact. This is further supported by the distinctly non-racist statements that abound throughout the interviews. Although the interviewees failed to recognise structural inequalities, they often employed a rhetoric of equality. For example, ‘in the eyes of

146 Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality, 55. 147 E.W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto, 1993). 148 This draws from Gilman who stresses the need to recognise the crucial difference between those who stereotype pathologically and those who can discard them once anxiety is overcome. S.L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 17–8. 149 Trevor 21 March 2002. 150 Gladys B 2 May 2002. 151 William 5 March 2002. 152 Phyllis 6 May 2002. 153 Sennett, Flesh and Stone, 366.

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the Bible, we’re all equal and I think that’s how you’ve got to look at it.’154 Phyllis claimed: As I say I’ve got nothing against anybody, if they want to work and want to earn a living and I say let them all come (laughs) I mean you can’t deprive people, we’re all people. I mean I used to say in the first place if you’ve been run over in the street and you’ve got to have a blood transfusion would you suddenly sit up and say ‘well what colour are they?’ I mean they’re all they same inside aren’t they? I mean we’ve all got the same blood and everything you can’t help your colour.155

Whites also demonstrated empathy and understanding and exhibited a belief in common humanity and the universality of human nature. Comments included: When they’ve got their own people in, they you know just come over and stay with them don’t they, same as you would if you’ve got some of your own family, you’d say ‘oh well if you’ve got no where else to go, would you like to come over here?’156 It’s like for instance if I’d stayed in Germany after the war it would have taken me quite some time to adapt to the German way of life or any other foreign way of life you see.157

Moreover, they admitted that they had gradually learned to accept South Asians and adopted a more positive outlook: ‘What’s right? You thought, oh god we’ve come to all this. I suppose over the years, now we’ve become accustomed to it now.’158 Another insisted: ‘As I say there are good and bad everywhere and I say again they’re here, they’re going to stay here, so you’ve got to make the best of it.’159 Similarly Stan claimed, I don’t think we should shun them, we should accept what they have to offer, simply because if they’re going to live here, let’s learn to live together, that’s the way I feel anyway. Is that a view that you’ve always had? No it’s not a view that I’ve always had, I think I was probably like a lot of other people many years ago sort of why do they want to come here, we’re a small country and why do they want to come here? But I’ve changed. Your attitudes change, your thinking changes, doesn’t it? You see the problems of other countries and you see the deprivation that they’ve got and you think to yourself, well how would I like to live? How would I like the children to live like that? If we could give them a better life, well you know you start to think differently don’t you? That’s how I’ve changed really. I’m tolerant of them now, a few years ago I wouldn’t have been. Why have your views changed, is it through living here? 154 William 5 March 2002. 155 Phyllis 20 May 2002. 156 Gladys 13 March 2002. 157 Trevor 21 March 2002. 158 William 5 March 2002. 159 Trevor 21 March 2002.

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I think it is yeah, because I’m living amongst it. I mean you’ve only got to go down Belgrave Road again, the golden mile and again it’s all Asian people so you know, you’ve got to accept that we’re a multicultural city now and basically we seem to be getting on all right don’t we? We seem to be mixing better and I’m very pleased that the queen has now accepted that we’re a multicultural country.160

Overall, interviewees refused to dwell on past antagonisms, typically asserting that they could not remember the riots in 1981 or the hostile reactions of local politicians in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, they expressed a pride in their local identity and accentuated the hospitable nature of Leicester people. This is captured by Doris’s response when she was asked if there were aspects of Highfields which she disliked. No not really. There were prostitutes up there. There was every nationality and I think it’s with there being so many different people that they can’t afford to fall out. It’s not like say two lots ganging up [against] one another, I mean every nationality I mean, I don’t think you can name anywhere that’s not up there or been up there I mean there’s every nationality and the prostitutes they weren’t a problem. … Well I mean you hear of all this trouble in different towns don’t you, but we don’t get a lot of trouble do we? There’s not anybody fighting one another here or shooting one another, I mean we’ve always accepted people and Leicester has, and you know that’s how life should be.161

Collectively, these examples showed that living amongst a South Asian population did have discernible positive implications, particularly as these non racist statements were absent from those who had minimal contact with different ethnic groups. Evidently, whites did not always evoke a white identity, they did not consistently engage in racial subordination, or resort to racialising South Asians. Instead their specific experiences had prompted them to adopt a more humanistic perspective. Moreover, on a day-to-day basis, whites effectively included South Asians, as they provided exemplary neighbours. Their respective neighbourhood roles provided a basis for commonality and was a group-based identity which effectively superseded racial boundaries. Furthermore, contact encouraged the cultivation of a more positive South Asian group image, exposed whites to the diversity of South Asian cultures and alerted them to important information. The cumulative effect was that it fostered greater understanding. Nevertheless, racial discourses which were embedded in their world views were not totally displaced. This is apparent by their relentless efforts to redefine the boundaries and recast the ‘other’. Redefining the ‘Other’ Invariably, the respondents struggled to rearticulate their identity and constantly attempted to fix the boundaries, between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This was achieved by 160 Stan 13 May 2002. 161 Doris 14 March 2002.

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marking a differentiation from South Asians and highlighting essential elements of group membership, which was based on a range of criteria.162 Despite their contact with South Asians, some claimed that they kept a physical distance and proclaimed ‘as long as they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone’.163 Others stressed that South Asians were not classed or treated as their friends. ‘As I say I speak to them, but I wouldn’t want to go out with them as friends.’164 Another commented, ‘I wouldn’t say I wanted them to live in my house. I wouldn’t mind getting them a cup of tea or anything if they wanted it, but I wouldn’t want to live with them. I’d never turn them away. I find them somewhere else to go with their own people but that’s the way it is.’165 For Gladys, the language difference was seen as an insurmountable barrier. There’s a lot of white people that just can’t, well for myself you know, you just can’t sort of get together with them, know what I mean? I suppose they feel the same way about us really don’t they ‘cause they all keep themselves to themselves, don’t they? Well then again it is language problems ‘cause if I’m talking to coloured people as I call them, they can’t understand what I’m saying same as if they’re speaking, I can’t understand what they’re saying, can I?166

Alternatively, religion was cited as the principal cause for disagreements: I think we would be, we are amenable. But I don’t think they would … It’s religion. We’ve got that in Ireland haven’t we, Protestants and Catholics: they haven’t agreed for forty years have they? And they never will agree. So how can you expect us to agree with Muslims and Sikhs and Asians and what have you, I don’t think we will ever fully agree.167

One woman even drew on the history of racial divisions and slavery. ‘I mean there used to be slaves and all that, the coloureds used to be slaves years and hundreds so years ago, and they’ve never ever did live together and I don’t know, I don’t think they’ll ever ever accept each other and live together. I don’t think they ever will.’168 More typically some argued that they were fundamentally different because they were English. Phyllis claimed, I’ve got nothing against them I mean anybody to me they was all people I didn’t hate them, but I’d have sooner they’d been all English, I didn’t want to mix with them and that. Why not?

162 This lends support to Cohen in R. Cohen, Frontiers of Identity: The British and the Others (London: Longman, 1994). 163 Marge 30 January 2002. 164 William 5 March 2002. 165 Phyllis 20 May 2002. 166 Gladys 13 March 2002. 167 Stan 21 March 2002. 168 Christine 21 March 2002.

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Well because as I say I consider myself English through and through like if I, you know, if I wanted a man if I couldn’t get an Englishman I wouldn’t bother with another one, it’s just that like, it’s not that I think any less like, just that I wouldn’t, you know, we never went to school with them or anything there were none when we went to school.169

Similarly, William argued, I think it’s just, the long and short of it, Joanna, they’re not us and we sort of think they’re encroaching onto our way of life. This is England, we’re British, well English I should say, not British, ‘cause they’re British now aren’t they? But we’re English there’s a big difference and I know from an old soldier’s point of view, I fought for this country and I don’t like anyone else taking a piece of it. It’s often been said that I wonder what would happen if there were another war? I wonder what would happen to all these? … I bet we’d have some conscientious objectors I bet. But there’s good and bad in all. It’s just the fact of it is they’re Asians, we’re white and it’s not our way of life, but you put up with it, you’ve got to put up with it, they’re here to stay that’s the long and short of it.170

These examples clearly echo Powell’s rhetoric of ethnic absolution, whereby the culture of South Asians was irrevocably fixed and immutable and contact was presumed to result in inevitable conflict. Moreover, this unveils the resonant process of othering, which they were actively involved in. They needed to maintain a sense of difference between the ‘self’ and ‘other’ and thus difference was identified to construct an imaginary boundary. Ethnic identity was essentially relational and only made sense in the context of the ‘other’. Moreover, by engaging in these struggles to define and distance themselves from South Asians the white interviewees had attempted to reclaim their white identity, by reasserting their privileges and excluding South Asians. The presumption that white equalled British was contested by South Asians and therefore the insider and outsider boundary was reorganised around the axis of Englishness. By equating Englishness with whiteness and therefore ‘race’ with nationality, they were asserting that South Asians could never belong because they did not share the ethnic heritage and the imagined common ancestral roots. The boundary constructed a hierarchical difference and created a place for South Asians on the margins of the nation. In short, they had attempted to reconstruct a white identity and re-centre whiteness. Nevertheless, the line between themselves and the ‘other’ was actually dynamic. It was ambiguous and in flux: their white identity remained, in essence, unresolved.171 The perspectives of the white interviewees were complex, contradictory and nuanced, and were not reducible to the category of ‘racism’. There were often tensions between their experiences and their rhetoric, and as they attempted to negotiate and mediate their world views they employed both narratives of exclusion and inclusion. It has been argued that they mobilised their white identity as an initial response to South Asian immigration. This was a strategy of defence, to preserve their relative status and protect their neighbourhood identity. This response has been 169 Phyllis 20 May 2002. 170 William 5 March 2002. 171 This parallels the interpretation of Englishness in Colls and Dodd, Englishness and Political Culture 1880–1920, 1.

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observed in other studies which show that ‘established’ and ‘outsider’ relations may be established even when ethnic differences were absent.172 In this case though, the newcomers were from a different ethnic group and this created a perception that South Asians were fundamentally different and essentially inassimilable. In reality, the white respondents established reciprocal links with South Asians primarily as neighbours and often reconciled previous preconceptions. Yet they ultimately expressed a desire to perpetuate separateness from South Asians, thus their white identity was always latent. This supports recent studies of whiteness that has shown how even when white youths have been reflective and have articulated anti-racist views, they could not escape the essentialist framework of ‘us’ and ‘them’.173 Finally, this chapter has provided a mere segment of a whole picture and it would be erroneous to suggest an Anglo ‘white’ versus ‘the rest’ dichotomy. For Highfields encompassed a multitude of ethnic groups, including the Irish, Spanish and Polish. Further research could therefore explore the interaction and dynamics between different groups, in particular to probe whether they also positioned and located themselves as ‘white’.

172 The established and outsider groups in Elias’s and Scotson’s study were whites. Elias and Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders. See also K.D.M. Snell, ‘The culture of local xenophobia’, Social History, 28, 1 (2003), 1–30. 173 Tyler, ‘Racism, tradition and reflexivity in a former mining town’.

Chapter 3

Transitions What meaning did the process of migration have for the migrants themselves? What were their motivations? How was the decision made and how was the transition experienced? Several explanations for migration were outlined in Chapter 1 and whilst it is accepted that structural conditions channelled and enabled migration, a focus solely on these social forces ignores the personal and familial strategies and decisions, the gendered dimensions and the mental maps along which people moved. This chapter will examine men’s narratives of colonialism, views and expectations of Britain, the decision making process and the arrival into Britain. This will highlight the importance of habitus and the lived body as key concepts to understanding the subjective reality of the migratory experience. Furthermore, an analysis of the motivations and perception of the migration is imperative to understanding their subsequent experiences of living in Britain. As other studies have highlighted, narratives of migration were gendered.1 South Asian men consistently stressed the colonial links with Britain and the ramifications of colonialism, a theme which was absent from the women’s stories. Central then to the men’s stories was the presumption that to fully understand the presence of South Asians in Britain, it is necessary to trace two hundred years of colonial history.2 Consequently, male respondents typically asserted that they were born under British rule and members of their family had worked for the British, most commonly as soldiers. Khan was born in 1928 and his story began: I was born in those days, what was of course the British Raj, India. I was born in a city called Kamalpur, Pakistan. Actually, my background is from Kashmir, I’m still living in Kashmir, my parents were there and of course my father was in British army, so he was in Kamalpur. ... My grandparents, my whole background family are army people actually.3

Khan’s family served under the British forces, and this shaped his ‘whole family background.’ It represented an enduring connection between the family and Britain, it was an undeniable facet of their past, a legacy which Khan inherited. 1 See M. Chamberlain, ‘Gender and the narratives of migration’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), 87–110 and K. Gardner, ‘Narrating location: space, age and gender among Bengali elders in East London’, Oral History, 27, 1 (1999), 65–74. 2 Skultans notes that an understanding of an ethnic group’s past is also a prerequisite for meaningful communication. See V. Skultans, The Testimony of Lives: Narratives and Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia (London: Routledge, 1998), 1. 3 Khan 4 July 2002. For other examples of connections with the British army see British Library, National Sound Archive (BL, NSA), C900/09145 S. Singh, C900/00009 B. Kaur and C900/00014 H. Patel.

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Likewise those who originated from East Africa also documented their family’s history. Men from East Africa traced their migration back to the endeavours of their predecessors when some 32,000 indentured Indian labourers were transported by British colonisers to work on the Kenya Uganda railway from 1896 to 1901.4 Karim described this history: My grandfather and my father when they came there, many many other Indian people came from India, British government wanted them over there. The aim was the railway line from Mombassa to Nairobi, Nairobi to Kisumu, Kisumu to Uganda, Kampala. All this main railway line was built by Indian liberals from India. It has got a very good history there as well. Good history. … My father says he can remember, there are some trees over there with leaves as big as this, so all the leaves there they used to make a string of it and that’s their clothes and from there they have to teach the Africans what to do, how to do it, but all the expertise came from India and they built the railway line. … They used to sleep in the bog in the railway line. There’s history there. Man eaters of Tsavo park, lions. That bog is still there in Nairobi, a platform because a few officers and labourers were picked up by the lions.5

These stories clearly convey how personal histories cannot be disentangled from colonial history. Yet Karim was also engaged in a process of reclaiming and preserving his family’s history, in which Indian people were not merely extras in a white man’s film, but assumed the leading role.6 Although the fate of Karim’s ancestors was entwined with the injustices and exploitations of the colonial ‘progress’, it was simultaneously a story about the struggles and sacrifice of the pioneers and their capacity to adapt and survive despite perilous conditions. The lack of basic amenities, clothing and housing highlights their vulnerability and lack of protection, yet they were ultimately resilient against the odds. The Indian bodies were transported simply for their physical labour, yet Karim stressed their skills, achievements and vital contribution to actually building the empire. Hence, it was their hard work which enabled the expansion of the British Empire and underpinned Britain’s imperial grandeur. It is a story which proclaimed ‘the height the great men gained was built on the backs of these other disregarded people’.7 Karim’s father passed down these stories, thus revealing how oral tradition transmits ‘wisdom’, values and ways of viewing the world, which constituted a particular habitus.8 The intergenerational stories illustrated the scope of imagined possibilities and also 4 M. Twaddle, (ed.), Expulsion of a Minority: Essays on Ugandan Asians (London: Athlone Press for the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1975). 5 Karim 7 May 2002. 6 G. Bhattacharyya, Tales of Dark-Skinned Women: Race, Gender and Global Culture (London: UCL Press, 1998), 27–50 and M. Ferro, Colonization: A Global History (London: Routledge, 1997), vii. 7 Bhattacharyya, Tales of Dark-Skinned Women, 33. 8 P. Bourdieu, ‘Social space and symbolic power’, Sociological Theory, 7, 1 (1988), 18–26. See also P. Thompson, ‘Women, men and transgenerational family influences in social mobility’, in P. Thompson and D. Bertaux, Pathways to Social Class: A Qualitative Approach to Social Mobility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 43. Thompson notes that this is a two-way process, thus the children may reject the ‘message’.

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generated a sense that ‘Britain owed them something’.9 They also helped to create a self identity, which as Giddens has shown was not rooted in specific qualities intrinsic in individuals, but constructed in terms of biographical continuity.10 This identity was also collective; it distinguished the shared history of the East African Asians and defined who they are and where they had come from.11 The links with Britain were further underlined by the men’s emphasis on their British nationality. According to Vadhia the ‘turning point’ in his father’s life was when he acquired British citizenship in 1942. He explained: He was an adventurer just like Christopher Columbus who went to see the Americas he went to Africa made his little bit of fortune and we were thrown out of the country … on his luck I managed to get a British passport and I’m enjoying life, my achievement, my good living in England now in UK, because of that finger stamp in the British citizenship that my parents got in 1942 and I give my full credit to him.12

Vadhia’s story clearly echoes Karim’s, as the father is cast into the heroic role and admired for his sacrifices and risks. Yet whilst the revisionist nature of memory may have transformed relatives into ‘ideal types’, the British passport was the tangible result of his father’s actions and signalled a link with his past.13 It was consistently mentioned by the South Asian men and can be viewed as a form of symbolic capital, substantiating not only their entitlement to travel and settle in Britain but also to citizenship, including economic, political and social rights and their access to equality and respect.14 It signified a legal document of identification, a guarantee of their right to be included into the boundaries of the nation and accepted as a British citizen. Consequently, those who were forced to leave Uganda in 1972 typically felt insulted when they were referred to as refugees. Moghal asserted, ‘I felt offended if anyone called me a refugee. I held a valid British passport, I could not see why I, as a British subject should be classified as a refugee.’15 Similarly, Mashru proclaimed he should not be referred to as a refugee because ‘we had the British right, we had 9 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel. 10 A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Oxford: Polity Press, 1991), 52–4. 11 See D.S.A. Bell, ‘Mythscapes: memory, mythology, and national identity’, The British Journal of Sociology, 54, 1 (2003), 69–70, A. Thomson, ‘Moving stories: oral history and migration studies’, Oral History, 27, 1 (1999), 35, S. Schrager, ‘What is social in oral history’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson, (eds), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), 284–8 and S. Hall, ‘Politics of identity’, in T. Ranger, Y. Samad and O. Stuart, Culture, Identity and Politics: Ethnic Minorities in Britain (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996), 131. 12 BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M. Vadhia. 13 R. Samuel and P. Thompson, The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 1990), 14. 14 Symbolic capital refers to defined status such as a noble title or a prestigious occupation, that is, acquisitions other than money which confer status and honour and provide opportunities. P. Bourdieu, ‘The forms of capital’, in A.H. Halsey et al., (eds), Education, Culture, Economy, and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 46–58. For other examples see East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), Community History Collection (CHC), CH/096/0154 M. Patel and Khan 4 July 2002. 15 ROLLR, BBC Radio Four, Mr Moghal speaking on ‘Haven of refugees, Ugandan Asians’, 2 November 1982, 8.30pm.

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been given British passport so it was British government obligation to have us in this country’.16 Overall then, the male respondents effectively conveyed their awareness of the structural and historical causes of their migration. Yet if we attend to the politics of hearing, as scholars have urged, then arguably these narratives were sparked in response to their contested experiences of citizenship, in which their Britishness was not only undermined by immigration controls but by their daily experiences as a citizen.17 Thus, narratives were enacted as a ‘strategy of equalisation’ designed to rebuke the effects of racism, by demonstrating their equality and reaffirming their prerogative to live in Britain.18 Moreover, considering that narratives were framed by the expectations of the interviewer, it is clear that they also served a didactic function and embodied an attempt to educate the white interviewer who may be ignorant of their own British history.19 Whilst this was implicit in most of the narratives, Patel stated this explicitly and asserted that immigration was the unequivocal outcome of Britain’s colonial rise and decline: This racism, these people don’t know the background or the history where as I said earlier why we are here. Now they just think that we went into an empty house, we have seen this empty house and we try to occupy that this is the bad impression, because we have all come here and we are all Asian because it’s a best, attractive and beautiful country, that’s why we’re here. I say that it’s not that why we came here. If I had to live in Africa and I had to make the choice without this British passport or anything probably myself and many more would have decided to stay there because then it’s a choice of your home but because there was no choice at all because you become a number, you become a number on the political game. … by offering the British subject what will be the effect or what will be the result. So in the fifties when they wanted to have British counting they wanted to have bigger numbers so the Commonwealth can shine better they wanted to have bigger numbers so we British are so many around the world. They wanted to use we British … but consequences have come other way around.20

The links with Britain were not simply part of a historical family connection, or an inherited legacy; they were also experienced directly through formal education. Both male and female respondents, particularly those educated in East Africa, were keen to state they were taught the English curriculum, their teachers were recruited from England, America and Australia and their exam papers were transported from Britain. Karim stressed that ‘everything was taught about England’ and Bhambra described her experiences of education in the 1960s:

16 EMOHA, Leicester Oral History Archive Collection (LOHAC), 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru. 17 See K. Gardner, Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 34. 18 M. Lamont, The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class and Immigration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 85. 19 Y. Alibhai-Brown, Who Do We Think We Are? (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 45–53. 20 EMOHA, CHC, CH/096/0154 M. Patel.

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I was quite influenced by the Western society, the school I went to, the schools I studied in, the teachers were mostly from America and England so I had lot of western influence and the children who attended that school came from a very upper class Indian society who were very very very very Americanised and Westernised.21

Similarly, Vadhia recalled, ‘all the teachers in my study time in Uganda were Europeans. I can still remember the names like Mr Brown, Mrs White and all the syllabuses were all English syllabus.’22 The influence of English literature was also apparent by numerous references to Shakespeare, Byron, Wordsworth and Austin. Arguably the colonial influence fostered identification with Britain and imposed a hierarchy of cultural importance, in which western culture was the ‘norm’.23 Thus Britain was viewed with special regard as the ‘motherland’, a consciousness that paralleled the African Caribbean communities in Britain.24 Moreover, education served to fashion their perceptions and therefore expectations of Britain. Scholars have uncovered how colonial administrators implemented a strategy in which western knowledge was presented to colonial subjects as objective, universal and rational. Specific texts were selected for study, which bolstered British moral values and promulgated British claims to superiority of civilisation, whilst Indian culture was defined as irrational, superstitious, idiosyncratic and even wild and barbaric.25 As a result, many possessed idealised visions of Britain. According to Patel, ‘that education system did have a role to play in people’s perception because what it gave, came across, was that this wonderful British Empire, how strong it was and how everyone had to obey to its standards.’26 Britain was typically envisaged as a superior, mighty nation, the pinnacle of modernity. As Kapasi explained: And see in our minds, this was when I was a student in Uganda, we were taught that Britain was a great empire and the way we were taught was look the British have ruled all quarter of the world you know and they are the elite, they are the best, they know everything and you are going to a race which is far superior than yourself and your mind begins to think you are such a small man in a developing poor country trying to adjust to these people who are so advanced.27

Saujani recalled a similar experience: ‘In school we’d always done British writers, in literature we’d also done British adventurers and historians so you had a vague idea 21 Karim 7 May 2002 and BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 22 BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M. Vadhia. See also BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel, who did not encounter a ‘black’ teacher until he was aged fifteen. 23 J. Docker, ‘The neocolonial assumption in university teaching of English’, in B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin, (eds), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1995), 443–6 and N. Thiong’o, ‘On the abolition of the English department’, in ibid., 438–42. 24 See M. Mamdani, From Citizen to Refugee (London: Francis Pinter Ltd, 1973), 79 and M. Chamberlain, Narratives of Exile and Return (London 1997), 79. 25 This was seen as vital to colonial power. G. Viswanathan, ‘The beginnings of English literary study in British India’, in Ashcroft et al., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 431–7. 26 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel. 27 BL, NSA, C900/09135 B.J. Kapasi.

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of a race of people who were very adventurous, people who had conquered many countries of the world.’28 The view that Britain was more civilised also prevailed, evident in comments such as, ‘there were standards set and everybody abided by them’, ‘everything to do about the law and the etiquette comes from this country’ and ‘they have very good manners and very good principles, they principally do everything by law.’29 Thus Britain was seen as more moral, ordered, rational and refined and most prominently it was seen as a place where success and status could be gained. Patel described his experiences in the late 1960s and early 1970s: In terms of people what they were trying to ingrain in me yeah, was that it was a beautiful state, powerful state … if you got educated in Britain that meant the whole world would respect you. Something was being portrayed there that if you were brought up in Britain, educated in Britain, you conquered the world, because that’s how I can put it in terms of my view and experiences through the education system. There were families who were sending their children back to study in Britain and they’d come back and there was always this view he has gained degree from such and such university and should be commanding a certain element of respect.30

This conception of Britain was therefore reinforced and actively reproduced by return migrants. This is further testified by Karim: Expectation was there, people say ‘okay my son is going to UK for further study’, I say ‘what for the study?’ ‘Maybe doctor, maybe degree in law’, so this kind of expectation was there but at that time my friends who became lawyers some of them became doctors they came back to Kenya and a few of them went to America as well.31

Whilst those from East Africa emphasised the opportunities for occupational status and entry into the professions, those who migrated from the Indian sub continent tended to view Britain in terms of material gains and as a means to enhance the quality of their life. For Khan, England simply represented ‘betterment’ whilst other definitions were couched in utopian terms such as ‘paradise’ and where ‘the money is growing on trees’.32 Conversely, one Muslim academic who moved to Britain in 1980 held a widely shared admiration for British democracy. He claimed: ‘There’s 28 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 29 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel, C900/00066 T.V. Morjaria and C900/12596 B. Vora. See also C900/09101 S. Bagum. 30 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel. 31 Karim 7 May 2002. This process again mirrors the African Caribbean experience, see Chamberlain, Narratives of Exile and Return, 72 and E. Thomas-Hope, ‘Hopes and reality in the West Indian migration to Britain’, Oral History, 8, 1 (1980), 35–42. 32 Khan 4 July 2002, BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur and EMOHA, LOHAC, 740, LO/108/059 C. Singh. This is very typical and revealed in other oral history studies of South Asian migration including Bradford’s Heritage Recording Unit, Here to Stay: Bradford’s South Asian Communities (Bradford: City of Bradford Metropolitan Council Arts, Museums and Libraries, 1994). See also EMOHA, Ethnic Elders Collection (EEC), 000629, EE01/01 K. Singh, who claimed Britain was ‘rich man’s country, people looked up to you’. Tatla claimed Punjabi migrants had a dream-like view of England; see D.S. Tatla, ‘A passage to England:

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quite a lot that I had read about Britain in terms of its democracy, in terms of its democratic institutions, in terms of university education, establishments, welfare state, so you always get attracted to know actually what is it. How does it work? How is it organised? So that was my interest.’33 Clearly migrants bought with them a cluster of hopes and expectations regarding Britain. These sets of ‘cultural imaginaries’ fuelled an admiration and aspiration and constituted their prime motivation for migration.34 However, it would be erroneous to suggest that these British-educated South Asians passively accepted and internalised the unrealistic group images of British superiority and Indian inferiority. Whilst the colonial presence perpetuated an association with the west, this did not displace their identification with Indian culture, which according to Roland was their ‘core’ identity.35 Nevertheless, Britain felt familiar to them and for this reason, the movement to Britain can be viewed as internal rather than international migration.36 Perhaps this explains why men tended to present migration as a flippant decision. This is exemplified by Tripathi’s recollections of 1964: I was getting promotion and my boss decided to station me at Bombay. So I wrote a letter to my friend in Preston to say I’m changing town and I’ll let you know the address soon. He wrote to me and said ‘instead of changing town why don’t you come here, you may be better off here?’ So I wrote him, ‘send me a ticket and I’ll come down’; knowing it would cost a lot of money, I didn’t expect him to send the ticket. Within fifteen days he sent me a ticket with a fixed flight number. So (laughs) I jumped on the plane and came here.37

oral tradition and popular culture among early Punjabi settlers in Britain’, Oral History, 30, 2 (2002), 61. 33 Gheewala 25 June 2002 and K. Armstrong, ‘The curse of the infidel’, The Guardian, 20 June 2002. Armstrong claims that at the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘every single Muslim intellectual was in love with the west’. 34 Thomson, ‘Moving stories’, 28. 35 People’s habitus are formed of contradictory layers: see A. Roland, In Search of Self in India and Japan: Toward a Cross-Cultural Psychology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 21. Roland claims there were potential responses to this conflict; to identify with the west, reject the west or synthesise west and Indian cultures, 22. Postcolonial studies debate the ramifications of colonialism and the capacity of colonised subjects to resist. For the range of debates see P. Gordon, ‘Psychoanalysis and racism: the politics of defeat’, Race and Class, 42 (2001), 17–34, H. Bhabha, ‘Of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse’, in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 85–92 and G. C. Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Ashcroft et al., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 24–8. Fanon argued that colonialism created a narcissistic identification with the coloniser; Bhabha claimed that colonial societies were engaged in a process of negotiating domination, through acts of mimicry and hybridity; and according to Spivak, colonisation rendered natives ‘voiceless’ and forced them to see themselves as the ‘other’. 36 Z. Layton-Henry, ‘Transnational communities, citizenship and African-Carribeans in Birmingham’, Working Paper Transnational Communities, WPTC-02-07 (Oxford: University of Oxford, 2002), 7. 37 EMOHA, LOHAC, 978, LO/333/284 U. Tripathi.

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In addition, it can be surmised that the casual and spontaneous nature of the decision was also founded on a familiarity with migration. Tripathi had lived in Pakistan, India and East Africa and this experience of migration was conspicuous in the life stories of other men. Sandhu, for instance, claimed that the necessary arrangements to move to Britain in 1962 were ‘not very difficult’ because he had already travelled to sixteen other countries and Kumar explained: ‘My Father always worked abroad (laughs), been to New Zealand, Australia, been to England a couple of times in the early sixties and he stayed here in ‘66.’38 This illuminates how some men lived within a culture of migration and were accustomed to the migratory experience. Added to this, the actual decision to migrate was described by men, not as autonomous, but largely influenced by friends and family and formulated at the meso level of social relations.39 Singh migrated in 1961 and claimed, One of my relatives was here and he lived here for about eight years and then he wanted to go back to his country to India, from here he went to Germany and he wrote us a letter. ‘If you want to come to this country while I’m here it’s better and then I can do something for you.’40

Men were, therefore, guided by a network of friends and relatives who precipitated the move and carved a ‘migratory path’.41 Social networks also directed migration flows to Leicester as many men went to London first and remembered the imperative role of their friends who advised and reassured them to settle in Leicester.42 For others, the incentive to migrate originated from within the family. Khan’s interview clearly conveyed the immense influence of his mother on his life course. He claimed, ‘my mother decided I must be a business man so that was her decision for me to be a business man.’43 His mother bestowed him with advice and instilled an ambition in Khan to seek improvements; his prime motive to migrate. Whilst other members of the family worked for the British army Khan was chosen to advance his career, thus his migration can be construed as a ‘family mobility project’.44 Furthermore, Khan exemplifies, how the Indian self is based on the eminence of the ‘we self’ in 38 EMOHA, LOHAC, 962, LO/317/268 C. Sandhu and Kumar 16 February 2002. Many families travelled between East Africa and India. See for instance BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh. 39 C. Harzig, ‘Women migrants as global and local agents: new research strategies on gender and migration’, in P. Sharpe, (ed.), Women, Gender and Labour Migration: Historical and Global Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2001), 22–5. 40 EMOHA, LOHAC, 740, LO/108/059 C. Singh. For another example see BL, NSA, C900/00001 A.H. Choudhury, who claimed: ‘My father was here before me, that’s why I came.’ 41 This is highlighted in other studies of migration. See I. Bertaux-Wiame quoted in Thomson, ‘Moving stories’, 28. 42 EMOHA, LOHAC, 962, LO/317/268 Sandhu and BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh. 43 Khan 4 July 2002. 44 B. Elliot, ‘Migration, mobility and social process: Scottish migrants in Canada’, in Thompson and Bertaux, Pathways to Social Class, 219. See also Sharad whose father told him must go to Britain, in BL, NSA, C900/09064 B. Sharad.

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contrast to the western ‘I self’. That is, those of Indian origin do not conceptualise themselves as autonomous or independent but collectively as ‘indivisible bonded units’.45 Interdependency is cultivated during childhood and as a result, South Asians are motivated by social pressures and gaining the approval of others, within the family context. Thus, it was not uncommon for the parents to determine their child’s education and occupation.46 Interdependencies highlight the importance of assessing the often hidden locus of the family and also acknowledging the role of women within the decision making process. There are numerous examples which reveal that women were able to influence and participate in decisions. Patel recalled the ultimatum imposed by his wife in a letter which demanded that he rejoin the family or else they would move, whilst Shenta described the letters exchanged between herself and her husband, whereby she resolved whether he should stay in Britain rather than return to Nairobi.47 However, overall, women were confined by their role within the family and they migrated primarily to marry or rejoin their husbands. Mistry recalled leaving Zanzibar in 1967: ‘I cried, the whole night on the plane, I was leaving all those beautiful things out there and I am coming to a new country which I never knew but only for one person. I had to leave all which I had there and I came here only for my husband, for my love.’48 Similarly, Yasmin claimed that she came to Leicester in 1976 because her husband ‘wanted a Kenyan girl’, whilst Balbir explained that the reason her family joined her father was to help with the necessary housework: ‘My dad was on his own, I think he found it very hard, you know getting up in the morning at three o’clock and cooking his food, obviously he used to do all the curry and everything, cooking at night time.’49 It should be noted however, that these examples do not necessarily reinforce the stereotype of women as passive followers and dependents. For Sue marriage was simply a way of securing her ambition to come to England and for other women who married in Britain, it was their husbands who travelled from India to join them.50 This therefore revises simple generalisations that men made the independent decision to migrate and females succumbed to their husband’s demands and followed.51 Obviously the decision to migrate was inherently different for those who were forced to flee from East Africa. Yet whilst those from Kenya and Tanzania simply stated that they left due to the ‘political situation’ or the ‘troubles’, those 45 S. Derné, Culture in Action: Family Life, Emotion and Male Dominance in Banaras, India (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 62. 46 Roland, In Search of Self in India and Japan, 252–4, 21, 11–2. 47 Patel 3 July 2002 and Shenta 8 March 2002. 48 Mistry 8 March 2002. 49 BL, NSA, C900/09135A Y. Kapasi and BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur. 50 Sue 10 July 2002. See, for example, Devi 24 June 2002 and Balbir 8 May 2002. 51 S. Pedraza, ‘Women and migration: the social consequences of gender’, Annual Review of Sociology, 17 (1991), 306. See also E. Kofman, ‘Female “birds of passage” a decade later: gender and immigration in the European Union’, International Migration Review, 33 (1999), 269–9 and M. Morokvasic, ‘Women in migration: beyond the reductionist outlook’, in A. Phizacklea, (ed.), One Way Ticket: Migration and Female Labour (London: Routledge, 1983), 13–31, for a discussion of the stereotypes of female migrants within academic literature.

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from Uganda relayed in vivid details the traumatic circumstances of their departure and the harrowing experience of their flight in 1972. Testimonies convey the sense of panic and shock that they were stateless, the inhumanity of the bureaucratic systems considering the exigencies of the situation, and the acute sense of loss and dislocation.52 Memories of violence were embedded in the landscape and underline the threat of death. As Kotecha recalled: ‘They kill, they pick the people out and just put it on the road and they drive the lorry on it [them] and they throw the people on the river and the river was red.’53 Others remembered the army snatching jewellery from the women, ‘their ears bleeding’, whilst Mashru was threatened with a gun and hence ‘without having a second thought we boarded the plane on 14th October’.54 These recollections of 1972 provide powerful images of the crisis experienced, and provide a sharp contrast to the casual explanations for migration presented by the male migrants from India. The decision to leave Uganda had life transforming consequences, but took a mere fleeting moment to make. The ramifications of the expulsion have been discussed elsewhere, yet the narratives confirm that it was an indelible memory and a defining part of their lives.55 On arrival in Britain, the vast chasm between expectations and reality was exposed and South Asians went through feelings of shock and bewilderment; emotions experienced by migrants who preceded them, particularly those from the Caribbean.56 In particular, romantic constructions of Englishness were quickly dispelled. As Valand recalled, ‘I opened the door, the front door and what do I see? Rows and rows of all these houses (laughs) and that was the first shock, I thought goodness me this is different isn’t it? That’s when I remembered Charles Dickens, this is not a Jane Austen story is it, this is Charles Dickens.’57 Others were astounded by the white working classes who did menial jobs. Patel arrived in 1976 and explained: It was February 18th in the morning when we landed, quite cold, the snow was still on the ground and what I found difficult to understand was looking at it back in Africa you could never see a white man sweeping the road and this was a shock to me that there was white people clearing snow. I thought to myself this is totally different. I was totally shocked

52 BL, NSA, C900/09135 Y. and J. Kapasi and BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M. Vadhia. 53 BL, NSA, C900/09083 K. Bhanumati. 54 BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M. Vadhia and EMOHA, LOHAC, 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru. 55 V. Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City (Leicester 1989), chapter 8, 155–166. This parallels the experience of other refugee groups. For example, see M. Winslow, ‘Polish migration to Britain, exile and mental health’, Oral History, 27, 1 (1999), 57–64. Studies show that refugees were more likely to suffer mental illness. See A. Ager et al., ‘Community contact and mental health amongst socially isolated refugees in Edinburgh’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 15, 1 (2002), 71–80. 56 W. James, ‘Migration, racism and identity formation: the Caribbean experience in Britain’, in W. James and C. Harris, (eds), Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (London: Verso, 1993), 240–4. 57 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand.

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to see white people actually sweeping the streets, that was my first thought and I just couldn’t believe it.58

Added to this was the frustration of not being able to understand the language, a difficulty which Irish migrants also encountered on arrival to Britain.59 Chitra claimed: Although I’d grown up with English, I’d been taught English and I spoke fluent English maybe my accent was a little different, but I spoke fluent English and I could read write and everything excellent when I first came to this country and when I used to listen to the white people talking I used to think are they talking English or are they talking in another language? I found it really hard to comprehend what was being said; it was just the different accents, you know, have I learnt English or have I learnt something else?60

Clearly, their perceptual expectations, shaped by their habitus, were severely undermined by migration. These experiences can be conceptualised as a threat to their ontological security, that is, ‘confidence or trust that the natural and social world are as they appear’, which is maintained by predictable and consistent routines.61 Migration disrupted their trust in their social environment, thus the experience was clearly unsettling. This is further testified by their inability to comprehend the landscape. Mandy, for instance, recounted the moment when the family alighted the plane in 1965: ‘we had never seen snow, although it was May it was very cold, it was snowing and I remember my brother saying to my mum, “look they’ve laid out the white sheets for us” (laughing), not realising it was snow.’62 Sources of confusion and ambiguity also included escalators, wall paper and mannequins in shop windows, the latter confused Devi, as she explained: ‘I thought they were real ladies and I said to him [her father] I said “oh my god, don’t they get tired standing there?” You wouldn’t think these things but when you are young and you haven’t seen anything like it.’63 For others, their sense of temporality was ruptured and they questioned ‘when will night come?’64 Collectively these recollections clearly articulate how the transition challenged the migrants’ sense of reality and triggered feelings of disorientation and uncertainty. A further significant dimension of their experience of the migrants’ experience can also be illuminated through a consideration of the lived body. As theorists such as Merleau-Ponty have contended, the social world is not experienced as a spectacle but lived through the engagement of the body.65 Consequently, migration 58 BL, NSA C900/00014 H. Patel. 59 L. Ryan, ‘“I’m going to England”: women’s narratives of leaving Ireland in the 1930s’, Oral History, 30, 1 (2002), 48. 60 Chitra 22 May 2002. See also BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 61 A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Oxford: Polity Press, 1984), 374, 50. 62 Mandy 28 May 2002. 63 Devi 24 June 2002. 64 Johan 8 March 2002, Patel 3 July 2002. 65 This is a central theme in N. Crossley, The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire (London: Sage, 2001). For further discussion and an overview of theories of embodiment

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was experienced at the level of lived embodiment; it entailed feeling, perceiving and sensing.66 Arrival in Britain involved the body inhabiting a new space and confronting new sensations. As Balbir reflected, The weather it was cold, it was raining, it was cooler than India. It wasn’t even supposed to be cold it was like when we came over it was July … The smell was so nice when we walked into the house it was like so fresh it was different from India, no petrol smell nothing, you know in India when you go into cities you actually smell a lot of petrol and like a paraffin smell.67

Similarly, Yasmin remembered ‘the smell of that air ’cause it was spring time when I came. It was cold and the smell was fresh though. It was just so different. Totally new world to me you know really different.’68 The cold and dark weather was a consistent theme throughout the interviews, but migration also awakened other senses.69 Chitra’s arrival in 1974 was relived through a stream of sensory experiences and physical sensations including tasting cheese for the first time on the plane and on entering the house she remembered, ‘this weird sensation of climbing the stairs because in Kenya we have single storey houses so it was something wonderful to be in a three storey house where as over here it’s the opposite. I remember climbing up these little stairs and sort of thinking and just falling asleep.’70 This further highlights Bourdieu’s conception that habitus is inscribed on the body. That is, the sensation of climbing the stairs or encountering a new smell was given particular meaning and significance due to their past experiences and specific cultural location. Overall, these examples convey that although prior to migration Britain felt familiar, on arrival it was actually experienced as strange, different and alien. This was evident at various levels; through observations of the landscape, encounters with unfamiliar accents and it was also felt at the physical level. Likewise, the senses also guided memories of East Africa and India and many reminiscences focused on the weather. Patel stated, ‘this Nairobi is the best climate in the whole of East Africa, not very hot, not very cold and it’s a beautiful city.’71 This theme was developed by Karim: Well at the time of living in East Africa the life was much, much better than UK. In terms of first of all weather, very nice weather you get very good sunshine and hot weather as see for example, S.J. Williams and G. Bendelow, The Lived Body: Sociological Themes and Embodied Issues (London: Routledge, 1998). 66 The importance of the body to understanding the experience of migration has also been noted in S. Ahmed, ‘Home and away narratives of migration and estrangement’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2, 3 (1999), 342. 67 BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur. 68 BL, NSA, C900/09135A Y. Kapasi. 69 EMOHA, LOHAC, 978, LO/333/284 U. Tripathi, 919 LO/274/225 M. Mashru and BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh. References to the weather have also been noted in Gardner, Age, Narrative and Migration, 36. 70 Chitra 22 May 2002. 71 Patel 3 July 2002.

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well rainy season and during the rainy season and the hot weather there’s a cool period you know, so it was good weather over there and because people liked it there the life was better. And the availability of food was plenty. All kinds of food there: meat, fish, no problem, vegetables, milk, butter, everything.72

Memories of food figure prominently in the life stories, for instance, Singh claimed: ‘When I think of India and those times it brings back great memories, you know as soon as my mum would go down to milk cattle I would go down with a glass and put sugar in it and she would give me the first milk.’73 This daily ritual reveals an intensely intimate relationship with food, which was absent from Britain.74 The multiple meanings embedded in narratives of food have recently been discussed by Mukta.75 According to Mukta, food had religious connotations and was central to the philosophy of Krishna, yet the experience of hunger was also common within families and stories of hunger were deeply ingrained within family memories and transmitted through generations. Moreover, foodstuff such as bread and butter, were brought to East Africa for the colonial British. They were too expensive for the East African Asians and were desired as a special luxurious treat.76 This sheds considerable light on Kapasi’s cherished memories: It’s funny, I mean every Sunday I still think of what I used to do every Sunday back at home, this is after twenty seven years of existence in England … in a hotel I used to have English cheddar and enjoy a ginger ale or any other drink with it, we just wanted to have that cheese you see ’cause cheese was something which was uncommon in that part of Uganda and it was fantastic having a piece of cheese (laughs).77

Reminiscent of Singh’s memory of milk, the eating of cheese was a ritual for Kapasi; it occurred ‘every Sunday’. These recollections encapsulated the yearning for routine, and habit in everyday life; crucial elements of ontological security which had been impaired by migration. This is particularly pertinent considering Kapasi’s memory of food was triggered in response to a question regarding Uganda as his ‘home’ and his preceding comment: ‘if you really think about it we are stateless or still remain homeless, because we have been uprooted from a country.’78 Finally, literature on the emotional culture of the Indian self has revealed that food was a principal metaphor for conceptualising emotional experiences, a factor which further elucidates the salience and significance of these memories.79 72 Karim 13 June 2002. 73 BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh. 74 See also Patel’s reference to the wild berries in BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel and Kaur’s memories of mangoes in BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur. 75 P. Mukta, Shards of Memory: Woven Lives in Four Generations (London: Random House, 2002). 76 Ibid., 85, 99. 77 BL, NSA, C900/09135B J. Kapasi. 78 Ibid. Giddens discusses the importance of food as a ‘regime’ in Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 61–2. 79 O. Lynch, ‘The social construction of emotion in India’, in O. Lynch, (ed.), Divine Passions: The Social Construction of Emotion in India (Oxford: University of California

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This chapter has attempted to grasp the essence of the migrants’ internal world and to understand the underlying processes and experiences of transition. Principally, narratives were unequivocally gendered. Male respondents tended to anchor their story in terms of a grand and coherent, linear narrative, which were structured by the key themes of colonialism and citizenship. These stories also signified an attempt to restore and reconstitute a collective history and identity and were framed by their subsequent experiences of living in Britain and the social location of the interviewer. The interviews further reveal that the culture of the empire was not simply an objective structure but penetrated people’s mental maps and formed their stock of local knowledge and perceptual schemas of Britain. In short, Britain was viewed as more superior, civilised and as a source of status and success; a fundamental motivation for migration. For several men, the move to Britain was facilitated by previous migratory experience and the plan to move emanated from networks of interdependency, particularly within the web of familial ties. Within this process, women did yield a degree of subtle power, although their main reason for migration was family reunification. The effect of the transition was profound. As the disparity between their expectations and reality transpired, their sense of ontological security was undermined and the process of inhabiting a new space was fundamentally an embodied experience. Furthermore, physical sensations, specifically temperature and taste, served to unlock memories of India and East Africa and helped to overcome the rupture and dislocation of migration.

Press, 1990), 14–6 and P.M. Tooney, ‘Krishna’s consuming passions: food as metaphor and metonym for emotion at Mount Govardhan’, in Ibid., 157–74. For further discussions of the theme of food in the narratives see J. Herbert, ‘Migration, memory and metaphor: life stories of South Asians in Leicester’, in K. Burrell and P. Panayi, (eds), Histories and Memories: Migrants and their Histories in Britain (London: IB Tauris, 2006), 133–48.

Chapter 4

The Household What was the migrants’ experience of the household both as a physical place of dwelling and a set of relations within the domestic sphere?1The experience of finding and living in new accommodation in Britain was not only remembered differently by men and women, but by different immigrant cohort groups.2 What was the impact of migration on domestic relations? Did migration upset the relative positions of power within the household?3 These issues will be explored by reviewing the high cultural expectations of the male elders and the consequent social constraints experienced by women at various stages of their lives. The strategies women developed to navigate restraints will also be discussed and this will include the influence of women’s participation in the labour market on their status within the household. The aim is to highlight how power relations were not fixed but were consistently negotiated and shifted throughout the life course. Finding a New Home The process of finding a new home and the type of accommodation experienced was largely differentiated by immigrant cohort; that is, immigrants who entered Leicester at approximately the same time shared the same conditions and contexts of arrival, 1 The focus is on a single household. For the problems associated with the definition of ‘household’ see K. Bhopal, Gender, ‘Race’ and Patriarchy: A Study of South Asian Women (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 27–30. 2 This will focus on experiences in the private sector. The respondents did not have experience living in council housing and some claimed that public housing was not desirable. Access to council housing was also constrained. A year of residency in Leicester was necessary to be eligible for a council house and reports in the 1980s stated that council housing did not meet the needs of South Asian families. For example, the city lacked large council properties to house extended families. See ROLLR, House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Race Relations and Immigration Sub Committee Session 1980–1981: Racial Disadvantage Minutes of Evidence, 13 March 1981, Leicester, 970 (London: HMSO, 1981) and ‘New Life in Leicester’, New Life (Asian Weekly), 14, 26 July 1985, 16. According to Marett, fear of racial attacks prevented Ugandan Asians from seeking council accommodation: see V. Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989), 144, 152–4. Hill, however, suggests that the demand for council housing was greater than has been reported: see R. Hill, ‘The housing characteristics and aspirations of Leicester’s inner city Asian community’ (unpublished University of Leicester Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 498. 3 For a review of the literature on this subject see S.J. Mahler and P.R. Pessar, ‘Gender matters: ethnographers bring gender from the periphery toward the core of migration studies’, International Migration Review, XL, 1 (2006), 34.

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including prevailing housing market conditions. Men who migrated mainly from the Punjab in the 1950s and 1960s lacked the infrastructure of an existing South Asian community and stressed the obstacles involved in acquiring accommodation. These problems were articulated in terms of a lack of houses and difficulties obtaining a mortgage. Leicester has traditionally had insufficient privately rented furnished accommodation and prior to 1976 building societies were unwilling to grant mortgages to properties in Highfields.4 However, whilst African Caribbeans have exposed their exclusion from rented accommodation and mortgage markets in Leicester because they were ‘coloured’, the South Asian respondents rarely pinpointed racism as at the root of their difficulties.5 For instance, Singh simply stated: ‘When I came in 1961 only I think fifty Asian people were here in this town, you know Leicester, and it was very very difficult and even the mortgage was a big problem, you know.’6 Only one respondent suggested that racial discrimination in housing existed. Kapur arrived in Leicester in 1965 and claimed it was ‘very difficult’ to find accommodation and that ‘you couldn’t get accommodation with white people’.7 He explained, ‘it might not be blatant, they would just say “sorry haven’t got the accommodation, it has gone.”’8 Kapur believed racism within housing persisted despite the Race Relations Act of 1968 which outlawed discrimination in housing and employment.9 He claimed, ‘those who do not want to give accommodation become more sophisticated in their dealings, there is no way you can force a landlord to give you accommodation.’10 This suggests that perhaps the respondents did not discuss discrimination within housing because they did not encounter overt racism. Kapur however, was involved in the Indian Workers Association and it can be construed that he possessed a heightened awareness of racism. The proliferations of all male lodging houses provided a pragmatic solution to these problems and were a ubiquitous feature of other British cities.11 As one man who arrived in 1956 recalled: 4 Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City, 136, L. Chessum, From Migrants to Ethnic Minority: Making Black Community in Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 111. The area was seen as high risk. 5 Chessum, From Migrants to Ethnic Minority, 100–101. See also Community Relations Council, Housing Choice and Ethnic Segregation: An Attitude Survey (London: Community Relations Council, 1979), 43–4, which revealed that South Asians in Leicester felt they had minimal experience of discrimination. Only 94 per cent claimed they had not been refused accommodation because of ‘colour’. 6 East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), Leicester Oral History Archive Collection (LOHAC), 740, LO/108/059 C. Singh. 7 EMOHA, LOHAC, 970, LO/325/276 S. Kapur. 8 Ibid. 9 For further discussion on race relations legislation see H. Goulbourne, Race Relations in Britain Since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1998), chapter five. 10 Ibid. 11 See D. Phillips, ‘The social and spatial segregation of Asians in Leicester’, in P. Jackson and S. Smith, (eds), Social Interaction and Ethnic Segregation (London: Academic Press, 1981), 104, D.S. Tatla, ‘This is our home now: reminiscences of a Punjabi migrant in Coventry’, Oral History Journal, 21 (1993), 70–71 and A. Shaw, ‘The Pakistani community

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There was a shortage of houses for our people. There were thirty five people living in one house. Houses were usually dirty and there was nobody to clean, sometimes it was embarrassing, everybody was busy working nights, days, shifts. We were too busy to make the coal fire during the weekdays, we used to have the coal fire at the weekends. We stayed in the pub till late to keep warm. This is all true, I am not exaggerating.12

Similarly another claimed that forty-four people lived in one house and ‘some used to sleep on a board in the bathroom’.13 These quotes clearly convey the cramped living existence, yet the lodging houses also subverted the hegemonic white culture presented in Chapter 2, whereby households were governed by the domestic ideal and neighbours were judged by standards of cleanliness. The South Asian men did not invest the household with values of domesticity; it merely served a practical purpose, enabling them to minimise living expenses and maximise savings. In addition, the need to divide living space between multiple lodgers challenged dominant modes of spatial ordering within the house. Consequently, the lodging houses marked a culturally distinctive space and embodied certain qualities of Foucault’s heterotopias.14 This is further supported by evidence that the houses were governed by specific principles. As Singh explained: the tradition when people come over from India, they used to stay with their friends and the food was free. No rent was charged unless you get a job and you pay them, you buy your own food and whatever you like and first pay … you used to give them a part with the first pay and that was the tradition that we had here and … even those who want to send some money to their parents at home they could borrow, they used to lend the money, you could give it back afterwards when you want.15

The emphasis on ‘tradition’ conveys how new arrivals were admitted to the same rites of passage on entering the house and how this heritage and value system of mutual dependence and obligation operated autonomously from the wider society. In Foucault’s words, ‘heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable’.16 Thus networks within the lodging houses functioned on a basis of gender and ethnicity and can be construed as a mechanism of boundary maintenance, defining who belonged to the group. Yet in Oxford’, in R. Ballard, (ed.), Desh Pardesh: South Asian Experience in Britain (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994), 40. Research has tended to either focus on the ‘constraint’ or ‘choice’ of this type of accommodation. See for instance J. Rex and R. Moore, Race, Community and Conflict: A Study of Sparkbrook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 133–46 and B. Dahya, ‘The nature of Pakistani ethnicity in industrial cities in Britain’, in A. Cohen, (ed.), Urban Ethnicity (London: Tavistock Publications, 1974), 77–118. 12 Highfields Library, Highfields Remembered Archive (HL, HRA), B. Singh. 13 EMOHA, Ethnic Elders Collection (EEC), 00638, EE/10/11/A/B M. and P. Thakorbhai. 14 M. Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, Diacritics, 16, 1 (1986), 22–7. See also E.W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 145–63. 15 HL, HRA, B. Singh. 16 Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, 26.

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they also acted as a vital resource, providing security and easing the transition of settlement. Whilst Bourdieu has claimed that the creation of social networks was driven by economic conditions and the opportunity for profit, it was the positive aspect of human relations highlighted by Coleman, which featured most prominently in the men’s narratives.17 Networks within the houses offered a valuable source of companionship as Singh confirmed, ‘we needed each other’s support because we did not have our families with us, so we’d spend our weekends together.’18 This provides a sharp contrast to the contemporary accounts provided by Rex and Moore which stressed the conflict, fear and distrust within lodging houses.19 Instead, memories centred on examples of trust, reciprocity and comradeship, that tended to eclipse the physical hardships. As Shokki claimed, ‘when I first arrived in England, there were thirty people living in one house. We had to queue to make chapattis and queue to go to the toilets but those days were the best.’20 The arrival of women and those from East Africa in the late 1960s marked another immigrant cohort. Lodging houses were no longer suitable and accommodation was sought to house the family. For many, housing was remembered as unproblematic; friends and relatives helped to arrange accommodation and for those endowed with sufficient funds, most notably those from Kenya, property was purchased with relative ease.21 For those hindered by economic constraints, owner occupancy was obtainable by sub-letting rooms to other South Asian migrants. However, respondents generally endured a process of renting prior to owner occupancy and for women this tended to be remembered as a difficult, albeit transient phase. For instance Munisa’s family left Tanzania for Britain and she recalled, ‘my feelings were I was very happy we were going somewhere, but then when we came here we were so depressed, we were all very, very depressed to come back to a sort of, to come back to a very small house because it was a terrace house.’22 Conditions were particularly cramped as her family of eight people shared the one-bedroom house with her two uncles’ families, consisting of thirteen other people. Another woman recalled the predicament of sharing a house with numerous men. Unlike the men’s accounts, she did not praise the values of co-operation. Instead the house was experienced as a contested space and in particular she disliked sharing the kitchen. The strength of her opposition was demonstrated by her actions whereby she fasted for one month as a form of protest.23 The lack of privacy and autonomy was a salient theme in accounts of renting. Balbir’s family were evicted from their first house and she recalled their fragile 17 J. Coleman, ‘Social capital in the creation of human capital’, American Journal of Sociology, 94 (supplement) (1988), 95–121. 18 HL, HRA, A.S. Singh. See also HL, HRA, E. Bhayat. This narrative style was also noted in P. Werbner, ‘Rich man, poor man – or a community of suffering: heroic motifs in Manchester Pakistani life histories’, Oral History Journal, 8 (1980), 43–8. 19 Rex and Moore, Race, Community and Conflict, 138. 20 HL, HRA, A.S. Singh. 21 See for example, British Library, National Sound Archive (BL, NSA), C900/12596 B. Vora and EMOHA, Community History Collection (CHC), 00524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel. 22 Munisa 3 April 2004. 23 EMOHA, EEC, 00644, EE/16/17 A. Bibi.

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status and vulnerability to exploitation. This was exacerbated by their household type, as female-headed households tended to occupy a disadvantaged status within the housing system.24 We rented a room out there and we used to have one room and … four of us, my mother and myself and my two brothers. Four of us in that room we had a shared kitchen we used to have a lock on the door. Our mother tells us now that when we used to go out some of our belongings used to go because obviously the land lady had other sets of keys to our room. We moved to three bedsits before we actually bought a house of our own.25

The insecurity associated with renting and the anxieties this prompted were clear. Yet the respondents were not compliant of their precarious situation as tenants; instead they worked collectively to exert control over their lives and ameliorate their position. Hence, the need to purchase a home assumed a principal objective and family members took whatever jobs were available to raise the necessary funds. Balbir’s brother, for example, worked tirelessly to save £500 for their house and similarly Johan, who had planned to pursue a university education to become a doctor, recalled, ‘we had to save the money to buy the house and rent and everything. At that time, I don’t know but we didn’t have any of this social thing, benefits and that.’26 She therefore sacrificed her ambitions and worked for long hours in a box factory: ‘I had to save £500 for the house, three of us worked eight till eight and then we saved £500 and we bought the house.’27 Other respondents also emphasised their lack of knowledge regarding government assistance and the importance of their self reliance and hard work in obtaining their own house. This corresponds with findings from elsewhere, which have stated that women were compelled to work to help purchase a house and the employment of South Asian women in Leicester has been noted as a decisive factor in enabling Indians to obtain secure residence in affluent areas.28 Furthermore, for women, owner-occupancy was typically equated with the need to acquire a sense of security and stability for their new life in Britain. This was most conspicuous in Johan’s interview whereby she consistently stressed ‘once we bought our own house we were more settled’.29

24 See G. Crow and G. Allan, Community Life – An Introduction to Local Social Relations (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), 114 and W. Webster, Imagining Home: Gender, ‘Race’ and National Identity, 1945–64 (London: UCL Press, 1998), 176–7. 25 Balbir 8 May 2002. See also EMOHA, EEC, 00634, EE/06/06 N. Kaur whereby six people lived in one room. 26 Johan 8 March 2002. 27 Ibid. 28 K. Stone, ‘Motherhood and waged work: West Indian, Asian and white mothers compared’, in A. Phizacklea, (ed.), One Way Ticket Migration and Female Labour (London: Routledge, 1983), 35, B. Dhanjal, ‘Sikh women in Southall (some impressions)’, New Community, 5, 1/2 (1976), 110 and D. Byrne, ‘Class and ethnicity in complex cities – the cases of Leicester and Bradford’, Environment and Planning A, 30 (1998), 718. 29 Johan 8 March 2002. Other research has noted that purchasing a house was also viewed as a route to accumulating wealth: see K. Hahlo, Communities Networks and Ethnic Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 53.

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Those who left Uganda in 1972 can be categorised as forming another immigrant cohort. They confronted a distinctive set of problems and their initial experience of accommodation was within the resettlement camps. Many expressed immense gratitude at the supplies provided: as Kapasi recalled, ‘we received a very warm welcome, we felt as if we had come to our other home, you know, we were given warm clothing, proper food and all for us.’30 However, memories of the camps were also dominated by the control and surveillance exerted over individuals. According to Mashru, they were treated like ‘prisoners’ and told ‘what to do and what not to do’, whilst Ganatra remembered particular instances when he was offended by the officials and his sense of humiliation and outrage when the Ugandan Asians were addressed as ‘wogs’ and were refused a second helping of beans.31 He recalled his response: ‘I explain don’t do it. These people are rich people, they have money ... and now they are standing here with the plates begging for food.’32 These experiences were elaborated by Vadhia: They used to get in the tray beans and toast and things and that was not our normal dietary food but was supposed to be good because we were told that if you eat this and if you eat this, it is good for you, the carbohydrates and the iron. You were not forced into, we were not compelled as well, but we were like, how shall I put it, we had to force ourselves to eat with fork and knife which we never did in Uganda so it became a custom to eat with fork and knife, how to cut this, how to cut that, we used to go to classes like how to arrange glasses, how to arrange your trays, how to arrange your dishes and everything when you go on a table which became like we had to abide by the British rule. You go out you cannot spit on the road, you cannot stand next to a tree I’m sorry to say this and have a pee which was illegal, you could be fined for that, so this thing came in like paper tissues which we never used in Uganda, dustbin do not drop any rubbish here and there you have to make sure everything is spic and span, clean … At one time, the food was different, the eating style was different, but we had to go and mould ourselves in to the living of it. We had to abide and we started learning those things you see.33

These examples resonate with Elias’s ‘civilising process’ in that the camps represented an opportunity to impose the English culture, instil the ‘uncivilised others’ with British respectable standards, and produce ‘civilised’ bodies. Hence, bodily functions were to be concealed from public spaces.34 The process in the camps was also akin

30 BL, NSA, C900/09135B J. Kapasi. See also C900/00003 C.M. Vadhia, C900/09083 B. Kotecha and EMOHA, LOHAC, 864, LO/228/179 C. Sharma. 31 EMOHA, LOHAC, 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru and 836, LO/200/151 G. Ganatra. 32 Ibid. The sense of shame the Ugandan Asians felt in ‘begging’ for food has been stressed in other personal accounts. See J. Kramer, Unsettling Europe (New York: Random House, 1980), 136. 33 BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M. Vadhia. See also M. Mamdani, From Citizen to Refugee (London: Francis Pinter, 1973), 87–103. 34 For other examples of this ‘civilising process’ see S. Mennell, Norbert Elias: An Introduction (Dublin: Francis Pinter, 1998), 125–7. For further discussion see C. Shilling, The Body and Social Theory (London: Sage, 1993), 150–75.

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to Foucault’s concept of carceral discipline, whereby institutions, including nonprison bodies, implement procedures of discipline and self control onto bodies.35 Vadhia’s account exposes the pressure he felt to conform to rules and regulations and emulate the intricacies of polite behaviour and etiquette. His actions were effectively constrained and the scope of agency curtailed.36 These memories provide an antithesis to the sense of autonomous culture depicted in the male lodging houses. Nevertheless, Foucault’s theories have been criticised for ignoring the subversion of power relations and the interviews reveal that the Ugandan Asians were able to carve a distinctive space for themselves away from English cultural domination.37 This was evident by the celebration of various religious festivals and the sense of unity and solidarity which was cultivated. As Vadhia explained: After maybe four, five, six weeks we became a close knit family, we used to know all the Asian families who came in from different areas of Uganda, we were all there and then we came to know each other by surnames, by first names and we found out you know some came from Soroti a place in Uganda, some came from Arua, from Mbale from Ginger from Kamapala. So we became a close knit family and we still keep in touch these days as well.38

Whilst Ugandan Asians were granted the option of help with housing, the Ugandan Resettlement Board followed a policy of dispersal designed to steer the Ugandan Asians away from areas of existing South Asian settlement. Consequently many were offered housing in areas such as Essex, York and Glasgow before relocating to Leicester.39 However, on arrival to Leicester they encountered a combination of adverse conditions including a severe housing shortage of some 1,800 dwellings in 1971, an unexpected upsurge in house prices from 1971 to 1973, high rents, competition for accommodation by students and, in contrast to other South Asians from Africa, a lack of capital.40 The permanent loss of their life savings as compensation failed to transpire evoked feelings of injustice and immense disappointment. This was epitomised by Vadhia’s comments. Up until today, this is 1998, I haven’t heard a thing they have promised and promised and promised that they would send the property back that they would send the money back, 35 M. Hewitt, ‘Bio-politics and social policy: Foucault’s account of welfare’, in M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth and B.S. Turner, (eds), The Body, Social Process and Cultural Theory (London: Sage, 1991), 225–55. 36 For other interpretations of camp life, see Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City, 74–80. 37 L. McNay, ‘Gender, habitus and the field: Pierre Bourdieu and the limits of reflexivity’, Theory, Culture and Society 16, 1 (1999), 96–8. 38 BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M. Vadhia. This aspect of camp life was highlighted in Y. Alibhai-Brown, ‘My time in a resettlement centre’, The Independent, 29 October 2001. 39 EMOHA, LOHAC, 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru and BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M Vadhia and C900/09083 B. Kotecha. 40 See Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City, 191. From 1971 to 1973 the cost of an inner area terraced house in Leicester had risen by at least one third. Ibid., 138.

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The cumulative effect was that housing constituted a critical problem and this has been discussed in depth elsewhere.42 Mashru relayed the desperate position he was situated in: ‘I lived for six months of my life in one bedroom, that was my wife, my sister and myself and I could not get a house complete for us to rent.’43 He claimed that he did not receive support from the existing South Asian communities and added, ‘that is where the difficulties comes when one is of too many that everybody class everybody into one society.’44 This indicates that Mashru felt he had experienced some form of exclusion within the sphere of housing based on racial stereotyping. It can therefore be inferred that previous cohort groups did not cite racism as a key facet in generating housing disadvantage because it was within their capacity to overcome difficulties. Mashru however, could not rely on networks of support and therefore possessed a heightened awareness of the constraining factors.45 When accommodation was eventually obtained, respondents typically stressed the deprived living conditions and meagre facilities which impinged on their quality of life. This afflicted not only the Ugandan Asians, but was also experienced by those from East Africa and India. Shenta recalled her feelings of distress that ‘there was no bath there, no electricity, no carpet, it was very cold’ and this had an adverse affect on the family’s health.46 Many also remarked on the small size of their first home in Leicester, which was typically remembered as ‘very very tight and really small’, in contrast to the spacious houses they had occupied in India and East Africa which were usually accompanied by open courtyards and verandas.47 However, a response to these poor housing conditions can be posited from the interviews, which reveal

41 BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M Vadhia. See M. Bristow, B.N. Adams and C. Pereira, ‘Ugandan Asians in Britain, Canada and India: some characteristics and resources’, New Community, 4, 2 (1975), 155–66, which reported that 80 per cent were unable to transfer their resources from Uganda. 42 The problems regarding housing are discussed in Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City, 136–154, V. Marett, ‘The resettlement of Ugandan Asians in Leicester 1972–1980’ (unpublished University of Leicester Ph.D. thesis, 1983), 475–537. Marett stresses the lack of action taken by the local housing authority to alleviate the problem. 43 EMOHA, LOHAC, 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru. These difficulties were also reported in Community Relations Commission, Refuge or Home? A Policy Attainment on the Resettlement of Refugees (London: Community Relations Commission, 1976), 11–12. 44 Ibid. 45 According to Werbner, direct racism had a limited impact on Pakistanis in Manchester within housing because the private housing market is ‘relatively open in Britain’ and they tend not to depend on statutory bodies. P. Werbner, The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings among British Pakistanis (Oxford: Berg, 1990), 41. 46 Shenta 8 March 2002. For further information see A. Sills, M. Tarpey, and P. Golding, ‘Asians in an inner city’, New Community, 11 (1983), 38. 47 BL, NSA, B C900/00009 B. Kaur and EMOHA, EEC, 00645, EE/17/18 R. Sultana, 00642, EE/14/15 S.P. Chowdary and 00629, EE/01/01, K. Singh.

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that families moved house several times, perhaps reflecting the desire to search for improved accommodation and attain better living conditions.48 The character of the immigrant cohort clearly shaped initial experiences of accommodation and, in particular, the experiences of the Ugandan Asians were distinct from preceding South Asian groups. Certainly the extent to which constraints were felt was tied to the amount of resources available and this included drawing on ethnic and familial networks to pool resources and share houses, whilst women’s participation in paid work helped to boost the household income.49 Some gender differences have also been detected. For the male respondents, memories of renting focused on the positive sense of social cohesion in the lodging houses and the convention of mutual support in adverse circumstances, whilst the women’s narratives conjured more negative images of insecurity and the lack of privacy they endured. Similarly, as other studies have noted, for the male respondents purchasing a house was primarily viewed as an important business investment and a means to circumvent high rents for poor quality accommodation.50 Conversely, for the women, owner occupancy was unequivocally related to the need for a secure and autonomous space for domestic life following the rupture of migration.51 Despite these divergent experiences, a predominant theme which spanned cohort groups and gender differences was the inferior and cramped conditions within the properties. Thus the house itself was rarely recalled as a place of warmth and comfort.52 The Ideal South Asian Household Before discussing the experiences within the domestic sphere it is essential to sketch briefly the most salient dimensions of the household within the respondents’ country of origin. This is not to suggest that the behaviour of South Asians in Britain should be evaluated solely by the norms and values which pervaded in their country of 48 Many moved three or four times. See for example, EMOHA, LOHAC, 740, LO/108/059 C. Singh. 49 The strategy of pooling resources and subletting accommodation was also used by other ethnic groups. For instance see M. Chamberlain, ‘The family as model and metaphor in Caribbean migration to Britain’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 25, 2 (1999), 251–66. 50 See for instance, Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City, 152–3. 51 This mirrors Chamberlain’s findings in M. Chamberlain, ‘Gender and the narratives of migration’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), 102. 52 This chapter has focused on the respondents’ early experiences of housing, however other studies have shown that over time class superseded ethnicity as the dominant structure determining residential patterns in Leicester. See Byrne, ‘Class and ethnicity in complex cities’, 703–20, Leicestershire County Council, Ethnic Minority Groups Living in Leicestershire Census 1991 (Leicester: Leicestershire County Council, 1997), 37–8. This contrasts with the national picture whereby South Asians continue to occupy inferior housing in the most deteriorating areas of the city. See Commission for Racial Equality, Housing and Homelessness (London: Commission for Racial Equality, 1999). There were important differences within the ‘South Asian’ category. For further discussion see C. Peach, ‘South Asian and Caribbean ethnic minority housing choice in Britain’, Urban Studies, 35, 10 (1998), 1657–80.

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origin, though this background information helps to elucidate the relative changes experienced following migration and their responses. It also avoids the pitfalls of judging patterns of behaviour as deviant in relation to western norms. According to Khanum, ‘reciprocal responsibility’ was at the crux of the South Asian household.53 This encapsulates the principal aim of the household to ensure the welfare of all family members and so individuals were guided by family duties and expectations of reciprocity. In conjunction with this, the principle of hierarchy was paramount. Family members were situated within strict hierarchical relationships which were expressed through rituals and codes of behaviour and demanded covert displays of subordinance and deference to superiors. Within this system, wives were expected to be submissive to men, to alleviate family tensions and ensure the harmonious working of the family. In particular, a women’s relationship with her father-in-law required utmost respect and adherence to rules of complete avoidance.54 According to some scholars these nuances of behaviour were not based on an external framework for action, but were internalised and effectively shaped individuals’ psyche.55 As a result, South Asians were not socialised to conceptualise themselves as autonomous individuals but viewed themselves in relation to the family and they were also acutely aware that their public behaviour was inextricably linked to the family’s ‘good name’ and reputation. Conformity to these ideal norms of behaviour was also enforced through discourses of shame (sharam) and honour (izzat), which were vital mechanisms of social organisation. Yet the responsibility for family honour was not shared equally but confined to women, and their conduct could either jeopardise or enhance family status. As a result, women’s behaviour was effectively constrained. For instance, marriage was crucial to the maintenance of family honour and as a result in some societies, the women’s right to divorce was never acknowledged.56 Honour also operated to segregate women, through the system of purdah which was practised in varying degrees throughout north Indian villages. This system was fashioned by ideologies of sexual modesty and women’s incompetence and perpetuated the belief that women were passive and vulnerable dependents. It served to control women’s communication and direct their social influence, away from the ‘male’ public sphere to the safe confines of the domestic arena.57 It is pertinent to note that the implementation of practices varied across class, caste and communities and scholars from the Indian subcontinent have exposed the discrepancy between the intention of ideological forces and their actual effect. Whilst 53 S.M. Khanum, ‘The household patterns of a “Bangladeshi village” in England’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27, 3 (2001), 493. 54 U. Sharma, ‘Women and their affines: the veil as a symbol of separation’, Man New Series, 13 (1978), 225. 55 A. Roland, In Search of Self in India and Japan: Towards a Cross-Cultural Psychology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 205. 56 A. Ahmed and Z. Ahmed, ‘Mor and Tor: binary and opposing models of Pukhtun womanhood’, in T.S. Epstein and R.A. Watts, (eds), The Endless Day: Some Case Material on Asian Rural Women (New York: Pergamon, 1981), 45. 57 H. Papanek, ‘Purdah: separate worlds and symbolic shelter’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15, 3 (1973) and Sharma, ‘Women and their affines’, 289–325.

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men actively endorsed ‘traditional’ values designed to subordinate women, research has uncovered the subtle and discrete powers South Asian women possessed and their abilities to manipulate situations to fortify their own position.58 Women faced strict and rigid sexual inequalities within their country of origin yet they also yielded a ‘power of the weak’ and had developed a tradition of resistance.59 Reconstructing Household Relations How was the domestic life experienced on arrival in Leicester? At first glance, it appears that the authority of the male elder was maintained. When discussing their present day position the male respondents invariably envisaged themselves as the head of the family and were keen to stress their prestigious role within the home. Ganatra emphasised his ability to implement decisions and traditions and boasted that he had arranged thirteen marriages and ‘not a single person has got a problem, everybody is happy’.60 Vora claimed that although his family earned separate wages, ‘still I’m being maintained by my sons wholly … I am proud’, whilst Singh stated, ‘with my family at home, I’m fully respected.’61 The family was a source of male pride and honour and offered social approval and status. Alongside this, male respondents consistently advocated the principles and functions of the family and emphasised elements which reinforced their dominance. Throughout Ganatra’s interview, the Indian core values of the extended family, arranged marriage and hierarchy within the family were expounded; hence for Ganatra the ideal situation was to ‘be ruled by your family’ as this avoids the problems which afflict the west, namely divorce.62 Moreover, Ganatra presented his life story as a justification and proof that his beliefs were impeccable. This was echoed in other interviews which referred to the ‘right’ way of ‘jointly working for the family’, whilst others praised the tradition of caring for the elderly.63 According to Singh, ‘there is nothing better in the world [than] to serve your elderly parents and look after them and love them honestly. There is nothing better than that. That’s one of the most important items of the South Asian system that the children got to love the parents and assist them.’64 Singh discussed this subject with particular fervour and conviction and warned: ‘But if you ignore your parents you are committing an

58 For interviews with men see S. Derné, Culture in Action: Family Life, Emotion and Male Dominance in Banaras, India (New York: SUNY Press, 1995). 59 J. Ginat, Women in Muslim Rural Society: Status and Role in Family and Community (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1982), 151, L. Gulati, In the Absence of their Men: The Impact of Male Migration on Women (London: Sage, 1993) and N. Rahat, ‘The role of women in reciprocal relationships in a Punjab village’, in Epstein and Watts, (eds), The Endless Day, 50–80. 60 EMOHA, LOHAC, 836, LO/200/151 G. Ganatra. 61 BL, NSA, C900/12596 B. Vora and C900/00049 M. Singh. 62 EMOHA, LOHAC, 836, LO/200/151 G. Ganatra. 63 BL, NSA, C900/12596 B. Vora. 64 BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh.

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offence, a very serious moral offence.’65 This clearly conveys the sense that rules were presented as inflexible and if individuals dared to violate key values, they would be held culpable. The length of time devoted to these issues and the predominance of this rhetoric is most telling and suggests that male respondents felt a need to reassert their principles because their ethos was threatened by migration. Durkheim has observed how the pressure to conform to norms and values was greatest amongst smaller groups and that as social encounters increased, individualism increased and morality became more abstract.66 Drawing on this insight, it seems that the morality expressed by the male respondents which bolstered their authority, was undermined by migration. Suajani recalled the loss of power experienced by her father: It was a real shock to him having to live in this country where he couldn’t go out much, where he didn’t have any friends, where he couldn’t communicate because he didn’t speak English. When children spoke English and were able to communicate to outsiders when he wasn’t, his authority sort of lessened and I think he was finding it very very difficult.67

Here, the father’s lack of knowledge of the English language tipped the balance of power relations within the house and rendered him dependent on other family members.68 This loss of power was also certified by the male respondents. Morjaria grappled with his anxieties: At times I’m really worried about our younger generation because they try to copy what the western people are doing … In the olden times when you are in East Africa the head of the family will work and the mother and the others the eldest will have the children and educate them, what is discipline, what is the religion about which we have no time to do it.69

Morjaria’s concerns were based on the premise that the dichotomy between the male public and female private sphere which assigned men to the role of providers and women as carers was ruptured following migration. In particular, it broke with the precedent that women were the intergenerational transmitters of ‘home’ culture and, as a result, left children exposed and vulnerable to the perceived moral vacuum in the west.70 Morjaria claimed the wider community sympathised with his position and served to substantiate his complaints: ‘I’ve been talking to the community, to the people who feel I’ve done so much for my children but they’re not doing anything 65 Ibid. 66 E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (London: Macmillan, 1984), 179– 99. 67 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 68 This is noted in F. Husain and M. O’Brien, ‘Muslim communities in Europe: reconstruction and transformation’, Current Sociology, 8 (2000), 9. 69 BL, NSA, C900/00066 T.V. Morjaria. 70 See also, A. Shaw, ‘The Pakistani community in Oxford’, in Ballard, Desh Pardesh, 52–3.

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for me.’71 Accordingly, his children did not fulfil their kinship obligations which he had invested in. His views were further corroborated by his use of vocabulary which presented his opinions as part of an accumulated wisdom, entrenched within the group’s history and culture. He proclaimed: There was a saying back in East Africa that when we came, we left East Africa, we lost our money and here after coming to this country, we will lose our generation, we will lose country over them, we will lose the family feeling which we had back in East Africa and India.72

The use of the term ‘family feeling’ denotes that some inherent essence of the family had been eradicated. This notion of loss was conspicuous and was a recurrent feature of other narratives. Patel stated, The tradition that we find difficult to maintain here is because of the education firstly for our children, when they’re educated in this country, they got a job in this country, so everyone has to work and when they go for work, the environment of the working places is different so the first thing, becomes clothing, what to wear and there the tradition starts dying away. They used to have saris for example, strictly, my wife still puts on saris 365 days she never tried anything else, but for my daughter and my daughter-in-laws, they’re working in the offices, they put on skirts or frocks and that’s how we accept that is going to change, traditionally we know it’s not very comfortable, we’re not used to that dressing but we have to accept that and we feel like we are loosing that you see.73

This reveals how men defined the parameters of ‘appropriate behaviour’, whilst the duty clearly lay with the women to be the paragons of virtue. More specifically, Patel’s comments relate to women’s ascribed role as symbolizing their nation or community. As Yuval-Davis has contended the importance of this role was amplified in multicultural societies such as Britain, as women were expected to preserve minority identities.74 Thus women’s ‘traditional’ clothes were a visible marker of the group’s identity and difference. However this was threatened by women’s entrance into paid employment as the public sphere represented a different cultural model to that of the home.75 Patel was unable to control these changes or impose his will; he could not monitor women at work and thus female employment had effectively curbed his leverage over other household members. A further repercussion was that the practicalities of work prevented family members from attending religious festivals which in Patel’s words meant that, ‘they are not as tight as one family so they are all separated.’ Patel concluded the ‘family system is still there but it is

71 BL, NSA, C900/00066 T.V. Morjaria. 72 Ibid. 73 EMOHA, CHC, 00524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel. 74 N. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997), 46. 75 According to Wilson, saris were also important status symbols and signifiers of the family’s prosperity, which showed women were ‘possession of husbands’. A. Wilson, Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain (London: Virago, 1978), 45.

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invisible, it is divided and we are weak or we are losing on that matter, that is another difficult part.’76 Others blamed women’s economic independence as the main problem. According to Ganatra, ‘When we were in Uganda, Kenya, East Africa or India, all men was an umbrella, all millions of rupees is there in one name’, in contrast to ‘here everybody has got their income, everybody has got a bank account’, consequently, ‘parents are not to interfere or help the child. They want to help but they can’t. I have lot of problems here.’77 These findings correlate with a recent study of South Asian elders in Leicester which reported that male respondents attributed increased individualism to women’s employment, which generated difficulties within the family and according to their observations, the respect conventionally shown to elders had diminished.78 Overall, the interviews reveal that men demanded strict adherence to the ideal South Asian household and the prescribed roles this entailed. Yet they also depict a widening gap between morality and reality and reveal that the reconstruction of household relations had incurred a reconfiguration of power relations between men and women. This caused the men considerable concern and frustration as their honour ultimately rested on their ability to control women within the family. Women: The Life Course and Constraints To explore this issue further it is necessary to consider the perspective of the women and uncover their experiences within the domestic domain. The women spoke at great length about the personal struggles within their private lives and their experiences were not confined to a particular religious or ethnic group, but were shared by many of the female respondents. Their interviews revealed that discourses relating to the ideal South Asian household continued to exert a powerful influence over women’s lives and were fundamentally experienced as a form of constraint. However, this was ultimately mediated by their stage within the life course. Those who came to Britain as children were unequivocally subject to the authority of their parents.79 In particular, the female respondents were acutely aware of the clash between the public and private domain and the battle to protect religious and community identity. This was exemplified by Balbir’s comments of her experiences in the 1960s. When we were at school we had to wear skirts and mum didn’t like the fact that we had to wear skirts. It was long skirts up to our knees and then we used to wear long socks with it so it was only just the knee that was showing from the back and the front of the knee and

76 EMOHA, CHC, 00524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel. 77 EMOHA, LOHAC, 836, LO/200/151 G. Ganatra. 78 In contrast to the interviews cited here, the male respondents insisted that this was not an issue which affected them personally. N. Jewson, S. Jeffers and V. Kalra, Family Care, Respite Services and Asian Communities in Leicester (Leicester: University of Leicester, 2003), 95. 79 Research has suggested that parental strictness was greatest amongst parents from South Asian origin. See J. Pilcher, Age and Generation in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 46.

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it still mattered to my mum, my mum was thinking it wasn’t a good idea but she didn’t have a choice.80

Although she claimed to have felt ‘good’ wearing the uniform to school, the clothes felt incongruous with the culture which characterised the home. In her words: When we were sitting on the bus we kept on pulling the skirt down. Dad was sitting right opposite to me and I felt ashamed I felt really really stupid, you know I didn’t feel good at all. I felt really really shamed and every time we used to come to school we used to get changed, last thing get into skirt and leave and then as soon as we used to walk into the house we used to change straight away, we wouldn’t even go into the bathroom with my uniform on. I would not do anything in the house with my uniform on ‘cause that’s how shamed and that’s how bad I felt in the uniform.81

The western clothes were effectively stigmatised within the home. The uniform strayed from conventions of sexual modesty and as a result sparked feelings of shame and embarrassment.82 In addition, Balbir’s account reveals how her body was experienced as a site of contradictions, which Balbir herself exerted little authority over.83 Although Mandy remembered the same predicament, her account of the early 1970s conveys that shame did not enforce conformity; rather, in Goffman’s terms, Mandy actively managed her impression of herself which she tailored to different audiences.84 She claimed: ‘For me it was really strange because at home it was strictly Asian and when you were in town you were one of the kids you know so like the miniskirts, I remember one day I forgot to get my skirt down because when you go out, you rolled your skirt up (laughs).’ She claimed, ‘we had two extremes’ and concluded ‘we had to pretend a lot where as the next generation doesn’t have to pretend just to fit in.’85 The use of the word ‘pretend’ adds to the sense that Mandy’s actions were not rigidly dictated by social constraints, but that she was engaged in presenting a performance.

80 BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur. 81 Ibid. 82 This relates to Cooley’s ‘looking glass’ theory whereby people imagine their appearance to others. See T. Scheff, ‘Emotions and identity: a theory of ethnic nationalism’, in C. Calhoun, (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994), 277–303. According to Afshar, Muslim daughters become adept at internalising the double standards associated with wearing a school uniform. See H. Afshar, ‘Gender roles and the “moral economy of kin” among Pakistani women in West Yorkshire’, New Community, 15, 2 (1989), 219. 83 Balbir was a Sikh. However this theme has been developed with reference to Muslim women. See L.A. Odeh, ‘Post-colonial feminism and the veil: thinking the difference, Feminist Review, 43 (1993), 26–37 and S. Khan, ‘The veil as a site of struggle: the hejab in Quebec’, Canadian Woman’s Studies, 5 (1995), 146–152. 84 E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Edinburgh: Anchor, 1959). 85 Mandy 28 May 2002.

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Discourses of shame and honour impinged on women in other ways. A common recollection was that they were prevented from attending further education.86 This is not to suggest that education per se was not valued by South Asians as research has shown that South Asian parents tended to place a high value on education.87 It is important, however, to consider Brah’s remark that there were considerable disparities among South Asians in relation to their views on education, just as there were among other ethnic groups.88 Balbir claimed, ‘She [her mother] didn’t want me to go on to further education. It would have meant that I would have mixed with boys.’89 This was underpinned by her mother’s apprehension that Balbir’s potential relations with ‘boys’ may have risked the family’s honour. She explained, ‘if I had gone off with anybody it would have been insulting to her, that her own daughter had found a man. My mother felt that she had to marry me off with her own hands, she chose rather than I chose.’90 Chitra was, with retrospection, more understanding of the restrictions enforced by her aunt and uncle and reflected that they were a manifestation of their concerns and a form of protection. In her words, their actions signified ‘support’ and were indicative of a trait within South Asian families ‘that you look after your own.’ She arrived in Leicester in 1974 and recalled, I really, really seriously wanted to study and I was so against coming to this country, they weren’t to know that and there are these horror stories aren’t there? People going to university and falling in love and this that and the other I mean their fears were founded, you know, having children now myself, now I can understand especially when it’s not your own child anyway you know you feel even so much more responsible, so they didn’t want that responsibility of me studying.91

The reference to ‘horror stories’ was reiterated in Mandy’s account of the early 1970s and reveals how gossip functioned to preserve the moral order by amplifying fears and tightening constraints.92 I had my O levels and really wanted to go on to university, that’s what I wanted to do, but I think I could have won my dad over, but my mum, bless her because she was a housewife

86 This applied to respondents from all religions, although recent research has cited this amongst Muslims. A. Dale, ‘Social exclusion of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women’, Sociological Research Online, 7, 3, (2002), 5.2. For an alternative view see F. Ahmad, ‘Modern traditions? British Muslim women and academic achievement’, Gender and Education, 13, 2 (2001), 137–52. 87 Bhachu has argued that this was particularly the case for Punjabi Sikhs. See P. Bhachu, Parental Educational Strategies: The Case of Punjabi Sikhs in Britain (Warwick: Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, 1985). See also Bhopal, Gender, ‘Race’ and Patriarchy, 14–6. 88 A. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora (London: Routledge, 1996), 80. 89 Balbir 8 May 2002. 90 Ibid. 91 Chitra 22 May 2002. 92 For further discussion on the mechanism of gossip see F. Dalal, Taking the Group Seriously: Towards a Post-Foulkesian Group Analytic Theory (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998), 118–9.

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and she heard all these horror stories she persuaded my dad saying you know, ‘universities aren’t for Asians, not prim and proper Asian girls they get married and have children’ and that my mum soon became to regret it later you know.93

Education was, therefore, seen as an impediment to conventions and her prescribed role as a wife and mother. This was compounded by perceptions of racism. They felt even education wouldn’t help us to get a job, because we were Asians, my dad, all he thought was as a bloke he’ll only get a foundry job and if you’re a woman you’re lucky if you get a job in sweat shop as a machinist. It didn’t matter what you had done, it’s who you were. But when they realised that we were able to get office jobs, we were getting on with things and you know my mum soon said, ‘gosh I wish I wasn’t being so forceful, I wish I had listened a bit more to your dad’ and then she said ‘it’s you lot you should have fought for it even more’ (laughing).94

In this case, education was seen as ineffectual against the pervasive force of racism and this conception was transmitted from parents to children. It reveals how structures of racism and patriarchy intersected and it lends support to Phoenix’s contention that it was within the realm of the family that minority ethnic children learned their position of social exclusion.95 Allied with this, the pressure to marry was widely reported and this has recently been exposed in other studies.96 In all cases the husband came direct from India and according to Bhambra, this ‘was the trend in the seventies, all my friends were having arranged marriages, everyone was having their husbands come from India.’97 The interviews reveal the different types of emotional and psychological pressure exerted on the women. Balbir, for instance, claimed that when her father discovered she was meeting male friends in Victoria Park in 1972, the family went to India and planned her marriage without her knowledge. ‘After a couple of months dad

93 Chitra 22 May 2002. 94 Mandy 28 May 2002. 95 A. Phoenix, ‘Theories of gender and black families’, in H.S. Mirza, (ed.), Black British Feminism: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1997), 64. 96 Y. Samad and J. Eade, Community Perceptions of Forced Marriage (London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office 2003) and K. Bhopal, ‘South Asian women in arranged marriages in East London’, in R. Barot, H. Bradley and S. Fenton, (eds), Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), 121. For an overview of the literature and debates regarding arranged marriage see R. Penn and P. Lambert, ‘Arranged marriages amongst South Asians in contemporary Britain’, Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 1, 1 (2003), 1–9. According to Takhar marriage norms varied immensely across different categories of South Asian society: see S. Takhar, ‘South Asian women and the question of political organisation’, in N. Puwar and P. Raghuram, (eds), South Asian Women in the Diaspora (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 250. 97 This heightened local prestige and facilitated the entry of grateful sons and daughterin-laws into Britain. See R. Ballard, ‘The South Asian presence in Britain and its transnational connections’, in B. Parekh, G. Singh and S. Vertovec, (eds), Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2003), 16.

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decided to marry me off, that was the punishment for having male friends.’98 This was accompanied with the threat of violence from her father. If we were in India we would have been chopped up he would have killed us straight away there and then he said that. He said ‘you’re in England that’s why you’re safe you know I wouldn’t do anything to you but if you were in India I would chop you up in little pieces and you know chuck you in the river and nobody would ever found you.’ I think I’m almost lucky to be alive, because that’s how strict my dad was.99

This triggered feelings of fear and immense helplessness. She claimed, ‘I was just crying and I wanted to commit suicide you know I was just crying I wanted to run away from home I just didn’t know what to do to myself.’100 However Balbir deferred to her father and conceded that her father’s honour was more important than her personal needs. This shift in her mindset was the outcome of evaluating the precise costs of her actions. As she explained, I was looking at my dad’s, you know, his turban, thinking look how people respect him in the village. He’s a big man, he’s a well known person, he helps society and everybody and all these people and look how much he does for people and people think he’s god almost. People worship him and could I do that to him? Could I commit suicide and then let people talk about my dad?101

She concluded: ‘I done it for my dad, I done it for my mum, I done it for the whole village.’102 Others retold the scenario of travelling to the airport to meet their future husband and confirming to immigration officers that they would marry him. Whilst the threat of physical violence was absent, the women nevertheless felt compelled to agree. As Balbir explained: Had I said ‘no’ then he would have been flown back on the following plane and my mother said ‘if that happens, it will be bad for his family and for ours, as well to think that a child has the right to mess up so many people’s lives?’ So I was under pressure like my mother was holding out both hands to me, she was like this [Her hands were clasped above her head to convey praying] ‘please look after my honour this time please don’t say no, you know, tell them that you want to marry him.’ So I was under immense pressure, knowing it was so wrong I was under immense pressure.103

Thus, not complying with marriage was not perceived as a plausible option, considering Balbir was deemed wholly responsible for the fortunes of other people’s lives. This was a heavy burden considering the legacy of dishonour affected not only

98 BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur. 99 Ibid. See also J. Vasagar, ‘Freedom to choose may have cost bride her life’, The Guardian, 18 January 2003. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Balbir 8 May 2002.

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the immediate families but was handed over to future generations.104 The term ‘child’ exposes how Balbir was expected to show obedience and highlights her inferior location within the web of hierarchical positions of dominance and submission. Thus, Balbir was accorded scant autonomy over the situation. A similar case was experienced by Devi and, although she attempted to resist the marriage and run away from home, her attempts proved futile as her father and brother consistently surveyed her movements. For Devi, her father’s authority was experienced as impervious and non-negotiable.105 Respondents also recalled their lack of authority over the marriage ceremony. Bhambra described the rushed nature of the ceremony and stated, ‘It was very very degrading I went through that, I wonder how many other girls went through that?’ She continued: Nobody was happy, I mean because it happened so fast I didn’t even have time to have a proper wedding dress it was just sort of an outfit conjured up in the middle of the night it wasn’t anything like bridal dressing up or anything no make up nothing it was just a simple very very simple ceremony like I’d probably wear a pair of jeans and get married like that. I had to wear something red yes, but nothing as elaborate as you know you find these bridal dresses. It was very heart breaking to come to think about it. When I think back of that particular day, it’s very very heart breaking, it’s very sad but I had to go through that and it’s put me off marriage completely.106

The event was therefore experienced as perfunctory and associated with feelings of despair and regret. Moreover, once the marriage was cemented, the pressure to stay with the husband was reinforced. Sue recalled the warning from her father that under no circumstances was she allowed to breach the contract. ‘You never get separated or divorced, because none of my children do that. I’ll never forgive you for that. If things get worse, we don’t know what the family’s like and if you can’t take it commit suicide but you don’t come into this house because I never want my reputation, somebody to point the finger at me, that your daughter came back.’ And it was a taboo, it was a big time taboo, that you know if girls come back, it’s always the girls fault full stop. So that was clear I was not accepted back, I had no choice but to put up with that.107

In short, women’s remembrances of their childhood and adolescence stress the manifold constraints placed upon them within the household. The pressure to conform to cultural standards of behaviour and maintain family honour resulted in

104 H. Bradby, ‘Negotiating marriage: young Punjabi women’s assessment of their individual and family interests’, in Barot et al., Ethnicity, Gender and Social Change, 158. 105 Devi 24 June 2002. 106 BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 107 Sue 10 July 2002. See also Bhopal, ‘South Asian women in arranged marriages in East London’, 120.

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rules pertaining to clothing, an exclusion from further education and a pressure to marry.108 The interviews reveal that constraints continued within marriage. The life cycle stage of marriage had a profound impact on the women’s lives. This was evident by the length of time women discussed the issue in contrast to the men who conveyed that the experience of marriage was peripheral to their lives.109 The male respondents typically envisioned wives as necessary for the smooth running of the household and marriage was generally seen as functional and practical.110 This was encapsulated in Khan’s seemingly flippant remark that he married because ‘being man can’t stay without wife’.111 However, for women, marriage heralded significant changes to their lives. A prevalent theme was the experience of isolation.112 This emanated from various sources, particularly through isolation by the spouse. Thus some women described a situation whereby their husband was like a stranger to them. As Balbir disclosed, I felt that he was cold. I realised that when I’d seen his photograph, he had these cold kind of eyes and I said to my mother ‘I don’t like the look of that’ and when I met him, when I’d seen him, he wasn’t very sociable either because some people can break the ice and warm up to you. He was very very quiet very quiet and the only time he spoke to me during sixteen years of marriage was when he wanted his dinner to be ready he’d be like ‘dinner now’. There wasn’t any communication between us.113

The sense of emotional loneliness this generated was stressed, when she added, ‘I had nobody, I couldn’t talk to my own mother because I wasn’t on the same level as her.’114 A striking example of the isolation experienced was also evident in Sue’s narrative. Like Balbir, she felt disconnected from her husband, whom she married in 1976. She claimed, ‘I never went on honeymoon, I never went out with my husband alone, there was always somebody there with us. It was hell, it was just sheer hell.’115 This isolation was amplified by various tactics deployed by the husband’s extended 108 These problems have been identified by the Southall Black Sisters. See J. Patel, Overcoming Discrimination: Selected Strategies Empowering Black, Ethnic Minority and Migrant Women (Brussels: European Women’s Lobby, 1998), 72–3. 109 This has been noted in other studies: see H. Afshar, ‘Muslim women in West Yorkshire: growing up with real and imaginary values admits conflicting views of self and society’, in H. Afhsar and M. Maynard, (eds), The Dynamics of ‘Race’ and Gender, Some Feminist Interventions (London: Taylor and Francis, 1994), 129. 110 BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh and C900/00003 C.M. Vadhia. 111 Khan 4 July 2002. 112 This problem of isolation within the family was noted in contemporary accounts. See for example Z. Dahya, ‘Pakistani wives in Britain’, Race, 6, 4 (1965), 311–21, N. Uberoi, ‘Sikh women in Southall’, Race, 6, 1 (1964), 34–40 and S. Feldman, ‘Changing ways: Asian women in Britain’, New Equals, November/December (1977), 4–6. For recent discussion see M. Abraham, ‘Isolation as a form of marital violence: the South Asian immigrant experience’, Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 9, 3 (2000), 221–38. 113 Balbir 8 May 2002. 114 Ibid. 115 Sue 10 July 2002.

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family, including thwarting contact with her natal family, restricting her finances and, as a result, minimising her contact with the wider society. The effects of this were illustrated by one incident she recalled in 1978; a particularly painful memory. I still never got to see the outside world, what it was like women going to work, bringing so much money, I never had enough money, I couldn’t even buy, I couldn’t even spend one pound. I didn’t know how to cross the road, I didn’t know from Belgrave area, how to get to Royal Infirmary when I was pregnant with my daughter. My husband was working shifts in a factory I still remember very, very clearly I can actually relive it, I can actually feel, even today that I’m going through that. But I still remember I had to go for ante natal classes at Leicester Royal Infirmary and I didn’t know how to get there so I walked up to Melton Road, then main Belgrave Road and I asked somebody and he says ‘yeah, you get the bus and you get there’, so somehow I managed, somehow I got there and I still remember, I don’t know how I ended up on the round-a-bout, Belgrave round-a-bout and I didn’t know how to cross the road that you have to walk up to the crossing and then cross it to get onto Belgrave Road if you are coming from the city and what I was trying to do heavily pregnant I was trying to run across and the car would come and I’d run back and I thought oh my god how do I get to Melton Road or Belgrave Road? How do I cross the road? And I still didn’t know I was really, I felt so helpless. I thought wait a minute they were supposed to be so rich living in a detached property, colour television, a car, so much money I’d heard and they were, really, really, wealthy. I thought wait a minute here I am don’t even know how to cross the road, heavily pregnant, how do I? If I get late my mother-in-law will get very cross, you know, ‘where have you been all this time?’ And I still feel, I think I was probably crying at the time but I did feel really, really helpless, I don’t know how I managed to get home.116

Her inability to perform a presumably simple, taken for granted task aptly depicts how her isolation and dependency rendered her vulnerable and disempowered and throughout the interview she consistently referred to her lack of knowledge and awareness of the outside world. According to Sue this isolation was intentionally calculated to maintain her subservient position within the household. In her words, ‘they never wanted any outside influence, they never wanted me to get that clever, that then I will say, ‘excuse me I don’t want this’, they never wanted that so the first condition was that I will stay at home and be a housewife full stop.’117 Related to this, marriage cast women into very narrowly defined roles. In particular, women who lived within a joint family were subject to overwhelming pressures and were expected not only to fulfil the role of a wife and mother but to also meet the demands of the dutiful daughter-in-law. Chitra described the immense strains and feelings of exasperation this caused her, when she married in 1974. I think I found that I was thrust into a role that I wasn’t at all prepared for, if you think about a seventeen year old, they’re so naïve and so little knowledge and theirs so much. I was the older daughter-in-law so that has its responsibilities and I think I found it really difficult, just those few years, and also becoming a mother quite soon within the year of marriage I think I had my daughter and I think everything combining being a daughterin-law and a wife and mother and all that, it was really really hard. I think I lost a lot of 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid.

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Chitra’s incorporation into the extended family therefore involved a drastic transition, as she was expected to embody ideal roles and embrace new obligations. According to Chitra, the ideal daughter-in-law encompassed slotting into the husband’s family lifestyle and simply doing ‘what the family wanted her to do’.119 This involved following a strict regime of working Monday to Friday, completing the household chores and shopping on Saturday, and visiting members of the community on Sunday. Responding to the needs of others consumed all her energy and time and her own needs were bypassed. Consequently she was left with no time to spend with her husband. She recalled, ‘I really resented that’, yet conceded ‘in those days you didn’t question you know you were, you just did. I mean, I wouldn’t stand for it now you know you develop as you move and I wouldn’t do half the things now that I did then, but that was how it was then.’120 As the daughter-in-law Chitra was the weakest member of the household, but Chitra’s remarks indicate how she gradually learned to negotiate and contest the power relations embedded within the household. A further factor which moulded these women’s experiences was their former class status. Many women from East Africa stressed their former comfortable and high standard of living before, with servants to work for them. Chitra recalled the duties undertaken by their domestic worker, which the family had become accustomed to. He would also come in the house and he would clean the house and he would do the sweeping and the wiping the floor, wash the dishes and he would wash the clothes, so he did the work, the things, so we didn’t have to do any of that and I’m really ashamed to say that we just accepted it as part and parcel of life and didn’t think anything more of it.121

Chitra was ill equipped therefore for the daily hardships of housework which were thrust upon her. Likewise, Sue also felt unprepared and found it difficult to adjust: I would get up really late and I wouldn’t clean the bathroom after I had a wash or bath because it just doesn’t occur to me because I had servants to do that you know, it doesn’t occur to me. So when I helped in the kitchen, cooking, I wouldn’t tidy the kitchen or the sink I would leave everything messy but it’s not my fault because I was not trained to do that at all.122

Consequently Sue was punished by the family who resorted to physical force to induce her passivity. I was thrown out so many times, out of the house, because I’d argued or because I hadn’t put enough salt in the curry or something like that you know, so its like they’d throw

118 Chitra 22 May 2002. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Sue 10 July 2002.

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me out then come and fetch me when they felt like it and you know I begged them for forgivingness and I cried and I said ‘okay I’ll never do it I’ll make good curries from now on, I’ll make good chapattis.’123

As a result, the female respondents were consistently critical of the extended family and equated it with ‘a burden’, ‘no privacy’, or ‘no freedom’.124 However, women tended to wield more authority within a nuclear family.125 The traditional practice of patrilocality involved the transfer of the wife to the husband’s household. Research has shown that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis preferred to live within an extended family, whilst East African Asians and Indians have claimed that a married couple should establish their own household after marriage, albeit, they should live in close proximity.126 Within the nuclear household women exercised greater influence as household managers. Mandy, for instance, made key financial decisions; an important determinant of power relations within the household.127 As she explained, my role before I got married it was a case of I with my sister we paid the bills we made sure all the paper work was done and when I got married, you know I’m quite independent, I’m quite head strong I can deal with things so when we actually first got married and you know roles had been established, right from early on my husband said ‘well I’m not good at paper, I’m not going to, you deal with it I’ll deal with everyday, with the family disputes, you deal with the monetary things and what needs to be done.’ And strange as it may be that his family is in India, his dad and his brother, even though from quite early on, any decisions that were made regarding finances in India they all sort of came to me and we’ve been quite successful, we’ve been able to turn a lot of things round in India as well as here and you know we’ve done quite well we’ve really done well, kids will benefit from the heritage I think (laughs). I like dabbling in stocks and shares, I like investing and you know we’ve managed to progress.128

Similarly Balbir exerted greater control over household finances and after a year of marriage, in 1978, persuaded her husband to stop sending remittances to his family 123 Ibid. For further research on in-laws and violence see S. Choudry, ‘Pakistani women’s experience of domestic violence in Great Britain’, Research Findings Home Office Research Study, 43 (London: Home Office, 1996), 1–4. 124 Devi 24 June 2002 and BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra and C900/09083 B. Kotecha. 125 P. Bhachu, ‘Apni Marzi Kardhi, home and work: Sikh women in Britain’, in S. Westwood and P. Bhachu, (eds), Enterprising Women: Ethnicity, Economy and Gender Relations (London: Routledge, 1988), 79. 126 See S. Beishon, T. Modood and S. Virdee, Ethnic Minority Families (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1998) and R. Goodwin et al., Social Support and Marital Well-Being in an Asian Community (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1997), 3–5. It is important to note that there were regional differences due to differences in housing stock: see K. Blakemore and M. Boneham, Age, Race and Ethnicity: A Comparative Approach (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994), 81–2. 127 K. Bhopal, ‘Domestic finances in South Asian households in East London’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 25, 1 (1999), 81–94. 128 Mandy 28 May 2002.

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in India and instead, allocate his income towards purchasing a house in Leicester. Balbir claimed her husband deferred to her decisions relating to domestic matters and stated: ‘anything that happened it was instigated by me’.129 She added ‘When I did leave him after sixteen years I felt as though I’d abandoned him like a baby because he was no more capable than a baby of doing anything.’130 His dependency on Balbir was shared by other members of the family, as she took the lead role in solving family problems and provided imperative moral guidance. According to Balbir, ‘I have taken control of all my family’ and this subversion of traditional gender roles was substantiated by others who claimed Balbir was ‘meant to have been the oldest boy of the family’.131 Thus, women did not simply assume a cooperative and responsive stance within the domestic arena, but particularly within a nuclear family, were able to assert decisions and master their own actions. However, these women were also Sikhs and previous research has shown that the independence of Sikh women within the household was linked to the ideology of the Sikh religion, which stressed the equal status of men and women.132 To review the themes relating to the household, the interviews reveal the extent to which discourses relating to the family and the ideal household permeated women’s lives and resulted in numerous restraints. As women entered marriage they encountered problems of isolation and confining gender roles and were often denied access to basic human needs such as respect and sociability.133 Their restriction to the private sphere mirrors Walby’s conception of private patriarchy, whereby the male head of household controlled women individually and gained from their unpaid labour within household production.134 According to Walby this form of patriarchy prevailed in nineteenth century Britain and has since been eclipsed by public patriarchy: women’s exploitation at work. Although Walby acknowledged that the dominant type of patriarchy varied across different minority ethnic communities, her conception requires further modification in relation to the experience of South Asian women, as it overlooks the influence of the household type on women’s authority and in particular it ignores the role of the mother-in-law.135 The mother-in-law essentially presided over the domestic domain, and thus it was not simply a male patriarch who sought to control women and benefit from their subordinate position.

129 Balbir 8 May 2002. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. See also Devi 24 June 2002. 132 Bhachu, ‘Apni Marzi Kardhi, home and work’, 77–8. 133 J.M. Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 140–41. 134 S. Walby, Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 23–4. 135 Ibid., 181.

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Negotiating Constraints Whilst other studies have also noted the constraints placed on women, many present a snap shot picture and fail to appreciate the importance of the life cycle dimension.136 The interviews reveal that certain problems were not a permanent aspect of the women’s lives but were often transient. Thus, women were engaged in a continual process of navigating constraints and overcoming problems as they arose. This was achieved through various strategies. An enduring theme throughout the interviews is that women tended to be very pragmatic in the coping strategies they developed. They were acutely aware of their constraints and often accepted reality at a given time, without loosing sight of their long term aims. Chitra, for instance, accepted that she could not continue with her education when she married and had children, but she was patient and quietly determined and pursued a law degree later on in life. She remarked, ‘I’ve got five children so you can see that I had to wait quite a while before I started studying, but it’s something I always wanted to do.’137 For other women their role as child bearers was not experienced as a hindrance to pursuing their own goals, but represented an informal power, which enabled them to manoeuvre circumstances. This was exemplified by Sue’s comments: I thought no matter what happens, this is it, this is my life and I’ll have to accept that. So few months later I heard my father-in-law he said ‘oh we should all go to India and settle in India because this is a really bad country, bad influence, the divorces’ and all this and I heard and I thought, oh my god that’s not what I wanted, I wanted to come here, I didn’t want to go back to India, so the best thing would be if I fell pregnant then that’s it, at least I will have a children in this country, so I fell pregnant straight away.138

The role of motherhood established the woman’s place within the household and enhanced her status, yet Sue used the option of pregnancy to secure her life in Britain.139 This shows the importance of imagining and planning as a vital facet of women’s agency and how the meaning of activities and strategies were often discreet.140 Furthermore, it demonstrates that women did not want to usurp men but advance their own strategies to improve their own well being and orchestrate their own lives.

136 For an exception see Werbner, The Migration Process, 147–50, P.A. Dossa, ‘(Re) imagining aging lives: ethnographic narratives of Muslim women in diaspora’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 14 (1999), 245–72. 137 Chitra 22 May 2002. 138 Ibid. 139 S. Warrier, ‘Marriage, maternity, and female economic activity: Gujarati mothers in Britain’, in Westwood and Bhachu, Enterprising Women, 135. Women’s ‘power’ as childbearers was noted in Rahat ‘The role of women in reciprocal relationships in a Punjab village’, 79. 140 P.R. Pessar and S.J. Mahler, ‘Gender and transnational migration’, Working Paper (Princeton: Princeton University, 2001), 8. Scott has noted that opposition to power was typically hidden. J.C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

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Although co-operation was often desirable, for some women divorce provided the resolution to an unsatisfactory marriage.141 This was often a decision taken by women following many years of marriage; however in the 1970s Bhambra refused to accept the conditions of her forced marriage and resolved to leave without hesitation. Her steadfast determination was manifested when she locked her husband out of her bedroom and audaciously confronted his family the next day. His family expected me to stay I said ‘look I’m going back to Leicester because I’ve to go back to work the following day’, yeah but they said ‘you’re married now you’ve got to stay here.’ I said ‘no I’m going back to work and I’m not coming back’ and they took it very lightly they laughed, they said ‘but you’ve got to stay’ I said ‘no I’m not staying here I’m going back to Leicester and I’m not coming back.’ ‘Oh you’re joking’ I said ‘no I’m not joking look at the expression on my face’, I was very very outspoken in those days and I stuck to my guns.142

For other women, divorce was also presented as a pivotal juncture when they attempted to assert control over their lives, yet divorce precipitated immense problems and women were invariably ostracised and stigmatised by their family and suffered extreme isolation.143 Bhambra recalled ‘I was looked down upon by every Tom, Dick and Harry in the family; my cousins, my sisters-in-law, everybody turned against me saying that ‘“she is too liberated she is no good, keep her at arms length.”’144 Likewise Balbir’s family were ‘disgusted’ by her divorce in the 1990s, whilst Devi stated her in-laws used to ‘hate’ her when she divorced in 1984 and refuted her claims of domestic violence.145 In her words, although divorce is very common nowadays but that time, bad, they thought it’s bad. They never blame men. Indian community as such, they never blame men, they always blame women, always, always. That’s why I stopped going to everybody’s house and I tried to commit suicide and everything because I was all alone.146

A prominent response to these adversities was to muster personal strength. Balbir distinguished herself from women who ‘look up to their men ‘cause I’m the mere woman’, and instead claimed, ‘I’ve always been strong in myself. I mean even now I think to myself I’d rather be on my own than be with someone whose unsuitable ‘cause

141 Divorce was less acceptable for Pakistani and Bangladeshis than East African Asians and Indians. See Beishon et al., Ethnic Minority Families, 66. According to Patel, divorce was not an option for women who migrated to Britain to marry as they typically faced deportation. P. Patel, ‘Third wave feminism and black women’s activism’, in Mirza, Black British Feminism, 261–3. 142 BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 143 This is also discussed in R. Ballard, ‘South Asian families’, in R.N. Rapoport, M.P. Fogarty and R.Rapoport, (eds), Families in Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 179–204. 144 BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 145 Balbir 8 May 2002 and Devi 24 June 2002. 146 Ibid.

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I don’t need a man, I’m quite independent.’147 Thus many women defined themselves as strong and emphasised their belief in independence and self responsibility. They did not internalise the shame propagated by others but created their own positive self-image based on the antithesis of the deferential South Asian woman. This was most important considering feminists have contended that women were socialised to perceive themselves from the perspective of men and as a result may develop a sense of inferiority and a passive temperament.148 Other women obtained strength from various sources. Some drew on spirituality and education as a source of self empowerment and inspiration. Devi for instance turned to Hindu art, which she sold for charity. She concluded: ‘That’s where I got my strength from, that’s why I’ve survived, otherwise I would have died a long time ago.’149 Moreover, this strategy was not limited to divorced women, but was also evident in the narratives of those who stayed with their husbands and endured other problems.150 Balbir for instance claimed she pulled through her ‘hard times’ because she was ‘very very strong’ and her mother proved to be a crucial role model. She explained: mum was very very strong person, she did pull through a lot of weight, everybody’s weight looking after the children and you know looking after the farm and the people who were looking after us and everything, she did so much I don’t think any woman would cope nowadays you know especially without a husband. I think that’s what it is, that’s what’s made me very very strong woman very strong person because I take after my mum you know. I saw mum going through hard time, I saw mum working very very hard, I saw mum fighting with people fighting for her rights and everything and I think that’s why because I’m her blood naturally I’m like that you know.151

Mandy’s mother was also a role model for her. She cited her mother as ‘the most dominating one in our household’ and claimed, ‘she had the last say whether we were going to university she had the last say in anything, she controlled the finances and that’s how I was bought up I think that’s how I picked it up.’152 Interestingly, Mandy stressed that her mother’s authority was ‘kept within the household’ and as a result did not undermine the father’s authority publicly.153 Similarly, Valand also defined herself throughout the interview as independent and although she was intensely aware of the pressures associated with being a wife and daughter-in-law, she did not allow these roles to subsume her sense of self. She 147 Balbir 8 May 2002. 148 P.M. Lengermann and J. Niebrugge-Brantley, ‘Contemporary feminist theory’, in G. Ritzer, (ed.), Sociological Theory (London: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 484. This notion is also central to other theories of inequality. See N. Elias and J.L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders (London: Sage Publications, 1965), 102 and B.V. Stolk and C. Wouters, ‘Power changes and self-respect: a comparison of two cases of established-outsider relations’, Theory, Culture and Society, 4 (1987), 477–88. 149 Devi 24 June 2002. 150 See for example BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. 151 BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur. 152 Mandy 28 May 2002. 153 Ibid.

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described how she was tied to the mother-in-law in the early 1970s, but added, ‘I must remember here that although I was married, I was still a teenager, although I was a daughter-in-law, I was myself, I wanted to venture, I wanted to explore the places and that’s what I was doing, learning about the place and people.’154 This demonstrates that within the household women were defined in relation to others, as a wife and daughter-in-law, yet Valand consciously retained her individual sense of identity. Although women were circumscribed by prescribed gender roles, they did not assume the totality of their lives. Women’s entrance into the labour market also offered some women an alternative source of recognition and self worth, yet it also enabled them to negotiate power relations within the household.155 Research has shown that East African Asian and Indian women were more likely to participate in work outside the home than Bangladeshi and Pakistanis, though according to some scholars this was related to their length of stay in Britain, rather than any ‘cultural constraints’.156 Most women commenced paid work once their children had passed the stage of infancy. However, this was often earlier for those who resided within an extended family as the motherin-law provided essential child care support. This highlights some of the benefits associated with the extended family, as Kotecha explained, ‘here if you are staying with the laws, mother-in-law and father-in-law, then it’s not difficult, because when you go to work, they will look after the kid, but if you are alone then it is very difficult.’157 A common theme was that the income women earned helped to improve their well-being. Devi claimed that her income enabled her to purchase consumer goods including a television and made it possible for the family to eat out at weekends. She stated, ‘we got that little bit of extra cash and we were happy, we used to go out for a meal Friday and I never used to cook Friday and Saturday.’158 It raised her standard of living, therefore, and freed her from certain household chores. This provides an alternative view to research which has claimed that the children and husband were the prime beneficiaries of South Asian women’s work and that the women themselves were denied any material benefits.159 154 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. 155 The experience of paid work and the implications on their sense of identity will be discussed in Chapter 6. 156 Bhopal, Gender, ‘Race’ and Patriarchy, 10, 145 and Beishon et al., Ethnic Minority Families, 69–70. Brah claims that the South Asian women who entered the labour market in the 1960s and 1970s were mainly Sikhs and Hindus, whilst Muslim women tended to arrive in the 1980s. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, 128–51. 157 BL, NSA, C900/09083 B. Kotecha. Though the presumption that an extended family equalled more support has been challenged: see S. Katbamna et al., Experiences and Needs of Carers from the South Asian Communities (Leicester: University of Leicester, 1998), 225–6. 158 Devi 24 June 2002. 159 Warrier, ‘Marriage, maternity and female economic activity’, 141. Others have noted that women did not control their earnings, but handed them over to the men. See Afshar, ‘Gender roles and the “moral economy of kin”’, 222 and S. Westwood, ‘Workers and wives: continuities and discontinuities in the lives of Gujarati women’, in Westwood and Bhachu, Enterprising Women, 102. However, more recent research has shown that women’s experience

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For other women, their wages effectively reduced their dependence on their husbands and enabled them to override male authority. As Kotecha remarked, ‘in Africa for the lady they don’t go to work so … you got to stay under husband.’160 Sue worked for three mornings in a playgroup in 1980 and saved the money to take driving lessons. She recalled, ‘I started to learn to drive and my parents-in-law said “no you can’t” and I said “no I’m going to”. That’s the first time I put my foot down. I said “no I want to, I’m not asking you for money. I’m earning myself.”’161 As women gained confidence through work they were therefore able to influence the decisions in the family.162 Furthermore, once Sue was able to drive, this in turn boosted her autonomy and self sufficiency. This was also experienced by Mandy. In her words, ‘I passed my driving test and got myself a car and that really gave me a lot of independence. I was able to go out in the evenings with the kids, it wasn’t a case of I had to stay at home because we hadn’t got a car and I sort of organised my life.’163 A further effect was that the division of labour within the household was altered and men were accorded greater responsibility for household tasks.164 Female respondents commented that when they went out to work their husbands were left to care for the child and this change was confirmed by the men.165 Karim noted, ‘husband and wife, they have to share the work in the house and there are all sorts of opportunities for wife or woman. Okay, my husband’s doing this, I’m going to do these things. In the evening he is going to look after my child so I can work part time in the evening.’166 However this is not to suggest that conjugal roles within the household were automatically transformed as the majority of the women still retained primary responsibility for the housework and childcare.167 This ‘double burden’ has prompted some scholars to posit that paid work was not as liberating

of domestic finances was related to their level of education, position within the labour market and family type, with women handing over their wages in lower income households. See Bhopal, ‘Domestic finances in South Asian households in East London’. 160 BL, NSA, C900/09083 B. Kotecha. 161 Sue 10 July 2002. 162 Other studies have noted that women’s employment increased their equality within the home for a summary see S. Pedraza, ‘Women and migration: the social consequences of gender’, Annual Review of Sociology, 17 (1991), 321–2. 163 Mandy 28 May 2002. 164 This has been noted in other studies of immigrant women. See P.R. Pessar, ‘The linkage between the household and the workplace in the experience of Dominican immigrant women in the United States’, International Migration Review, 18 (1984), 1118–1211. 165 Balbir 8 May 2002 and BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 166 Karim 13 June 2002. 167 This concurs with research in Britain and North America. See Beishon et al., Ethnic Minority Families, 37–8, 52–3, S. Dasgupta, ‘Conjugal roles and social network in Indian immigrant families: Bott revisited’, Journal of Comparative Family Studies 23, 3 (1992), 465–80 and U. George, ‘Race, gender, and class: interlocking oppressions in the lives of South Asian women in Canada’, Affilia Journal of Women and Social Work, 13, 1 (1998), 102–120.

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as Western feminists have supposed and that it actually devalued the women’s role within the household.168 Mandy claimed that although she devised a rota to overcome these difficulties and ensure household chores were evenly distributed, the majority of women she knew retained responsibility for the running of the household. Most notably, she cited the example of one woman she knew who had experienced considerable occupational success and had progressed from a machinist to owning her own business. According to Mandy, ‘she must earn you know three times as much as he [husband] does but at the end of the day she still has to go home and do the housework.’ Hence, ‘there are still women like that, who despite all their achievements are still classed as the wife.’169 Similarly, Saujani discussed her dilemma: When I got married obviously the responsibility fell on me to juggle work and home. I find that still quite difficult not in the sense of just keeping the house but also in the sense of you are the sole main educator of your children, the culture that you pass, the language that you pass on, the way of life you pass on to them and it becomes a big struggle when you are working full time and you still have to come home and make sure you know all these things and it becomes a constant struggle in a way. And because I’ve never been brought up to think I’m going out to work that was something I never thought of in terms of how do other women do it, for example, in this culture. So it’s become a constant learning experience in the sense you make mistakes and you learn from it so there is no one way and I’m still finding the best way to do that.170

Whilst her husband had adapted to sharing the housework, Saujani still shouldered the responsibility as the cultural transmitter. This generated feelings of ambivalence and guilt which were most apparent when she commented, ‘I just feel because I’ve been brought up to think it was my role, I just feel [as if I am] being split in two at times. Am I doing this right? Am I doing that right? And you feel you are sort of torn between the two.’171 Nevertheless, Saujani’s claim that it was part of ‘learning experience’ implies she did not passively accept the ‘double burden’, but consistently worked to overcome problems. Recreating Culture: Continuities and Change Despite the struggles and hard work, many women took pride in the example they set for their children and their role within the household fostered feelings of authority, self worth and self achievement. This was most evident in Sue’s narrative: One can balance. I still go to the temple, I still attend weddings, I still do my duty, I still have guests, I still feed, I do everything and I know how to dress. If I go to the temple, I don’t turn up in a pair of jeans, I do dress appropriately and I have balance. Now, I mean

168 H. Afshar and M. Maynard, ‘Gender and ethnicity at the millennium: from margin to centre’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23, 5 (2000), 805–19. 169 Mandy 28 May 2002. 170 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 171 Ibid.

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I shouldn’t be saying this because it sounds like I’m not being modest but in our family people take my example. Look at Sue you know, one minute I’m nine to five Sue when I’m out working in an English western dress, in a suit or tight pair of jeans or whatever then that’s me then that’s it you know, but once I get home, I become a housewife. I make sure the house is reasonable clean, I’ve done my cooking, I’ve done my duties. It’s my duty.172

Sue insisted that she had not experienced a ‘burden’, but a ‘compromise’. She added, If I try to be too westernised then how can I train my girl to have that balance? I want my daughter-in-law to be like a proper daughter-in-law … but I can’t expect that if I’m not prepared to balance in the first place and set an example for them so I don’t think it’s a problem, but there is a compromise anywhere you go you know.173

Her role was, therefore, a valuable source of identity, stability and self esteem. Moreover, her emphasis on wanting her daughter-in-law to be a ‘proper’ daughterin-law reveals how she actively participated in reproducing gender relations within the home. Nevertheless, the women did not simply pass on a static, immutable culture; instead they revised their cultures and accepted some values, whilst consciously rejecting others.174 For instance, many were keen to transmit religious practices and knowledge to their children, yet they stressed that they would not require their children to have arranged marriages.175 Bhambra stated: ‘Let them choose their own, how they want to be, should they choose to get married to them or should they want to live with them it’s their choice. Let them make their own life.’176 Others stated that their values were reformulated due to their own experiences. As Kotecha explained, now I can say that when I was young, my parents, they don’t let me go out with friends, or with the boys and if my father, if he see I’m talking with the boys, they will start shouting and fighting. But now I like my daughter to go, she goes out I don’t mind, but I want to know where’s she’s going and with whom.177

Many stressed the importance of learning the language of the dominant culture. Kaur stated: ‘Parents should speak the English language with their kids because 172 Sue 10 July 2002. 173 Ibid. 174 P. Bhachu, ‘Culture, ethnicity and class among Punjabi Sikh women in 1990’s Britain’, New Community 17, 3 (1991), 401–12. 175 For transmitting religion see, for example, Mandy 28 May 2002 and BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. For changing attitudes towards marriage see also T. Modood et al., Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage (London: PSI, 1997), 314–319. According to Bhopal, Muslims were more likely to have arranged marriages, followed by Sikhs and then Hindus, although religion did not influence attitudes towards marriage. Bhopal, Gender, ‘Race’ and Patriarchy, 58–78. 176 BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 177 BL, NSA, C900/09083 B. Kotecha.

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it is very very and I mean very very important.’178 Whilst, when Mandy was asked whether she felt it was important for her children to learn Punjabi, she responded, ‘I don’t think it’s as important as my parents thought it was but then again we couldn’t communicate with our parents in any other way and no, as far as I’m concerned their education is paramount than them learning a second language.’179 Unlike her parents who felt an education was futile against the inexorable force of racism, Mandy was aware that education offered opportunities to achieve a higher social status and this was possible without forsaking an ethnic identification. She added: The importance for them is to get proper careers, proper education, focus on that because this is the country they’re going to be living in so it’s important that they adapt the cultures and so forth and that’s paramount. Not losing their own identity because I don’t think they have. I think my children have managed to adapt to both.180

Women also adopted more egalitarian values. Kaur claimed that she contested the gender inequalities she had learned as a child and claimed, ‘some of the values I don’t agree with, simply that men and women should not mix, that men, boys should be fed more than little girls ‘cause they’re boys and they’re going to grow up to be men.’181 She therefore imbued her children with notions of equality. In her words: I’ve brought my children up to think that they’re equal to each other and I must admit my youngest daughter I said to her the other day ‘you’ve got to learn to roll out some chapattis that’s Indian’, she says ‘oh I will when he does’ and that’s my son, which is a fair comment which is good. It’s nice to see that, it’s equality isn’t it? You know people should be respected for what they are not what gender they’re born into.182

From their own experiences these women were acutely aware of the importance of the household as a key site where values, dispositions and practices were transmitted. As cultural reproducers, the female respondents sought to negotiate deeply entrenched cultural traditions and innovate and fuse different values. Alongside their daily struggles to assert control over their own lives, these women were also committed to a long term strategy, designed to transform gender relations for future generations.183 The immigrant cohort was integral to the respondents’ experiences of accommodation, whilst the degree to which constraints were felt hinged on their access to resources, such as social and economic capital. However, with regards to relations within the household, there was no simple correlation between immigrant cohort and actual experiences. Suffice to say, this was largely due to the many axes of differentiation within the South Asian population, such as language, religion, wealth, caste, education and so forth which were not simply transmitted from the

178 BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur. 179 Mandy 28 May 2002. 180 Ibid. 181 Balbir 8 May 2002. 182 Ibid. 183 See also Bradby, ‘Negotiating marriage’, 163–4.

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respondents country of origin.184 Within the home, men attempted to reassert their authority and demanded strict conformity to the principles of the ideal South Asian household. This imposed numerous restraints on women, including rules relating to clothing, exclusion from further education and a pressure to marry. Within marriage, women experienced isolation and confining gender roles, although this varied according to household type and was further complicated by the women’s previous class status. Nevertheless, the female respondents were able to resist restraints and this included pursuing pragmatic strategies, divorce and cultivating personal strength, whilst women’s entrance into the labour market granted them leverage to negotiate household relations. However, the nature of constraints was inextricably linked to the life course. As the daughter-in-law, women were the weakest members of the household, yet when women assumed the role of cultural reproducers they seized the opportunity to reformulate cultural values and instigate change. Finally, whilst black feminists have reclaimed the household as a site of resistance against white domination, this chapter has shown that it is also important to recognise the continuing struggles against gender inequalities within the household.185

184 This is also argued by Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora and Takhar, ‘South Asian women and the question of political organisation’. 185 b. hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston: Turnaround, 1990), 46, H. Carby, ‘White women listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood’, in Centre for Contemporary Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 212–35 and V. Amos and P. Parmar, ‘Challenging imperial feminism’, Feminist Review, 17 (1984), 3–19. See also G.T. Nain, ‘Black women, sexism and racism’, in S. Jackson, (ed.), Women’s Studies: A Reader (Cambridge: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 220–22.

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Chapter 5

The Neighbourhood The dominant representation of Leicester is of a city characterised by harmonious relations where ‘Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians live together happily in the neat narrow brick terraces’.1 Yet does this image reflect the actual experiences of South Asians? This chapter takes the neighbourhood as a spatial setting within which people reside and interact socially to explore the respondents’ perceptions and lived experience of the urban environment.2 An analysis at the neighbourhood level also allows a focus on the meso level of social interaction and the useful contacts, networks and group memberships, as well as the obligations tied to friendships and kinships, known as social capital.3 Research on social capital has revealed how people’s relationships to their neighbourhood and their stock of social networks have important ramifications for their sense of well-being.4 In particular, social networks have been noted as an important resource for immigrants, countering the alienation caused by migration and aiding consequent adaptation.5 This chapter seeks to explore the respondents’ relationship to their neighbourhood. What forms of social inclusion and exclusion did they encounter? Whom or what excluded them? How did men and women actively generate and negotiate their own forms of social capital? On what basis were these relations formed? What were the positive and negative effects of these networks? Following on from previous chapters, the complexity of experiences and the agency of the respondents will be revealed, yet this chapter will also elucidate the significance of place in the formation of people’s subjective realities.6

1 ‘Side by side’, The Guardian, 1 January 2001. 2 For further discussion of definitions of neighbourhood see G. Galster, ‘On the nature of the neighbourhood’, Urban Studies, 38, 9 (2001), 2111–24, R. Meegan and A. Mitchell, ‘“It’s not community round here, it’s neighbourhood.” Neighbourhood change and cohesion in urban regeneration policies’, Urban Studies, 38, 9 (2001), 2172 and R. Forrest and A. Kearns, ‘Social cohesion, social capital and the neighbourhood’, Urban Studies, 38, 12 (2001), 2125– 43. 3 P. Bourdieu, ‘The forms of capital’, in A.H. Halsey et al., (eds), Education, Culture, Economy and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 46–58. 4 V. Morrow, ‘Conceptualising social capital in relation to the well-being of children and young people: a critical review’, Sociological Review, 47, 4 (1999), 744–65. 5 M.N. Marger, ‘The use of social and human capital among Canadian business immigrants’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27, 3 (2001), 439–53. 6 P. Jackson and J. Penrose, (eds), Constructions of Race, Place and Nation (London: Routledge, 1993), 12–13.

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Boundaries of Exclusion As Bourdieu has stressed, social capital is not a natural or social given, but a process which must be invested in continually.7 Social networks needed to be created so respondents invariably recalled the absence of a social life on their arrival in Leicester. Men who arrived before the 1970s typically recalled the limited range of places for social interaction. For instance, Choudhury arrived in Leicester in 1938 and claimed he would simply ‘stay in the house or go out to work or go out have a walk around’ in his spare time.8 He added, ‘Those days there were no mosques in Leicester, you couldn’t go, but library or sometimes go in the shops and have a look round.’9 This conveys a sense that he was not engaged in social activities but circulated between work and home or wandered the streets. Others visited the park. According to Singh, who arrived in 1967, ‘we all used to go to Spinney Hill Park and we went to town. We used to walk to town. So that’s the only two places we went to for the first twelve months or so.’10 Another option was the pub. For instance, Shokki claimed in the 1950s, ‘a visit to the pub and beer was the main source of entertainment’ and Patel stated, we came in March but at that time 1965 it was snowing it was very cold for us and my brothers were here and they used to mix with the white people and they used to go to the pub in the evening as white people are going you know, but as I came from Kenya, I had no experience of this and I had no like for the drink you know so this was very, very tough for me, because I didn’t like to go to pub at that time, even today I’m not going.11

The pub was a signifier of the dominant white culture and was clearly experienced by Patel as problematic.12 Yet whilst these quotations illustrate the lack of suitable spaces for sociability, they also confirm that the male respondents were involved in some social activities, had forged social ties and were active in social space. This contrasts sharply with the female respondents who recalled their initial isolation from the neighbourhood.13 As Valand explained, South Asian women felt 7 Bourdieu, ‘The forms of capital.’ This is also recognised in P. Werbner, The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings Among British Pakistanis (Oxford: Berg, 1990), 2–3. 8 British Library, National Sound Archive (BL, NSA), C900/00001 A.H. Choudhury. 9 Ibid. 10 BL, NSA, C900/09138b G.S. Singh. 11 Highfields Library (HL), Highfields Remembered Archive (HL, HRA), A.S. Shokki and Patel 3 July 2002. For other references to the pub see also HL, HRA, B.S. Anwal, A. Singh and B.S. Claire. 12 For a discussion of how the landscape represented the dominant culture see D. Cosgrove, ‘Geography is everywhere: culture and symbolism in human landscapes’, in R. Walford and D. Gregory, (eds), Horizons in Human Geography (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), 118–35. 13 This has been noted in other oral history accounts. See C. Jenkins, ‘Passport to learning project’, BBC Radio 4, Women’s Hour, Bangladesh, 26 September 2002, S.V. Khan, ‘Asian women in Britain: strategies of adjustment of Indian and Pakistani migrants’, Social Action, 25, 3 (1975), 312–13, C. Chowdhury et al., (eds), Our Home in Loughborough: The Story of the First Bangladeshi Settlers in Charnwoood (Loughborough: Charnwood Arts,

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excluded from white leisure spaces such as the ‘masculine’ pub and ‘feminine’ bingo. There was nothing much really, nothing much, no parties, I don’t remember Asian girls going to parties, Asian men would go to a pub but of course ladies don’t go to a pub, do they? That’s not possible (laughs) and Asian families don’t go to play bingo, we didn’t for some reason we just don’t, it’s not within our culture to go and play such games.14

In addition, various factors coalesced to isolate women from the neighbourhood. This included the ramifications of paid work. Mistry explained how her employment severely restricted her free time: ‘I didn’t have a social life for so many years because it was all work, work, work. Saturday and Sunday we used to work, seven days a week and end of the day we feel so tired we didn’t have that much of a social life for so many years.’15 This was combined with the ‘cold and dark’ British weather and the English ethos of home centredness which was prevalent in the 1960s.16 As Valand recalled: I wasn’t shocked about the layout of the house, I wasn’t shocked about the yard, what I was shocked about was the winter nights, the winter evenings, when people just stayed in the house, they couldn’t go out because they would be tired after work or they would stay at home watching television. There wasn’t that kind of social life as I was used to. That was very difficult and in the beginning I did miss those open spaces, I did miss that social life, thinking oh dear, we have to stay in four walls all the time, everything has to be done within the four walls. (Pause) I did shed some tears, but then gradually you do get used to the new lifestyle.17

This new lifestyle was underpinned by norms and expectations of privacy. As Valand explained, The family life used to be very private; we didn’t know what the neighbours were up to. We knew or I knew rather that they were very private people. That they had their own life and like in India you can’t just go and enter in anybody’s house you have to knock on the door or you have to say, “is it all right for us to come in? Would you like to come and have a cup of tea with us?” Things like that, you had to use certain, very different tones as well, that way it was very different.18

1999), 26–9. See also K. Gardner, Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 60. 14 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. A similar account is presented in C. Hyde, S. Vadnerkar and A. Cutting, Parampara: Continuing the Tradition, Thirty Years of Indian Dance and Music in Leicester (Leicester: Living History Unit, 1996), 8. 15 Mistry 8 March 2002. 16 The retreat into the home is discussed in Chapter 2. For more details see E. Roberts, ‘Neighbours: north-west England 1940–70’, Oral History Journal, 21 (1993), 38–45. 17 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. 18 Ibid.

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Here Valand’s mention of the appropriate ‘tones’, reveals her sensitivity and nuanced attention to the unwritten ‘rules’ which underlay everyday behaviour and facilitated smooth social interaction.19 A further factor that fashioned the women’s experiences was their previous social life.20 Female respondents typically lamented the ‘vibrant community in India and Uganda’ where ‘all doors are open’ and daily life was less structured by work and time.21 This was most evident in Chitra’s interview whereby she recalled the spontaneous and unconstrained life in Uganda: You just used to walk up and down the road, you know everybody used to dress smartly and then walk up and down the road, or there was a restaurant and because it was on Lake Victoria and there was a point in the restaurant where you could see the hippos come out something like that. I remember going for a night visit because they only come out at night so I remember being taken in my nighties and all of us being hurried into the car, half asleep and being taken to see the hippos and things like that, it was really relaxed and easy going life style.22

Chitra’s quotation aptly illustrates how her previous social life was not confined to institutions such as the pub but was structured by the natural landscape, with Lake Victoria serving as the key focal point.23 Fear of causing misunderstanding also prevented some women from venturing beyond the house. Ranjan claimed her mother felt ‘very, very insecure’ and prevented her from visiting the corner shop for one month after arriving in Britain, whilst Patel claimed his wife was unable to meet people ‘freely’ and was ‘very afraid’.24 Similarly Vora recalled: ‘first of all very difficult for speaking English because I’m very worried that somebody laughing, or somebody say “she’s not very good, not speak very good” and I’m afraid.’25 Clearly language difficulties hindered communication and heightened a sense of alienation.26 This was most evident when Shenta stated: ‘when we came here we just cried, why come here? We don’t know nothing here, it’s cold, we can’t speak, we don’t know anything, we can’t find food properly, no shop

19 For further discussion of theses ‘rules’ see Garfinkel’s concepts in D. Layder, Understanding Social Theory (London: Sage, 1994), 81–2. 20 This is also discussed in Khan, ‘Asian women in Britain’, 312–13, C. Phillipson, A. Ahmed and J. Latimer, Women in Transition: A Study of the Experiences of Bangladeshi Women Living in Tower Hamlets (London: Policy Press, 2003), 29. 21 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani and Karim 7 May 2002. For the effects of industrial capitalism on people’s sense of time see E.P. Thompson, ‘Time, work discipline and industrial capitalism’, Past and Present, 38 (1967), 56–97. 22 Chitra 22 May 2002. 23 The pier on Lake Victoria was Brah’s ‘favourite spot’ for congregation, A. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora (London: Routledge, 1996), 34. 24 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani and Patel 3 July 2002. 25 BL, NSA, C900/12596 B. Vora. 26 This has been noted elsewhere. See Community Relations Commission, Refuge or Home? (London: Community Relations Commission, 1978), 19 and N. Uberoi, ‘Sikh women in Southall’, Race, 6, 1 (1964), 34–40.

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here, so hard.’27 The problem of isolation was further amplified for those who arrived in the 1960s when there were fewer South Asian people. Devi, who arrived in 1960, consistently claimed she had ‘no friends’ in Highfields, whilst Mistry stated, at first you find it very hard because down in India the sun was up all day and people meet outside and everything when we came here we got nobody to talk to, you’re on your own, it’s very hard for you to find your friends as you don’t know that many people, in ’67 we didn’t have that many Asian people.28

Added to this, according to Abraham, women’s wider support networks performed a vital role in India and East Africa and often acted as a social control to an abusive husband, or served as a buffer to stress and abuse.29 In short, women’s survival against structures of patriarchy was unequivocally tied to their web of female alliances. Migration, however, disrupted these networks and consequently magnified the problems the women experienced within the household, as discussed in chapter 4.30 This helps to elucidate why, whilst the male respondents felt constrained by the lack of meeting places in Leicester, isolation from the neighbourhood constituted a considerable and pressing problem for the female respondents and irrevocably impinged on their quality of life and sense of well being. This was exacerbated by social exclusion from white neighbours. One form of exclusion was racial harassment. Singh recalled the relentless racial attacks his family endured from their English neighbours when he arrived in Leicester in 1969. We were being continuously bullied by them but I think that was a bad experience because all white children weren’t like that but unfortunately we got the worst bunch. We lived on a street where they seemed to be very racist and the children would really tease us and call us the usual names like pakis, wogs, get out of this country. Like I said I couldn’t even play in my back yard, there was times when my sister would get bullied when she was coming back from school so my mother would literally have to take her and bring her back. So that first house we were at was a very bad experience because we were bullied a lot by white children and called all sorts of names and it wasn’t a very good start because it obviously puts you off and you think we were better off in India at least we didn’t have this problem and we weren’t looked upon as aliens or people that didn’t fit.31

These incidents clearly sparked feelings of displacement, alienation and insecurity and this was conspicuous by Singh’s reference to ‘aliens’, a term which also featured in other accounts.32 The consequent powerlessness his family felt impelled them to flee the area. As Singh explained, We couldn’t do much about it. We didn’t know what to do, we didn’t know that you could call the police or stuff like that plus they were children and the police didn’t do much in 27 Shenta 8 March 2002. 28 Mistry 8 March 2002. 29 M. Abraham, ‘Isolation as a form of marital violence: the South Asian immigrant experience’, Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 9, 3 (2000), 232. 30 This is also noted by Phillipson et al., Women in Transition, 30. 31 BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh. 32 See BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel.

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This illustrates how racial harassment served to eradicate the ‘outsiders’ from the neighbourhood. Yet another striking aspect of Singh’s account was that the experience of racial harassment was not equated with the racism of all white people. Instead, Singh surmised that his family were unfortunate in encountering the ‘worst bunch’. Similarly, Karim deduced that although there were one or two families in the street who did not like ‘immigrants’ and who threw stones or bottles, these represented a small minority.34 Racial incidents, therefore, tended to be viewed as isolated and self contained. This counters Cohen’s contention that the experiences of racial harassment make white hostility seem ubiquitous within society.35 Alongside this, respondents also encountered more indirect forms of social exclusion from the neighbours. Kapasi claimed that whilst he was aware that Britain was endemically racist, he was not prepared for the more subtle guises of racism. He came from Uganda in 1972 and recalled: We have faced racism yes certainly because when we came to Leicester for example our neighbours didn’t speak to us for at least three years and that really puzzled us because you see we came from a background where, you know, you meet a friend on the road you spend ten minutes talking to him and here is a neighbour who is not willing to even say hello to us, so you see we had to adjust to those things.36

Other respondents also felt insulted when white neighbours rejected gestures of friendship or failed to reciprocate invitations of hospitality and this parallels research in America, which revealed that West Indian immigrants did not expect racism to infuse day-to-day interactions.37 Furthermore, due to this less explicit form of racism, the respondents were often ambivalent as to whether events were actually a manifestation of racial prejudice. This uncertainty was exemplified by Balbir, who recalled the harassments from their neighbour. Although the racism could not be termed as subtle, it did not involve explicit racial insults: We had a lot of harassment from the person next door, he was English, he was like trying to drive us out of our homes I think. I remember him standing on the top end of the garden sharpening his knife, he was saying ‘this is for you Mrs Kaur’ you know, so that sort of thing I think that was racism from next door, they were English, they had six children of their own, they didn’t like us …

33 BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh. 34 Karim 13 June 2002. 35 P. Cohen, Home Rules: Some Reflections on Racism and Nationalism in Everyday Life (Dagenham: New Ethnicities Unit, University of East London, 1994), 10. 36 C900/09135B J. Kapasi. 37 Khan 4 July 2002, BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani, BL, NSA, C900/09083 K. Bhanumati and M.C. Waters, ‘Explaining the comfort factor: West Indian immigrants confront American race relations’, in M. Lamont, (ed.), The Cultural Territories of Race: Black and White Boundaries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 82.

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We had a little garden and he used to put his dog over deliberately to come and mess in our garden and come and mess the vegetables up. It was only a small garden but yeah he would throw the dog over and mother couldn’t really do anything about it because she was a woman on her own with three kids.38

According to Essed, a crucial step towards acknowledging racism is the realisation that unacceptable behaviour is directed towards individuals because of their ethnicity.39 Drawing on this, Balbir’s reference to the neighbours as ‘English’ suggests that she evaluated the hassles as racist and she actually stated ‘I think that was racism.’ However the following comment is contradictory and indicates her uncertainty: It was just him, ‘cause he used to row with his wife as well, there’d be pots and pans flying between the pair of them and I never thought it was a racial act. I just thought that’s the way he is, a bit of a lunatic and when he’s not fighting with his wife, he’s having a go at us.40

Thus Balbir concluded that as her family were not the only targets of his aggressive behaviour, it could not be assumed that he was racist. According to some scholars, this could be construed as a coping mechanism because an acceptance of racism can harm an individual’s sense of control and self worth.41 However, Balbir’s quote suggests that her judgement did not simply stem from a denial of racism, but that she failed to interpret his behaviour as part of a wider social and historical context. Instead she drew on an individualistic framework and consequently viewed his behaviour as pathological.42 It is important to note here that the sample of respondents did not form a homogeneous mass but represented a heterogeneous group who possessed varying conceptions and different levels of awareness of racism.43 A myriad of factors influenced perceptions of racism within the neighbourhood, including the ability to speak English and understand racist comments and personal definitions of racism. A further influential factor was the extent of contact with whites and this was most pertinent considering the female respondents were initially isolated from the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, despite this disparity, overall the interviews reveal that those who arrived in the 1960s recalled a radical shift in white attitudes during the following decade. 38 Balbir 8 May 2002. 39 This draws on Essed’s model of evaluating racism as cited in D. Mellor et al., ‘The perception of racism in ambiguous scenarios’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27, 3 (2001), 473–88. 40 Mandy 28 May 2002. 41 C.T. Miller and C.R. Kaiser, ‘A theoretical perspective on coping with stigma’, Journal of Social Issues, 57 (2001), 87. 42 Research suggests that African Caribbeans in Britain and America were more aware of racial discrimination within their daily lives. See H. Jayaweera, ‘Racial disadvantage and ethnic identity: the experience of Afro-Caribbean women in a British city’, New Community, 19, 3 (1993) 383–406, Mellor et al., ‘The perception of racism in ambiguous scenarios’, 485. 43 See R. Aziz, ‘Feminism and the challenge of racism, deviance or difference?’, in H.S. Mirza, (ed.), Black British Feminism: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1997), 74.

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They tended to stress that white people appeared friendly, amicable and polite before the 1970s. Devi insisted, Oh they were nice to us they were really good to us there was no like what do you call it, racism, I didn’t find any racism in those days, every people you meet ‘good morning’ and man used to wear hats and he used to lift the hats up for respect. Oh my god, those were the days, honest to god, nothing like that now, they don’t wear a hat any more and nobody says good morning even you know. They were gentlemen, but the gentle is gone.44

For Devi, the display of civility in public spaces conferred personal respect and signalled an inclusion into the neighbourhood.45 Others claimed that white people treated them as ‘novelties’. According to Choudhury: They treated me like a novelty because there wasn’t many Asians. There were hardly any Asians about and they were quite nice to me and they used to ask me to their house, invite me in their house for cup of tea or drink, some used to say ‘you can come when you like to visit us’, they were quite friendly you know because they had not seen many Asians before.46

Similarly Kumar articulated: ‘at one time I suppose I think Indian people were like novelties (laughs) if you can see what I mean, it was good to associate with an Indian person, I got that feeling.’47 These respondents were aware that although whites viewed them with curiosity, as an ‘exotic other’, this did not result in a social distance from them instead, whites were keen to establish interaction. Accordingly, this evidence of tolerance and tacit acceptance was drastically displaced by local hostility in the 1970s. Kumar charted the changes: ‘I think that’s when we started getting these racist views, late ‘70s was quite high, it was gradually rising I think late ‘75 ‘76 ‘77 ‘78 it peaked and then it slanted off again towards the ‘80s.’48 Often throughout the interviews, exact dates were forgotten, yet Kumar’s recollection of the specific years underlines how the increase in white hostility was vividly remembered. Indeed, these changes also had a profound impact on Kumar as evident in his comment that he never thought he was a ‘different colour’, before the ‘bitterness in 1972’.49 Furthermore, according to Kumar in the 1970s racist attacks were ‘so common you just ignored it’ and racial comments were ‘just part of the life’.50 Similarly Balbir surmised, ‘I didn’t recognise racism in the 1960s because it was only a few Indians here, perhaps we didn’t have it, perhaps you know it’s only heightened with so many immigrants coming into the country and more so 44 Devi 24 June 2002. 45 The decline of this ethos in working class communities is a major theme of S.J. Charlesworth, A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 46 BL, NSA, C900/00001 A.H. Choudhury. 47 Kumar 16 February 2002. A similar account is given in R. Perks, ‘“You’re different: you’re one of us.” The making of a British Asian’, Oral History, 15 (1987), 67–74. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid.

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wanting so many of their rights.’51 This was also supported by Councillor Parmar’s observations, which claimed there was ‘very little racial abuse or racial attacks in 1960s Leicester. The hatred began after the 1972 expulsion of Uganda Asians.’52 This upsurge in violent racism was evident throughout Britain, particularly in the East End of London with the onset of ‘Paki-bashing’.53 The memories of these respondents were not simply coloured by a nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ but rather they observed how racism became more visible in the city particularly with the rise of National Front, as detailed in Chapter 1. Women, in particular, initially felt excluded from the neighbourhood and this was compounded by explicit and subtle forms of exclusion from white neighbours. Whilst South Asians encountered hostility from white neighbours irrespective of structural dimensions, such as gender and class, actual perceptions of racism varied. A further form of exclusion emanated from within the South Asian communities. Although this may have had less impact on an individual’s well-being compared to the preceding modes of exclusion, this issue warrants attention as it reveals how boundaries were drawn not only between whites and South Asians but shows how South Asians were also positioned in relation to one another. Respondents from East Africa typically stressed the unity between diverse groups within their country of origin. Bhambra described the communal social life in Kenya: we observed other faiths and cultures and religious festivals like Diwali, Eid and all that which was very good in the sense we would celebrate everything together. That’s the one thing I really miss, Diwali we would all get together and celebrate, Eid and Gu-stor and the Vasaki coming we could all celebrate that together whereas in England we are so isolated.54

Similarly Valand claimed the ‘the life in East Africa was very, very different to the life in this country’, there were no ‘religious or racial conflicts’ and ‘everyone was like as if they belonged to one family’.55 It would be easy to dismiss these claims as part of a nostalgic yearning; however this social mixing across multiple identities has been noted elsewhere.56 By contrast, on arrival in Leicester, these respondents noted the perceptible divisions between themselves and those who had migrated directly from the Indian subcontinent. Karim claimed the hostility was akin to rivalry between football clubs

51 Balbir 8 May 2002. See also East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), Community History Collection (CHC), 000524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel and BL, NSA, C900/00001 A.H. Choudhury. 52 ROLLR, ‘New Life in Leicester’, New Life (Asian Weekly), 14, 26 July 1985, 8. 53 B. Bowling, ‘The emergence of violent racism as a public issue in Britain, 1945– 1981’, in P. Panayi, (ed.), Racial Violence in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996), 183–220. A racist killing was reported in Leicester in 1973. See Ibid., 197. 54 BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 55 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. See also BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel and C900/ 09135A Y. Kapasi. 56 Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, 31–2.

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or local towns, whilst Patel’s comments indicate the root of the fissure.57 According to Patel: In the start I’m talking about 1970, there were two parts, the Asian people from India the other one was the Asian people from Africa even they used to talk to each other but they didn’t used to meet each other you know. Those people who came from India they were quiet, they came very early in this country you know, that’s why they thought these people have come and spoilt all our you know interest. But now, now it’s okay, they all meet together.58

Here Patel suggests that the East African Asians were blamed by the existing South Asian population for provoking local hostility and upsetting local relations.59 Others suggested that the East African Asians and South Asians were divided along class lines and possessed different priorities and expectations. Patel claimed, I saw in those early days that there was a three way system within the Asian community in terms of its divides. So you had the people who wanted to make money, as far as they were concerned come hell or high water whatever they trampled over they were going to establish themselves. And then you had the difference with what people experienced back in the Asian subcontinent, coming over and they basically wanted to make money and send it back and then you had the experiences of the African Asians coming in.60

In particular, Patel felt distanced from those whose prime priority was the attainment of economic and social success: My agenda was totally different. I wanted to live within reason, comfortable, without injustices and see that everybody was happy and therefore I had this difficulty in understanding what it meant for them and what it meant for me. Certainly for me was that there was no way I was going to engage myself in that massive business building empire and becoming a millionaire that wasn’t my agenda it never featured on my agenda.61

Patel stressed, ‘for them money meant a lot yeah and therefore in terms of challenging or resisting or you know trying to make change was the last priority they had.’62 Clearly, divergent values and attitudes undermined a sense of solidarity or mutual identification. Yet coupled with this Patel also encountered caste divisions within the Ugandan Asians and specifically felt snubbed from the Lohanas. This was demonstrated by one particular social encounter with a man on a bus. As Patel explained: He was talking about his life and experiences in Britain which came during the Ugandan expulsion thing and all that and the first question he asked me was ‘are you a Lohana?’ 57 Karim 13 June 2002. 58 Patel 3 July 2002. 59 This was also noted in V. Marett, ‘The resettlement of Ugandan Asians in Leicester 1972–1980’ (unpublished University of Leicester PhD thesis, 1983), 551. 60 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid.

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And I said ‘what’s that got to do with it?’ So in terms of discussion there was that barrier because immediately I said I wasn’t, you could see that there was barrier and he didn’t want to engage into that discussion.63

Patel felt slighted that the man excluded him from further social exchange on the basis of his caste association. It can be surmised that the manifestations of these internal differences during the early 1970s was simply part of the formation of collective identities whereby individuals sought to differentiate themselves from ‘outsiders.’ The continuing importance of caste loyalties in Britain has been stressed by other research; Lohanas in particular have been identified as extremely conscious of their status and caste affiliation.64 Yet it was also strongly tied to the predominance of the South Asian population in Leicester, which enabled individuals to be more discerning in their choice of friends.65 Clearly this experience was influenced by timing of arrival. Mandy moved from Wolverhampton to Leicester in 1980 and claimed Leicester was ‘very very, different. I found living in Wolverhampton it was more sort of open house, here it was closed house.’ She elaborated: God knows why I didn’t suffer from depression. I had a very young baby a six week year old baby and I felt the Asian community here didn’t like outsiders. Even my own husband’s family who were here, if you weren’t in the pecking order you didn’t fit in and he used to work nights and I remember thinking god, why have we moved to Leicester? Because I just didn’t find that the people were friendly, they just didn’t accept you.66

This highlights an often overlooked aspect of social capital: that the development of social networks and solidarity often entailed the social exclusion of others.67

63 Ibid. 64 R. Ballard, ‘Introduction: the emergence of Desh Pardesh’, in R. Ballard, (ed.), Desh Pardesh: South Asian Experience in Britain (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994), 25–7 and R. Dwyer, ‘Caste, religion and sect in Gujarat: followers of Vallabhacharya and Swaminarayan’, in Ballard, Desh Pardesh, 184. 65 See Chapter 1. See also, P. Werbner, ‘Essentialising the other: a critical response’, in T. Ranger, Y. Samad and O. Stuart, (eds), Culture, Identity and Politics: Ethnic Minorities in Britain (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996), 70. For a comparison of community formation and divisions in other cities see H. Tambs-Lyche, ‘A comparison of Gujarati communities in London and the Midlands’, New Community, 4 (1975), 349–55, Bradford’s Heritage Recording Unit, Here to Stay: Bradford’s South Asian Communities (Bradford: City of Bradford Metropolitan Council Arts, Museums and Libraries, 1994), 13–14, P. Lewis, ‘Being Muslim and being British. The dynamics of Islamic reconstruction in Bradford’, in Ballard, Desh Pardesh, 58 and K. Hahlo, Communities, Networks and Ethnic Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 88–112. 66 Mandy 28 May 2002. 67 A. Portes, ‘Social capital: its origins and application in modern sociology’, Annual Review of Sociology, 24 (1998), 15.

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Beyond the Neighbourhood It is important to note that whilst racism did not represent an everyday occurrence or an all pervasive problem within the neighbourhood, it was seen as constituting a considerable threat in other parts of the city and the respondents frequently pinpointed specific racialised areas.68 Several respondents revealed their experiences of racism when they visited the council estates.69 Gheewala claimed he endured racist comments when he attended an interview at Braunstone, whilst Singh recalled the anxieties and intense discomfort he felt when he played football at Braunstone and New Parks in the 1970s. He claimed, ‘you’d never go on your own. You were always wary to get away as quickly as possible afterwards and you didn’t feel comfortable. People would stare at you. People would swear at you.’70 Other experiences were located in the villages outside the city. Kapasi recalled an incident in Birstall in the 1970s and the memory was triggered in response to the question ‘Do you remember anything that really hurt you?’ I was waiting at the bus stop and before me there was this old lady and then it started to rain you know and we were soaked in rain, it rained so heavily and the bus would never come and we just kept on waiting and waiting thirty five, forty minutes and this old lady told me ‘look I think you better ask for a lift, better try for a lift from any passer by car.’ And so we just indicated with our thumb and nobody would stop, nobody would give us a lift and no bus was coming and then this old lady turns to me and says ‘look we both have no chance, the reason why I won’t get a lift is because I’m too old and the reason (laughs) you won’t get a lift, you know very well.’ And I still remember I was very young then when I really realised people do, are racist (laughing) and I admitted no one would give me a lift because of my colour.71

Although the incident did not involve physical harassment, the moment was remembered as particularly poignant and pivotal for Kapasi as he was alerted to how his racial identity was conspicuous within a particular geographical setting. Kapasi was also acutely conscious of his racial identity within the city in the 1970s. He explained, ‘when I used to be in the city centre I was surrounded by all the white people because at that time the South Asian population was not that high and really I used to get scared because of people saying “you are different colour to mine” you are conscious about it and it used to scare me.’72 This quote clearly 68 This correlates with Brah and Golding’s research in Leicester. A. Brah, and P. Golding, The Transition from School to Work among Young Asians in Leicester: A Pilot Study (Leicester: University of Leicester, Centre for Mass Communication Research, 1983), 5.9–5.10. This also parallels Back’s research on racism in Southall, London. L. Back, New Ethnicities and Urban Culture: Racisms and Multiculture in Young Lives (London: Routledge, 1996), 243. 69 This is also discussed in M. Fitzgerald, ‘Racial harassment in Leicester’, Black Housing, 4, 3 (1989), 7–12. 70 Gheewala 25 June 2002 and BL, NSA, C900/09145 S. Singh. The council estates remain a feared space for Asians. See comments in A. Dawson, ‘Young Asians with tales from the city’, Leicester Mercury, 30 May 2001. 71 BL, NSA C900/09135B J. Kapasi. 72 Ibid.

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reveals Kapasi’s sense of fear and echoes hook’s descriptions of whiteness in the black imagination as fundamentally a representation of terror.73 Similarly, Singh recollected the aggression prevalent in the city centre in the 1970s, conspicuous by National Front graffiti and amplified on Saturday when there was a football match. He claimed: every Saturday afternoon we were locked away. We weren’t allowed to go out [… due to … ] stories of other South Asians who ventured out Saturday afternoon around Albert Street, Narborough Road, Upton Road area who were beaten. It was generally accepted that you stayed away or stayed away from that area so we stayed indoors.74

Clearly the apprehension of racial harassment inhibited the use of public urban spaces and prompted the respondents to develop an inventory of racialised spaces or geographies of fear.75 Another common place to avoid was the pub. Fear of the pub was not associated with a particular historical period or even a specific pub. Instead the pub was presented as generic. For instance, Kumar stated, ‘if I go to a pub you can’t relax. You don’t know how they perceive you’, whilst Khan explained that though he had no experience of going to clubs or pubs he feared these spaces because ‘perhaps somebody will beat me or perhaps somebody will abuse me’.76 Collectively, these comments defy the stereotype of the ‘fearless male’ often reproduced in studies of crime and uncover how mental maps of the city did not simply emanate from direct past experiences but were also based on accumulated local knowledge which informed the meaning of the landscape.77 As Bannister and Fyfe have commented, ‘fear is embedded in the physical and social characteristics of place and the familiarity of that space to the individual.’78 In addition, perhaps the spaces frequently identified by the respondents, such as the pub and the football ground, were viewed as potentially dangerous because they also signified a tradition of white masculinity which was associated with drinking and sometimes violence. These ‘masculine’ spaces did not feature in the women’s accounts though they did recall racist incidents in the city. Chitra described how whilst she was shopping with her child at least ten years ago, a white woman blamed her for stealing her purse. She claimed, she accused me of having stolen her purse and she said ‘I’m going to call the police on you’ and I forget she must have been swearing, ‘you people you shouldn’t be in this country’ and things like that, I can’t remember the ins and outs of it now, but I remember being 73 b. hooks, ‘Representing whiteness in the black imagination’, in R. Frankenberg, (ed.), Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (London: Duke University Press, 1997), 165–79. 74 BL, NSA, C900/09145 S. Singh. 75 This was also noted in D. Phillips, F. Butt and C. Davis, ‘The racialisation of space in Bradford’, The Yorkshire and Humber Regional Review, 12, 2 (2002), 9–10. 76 Khan 4 July 2002 and Kumar 16 February 2002. 77 P. Pain, ‘Gender, race, age and fear in the city’, Urban Studies, 38, 5–6 (2001), 899– 913. 78 J. Bannister and N. Fyfe, ‘Introduction: fear and the city’, Urban Studies, 38, 5–6 (2001), 809.

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Chitra reflected, ‘that’s the only experience I can recall but at the time I was really shaken by it. I was wanting to really sort of hit them because, how dare you you know, I’m probably more honest than you are sort of thing, just because you look at a person’s skin and you think everybody’s dishonest.’80 Chitra was unequivocally angered by the incident and this has been acknowledged as a common response to prejudice.81 Yet anger also conferred vengefulness, a vital ingredient for social action. In Barbalet’s words vengefulness is ‘the active apprehension of both injury and a desire for retribution, it is a sentiment or emotion directed to setting things right.’82 Hence Chitra did not accept the prejudice but contested the woman’s attitudes. This contradicts the image of women as fearful and passive.83 Yet Chitra’s ability to respond was also linked to her class status. That is, as an educated woman, she was able to articulate herself confidently and this was recognised by Chitra herself: ‘I wonder how much that is to do with if you are seen as educated and able to hold your own then people won’t take advantage of you.’84 Balbir’s narrative provided a similar example. The setting was also in town, whilst she was shopping with her daughter, and the incident occurred only a couple of years ago. According to Balbir, a group of four females deliberately bumped into her and this was followed by racist comments. She recalled: that made my blood boil ‘cause I stand up for myself so I thought to myself you might talk to some other Indian like that because they’re all very timid, I’m not. So I stood there and said ‘why don’t you come over here and say that’ and although there was four of them I think it probably stunted them in their thoughts and then they sort of didn’t say anything and walked off, because they must have been used to doing that to the mere Indian that’s not going to say anything, that’s going to say keep away from trouble, oh they’re trouble. But I’ve always been like fight back quick and that’s the way I’ve brought my kids up, you don’t go out looking for trouble but if it comes your way, don’t back off, you know stand your ground.85

Like Chitra, Balbir boldly challenged her perpetrators, yet Balbir’s premise that the women directed verbal abuse at her because she was expected to act like a ‘mere Indian’, is particularly insightful. That is, it reveals how she was aware of the gender 79 Chitra 22 May 2002. 80 Ibid. 81 Miller and Kaiser, ‘A theoretical perspective on coping with stigma’, 85. 82 J.M. Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 134. 83 Pain, ‘Gender, race, age and fear in the city’. 84 Chitra 22 May 2002. 85 Balbir 8 May 2002.

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sensitive nature of racism and this was also evident in other accounts.86 Mandy, for instance, stated that whilst she had no direct experience of hostility within the city of Leicester she was shocked that ‘still now people are unsure about Asian women’.87 She claimed, ‘I used to joke when I was a peasant, I put my traditional dress on and I kiss his feet and everything else and (laughing) I was joking I wasn’t being serious you know oh God and they realise that the modern Asian women are no different to anybody else.’88 Mandy was therefore conscious of stereotypes of South Asian women as docile, backward and the subjects of subordination. She used parody to mock the racist constructions and provoke individuals to question their assumptions.89 For these women, racism was presented as a unique and sporadic occurrence in the city, however several Muslim women who wore the hijab claimed that in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 white hostility was all pervasive in areas beyond the neighbourhood and was an ever-present concern. Sameeha claimed that she endured verbal abuse whilst driving her car in the city and to work. ‘I suffer abuse in the car. I just don’t look anymore sometimes if I see people looking at me, I don’t look. If you’re parked at the traffic light or something I don’t look ‘cause I just used to turn my head and they would be swearing at me because of my scarf.’90 This observation was shared by Devi, a Hindu woman who insisted that inter-ethnic relations had deteriorated in Leicester since 9/11. Devi remarked, I’ve got a Muslim friend, this is the truth let me tell you. She wears a scarf, sometimes she takes me out shopping in her car and if she’s in a traffic light or she’s slow turning, nobody gives her way and sometimes, if her car stops in the middle of the road she gets you know a mouth full.91

For Sameeha, the city centre was also associated with white hostility and following consistent harassments she decided to halt further visits to town and shop locally or through a catalogue – a restriction she also imposed on her daughter. Sameeha was reluctant to visit other British cities, such as Birmingham, for fear of attacks and she stressed that anti-Muslim incidents were unequivocally linked to her family’s distinct Muslim appearance. She explained: People don’t realise the extent to which it affects your daily life. I was telling Aadila, she’s a Muslim, but she doesn’t wear the scarf or the cloak and when I told her she was shocked. When I told her that I don’t go into town, only once a year if that much … you know if my daughter wants something then I take her and she said ‘oh my god, why?’ I said ‘because of all the abuse me and my husband get.’ Because she doesn’t wear the

86 This was also noted in Back’s study. Back, New Ethnicities and Urban Culture, 165. 87 Mandy 28 May 2002. 88 Ibid. 89 A. Rattansi, ‘“Western” racisms, ethnicities and identities in a “postmodern” frame’, in A. Rattansi, and S. Westwood, (eds), Racism, Modernity and Identity: On the Western Front (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 68–9. 90 Sameeha 10 March 2004. 91 Devi 24 June 2002.

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Negotiating Boundaries in the City cloak and that she’s fine. She says, ‘Oh I go there every week.’ ‘You’re lucky then’, I said, ‘cause I can’t.’ So she has had a completely different experience. Yeah and my sisters are fine. There’s another one who wears the cloak. She feels scared. She doesn’t go out, like me. The youngest one is really modern and she’s fine. She’s a Muslim and she’s happy and she’s fine. And so is my sister who is married to this Englishman. He is happy, he is lovely, and understanding. I guess because it’s visible that I’m a Muslim I will be suffering I think. Suffering in silence to be honest.92

Sameeha’s contention that she would be suffering in silence may disclose her feelings of powerlessness and reflect how Muslims generally feel they have less access to power within the wider society.93 Yet she may have also used suffering as a genre to frame her story and to communicate to a white English interviewer and a wider audience the extent to which anti-Muslim sentiment permeated her life. It was a call for her story of what it is like to live in the city to be acknowledged. Sameeha posited a distinct juxtaposition between herself, whose presence in the city provoked potential harassment due to her cloak, and her other two sisters who were not visibly identifiable as Muslims and hence did not share these intense feelings of fear. Clearly, not all Muslim women shared the same experiences of the city and whites were able to differentiate between different South Asian religious groups. They did not, as some have suggested, target all South Asians as ‘Pakis.’94 Moreover, the absence of this theme in the Muslim men’s narratives indicates that whilst reports have documented the rise in Islamopobia at the local, national and international level, women may have borne the brunt of this.95 Collectively, these quotes help to uncover the subjective experiences of racism and Islamaphobia and specifically reveal how experiences and perceptions of white hostility can be mapped within the city. In particular, for the male respondents, fear of racism had a tangible effect on their use of public spaces and reinforced social exclusion from certain areas. It is important to note that these spaces were not construed as dynamic and changing over time, but were envisaged as fixed and static. For the majority of South Asian women, racist experiences, although painful, were recalled as isolated incidents that had not impeded subsequent visits to the city centre. However, for several Muslim women who wore the hijab, the threat of white 92 Sameeha 10 March 2004. 93 Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, Islamaphobia: Issues, Challenges and Action (London: Trentham Books, 2004), 8. 94 R. Ballard, ‘The South Asian presence in Britain and its transnational connections’, in B. Parekh, G. Singh and S. Vertovec, (eds.), Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2003), 206. 95 C. Allen and J. Nielsen, Summary Report on Islamophobia in the European Union after 11 September 2001 (Vienna: European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, 2002), Commission on British Muslims and Islamaphobia, Islamaphobia, Issues, Challenges and Action and L.P. Sheridan and R. Gillett, ‘Effects of the event of September 11 on discrimination and implicit racism in five religious and seven ethnic groups’ (unpublished paper: University of Leicester, 2002).

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hostility beyond their neighbourhood was amplified following 9/11 and was seen as a permanent fixture of the landscape. This supports research of other British cities which has highlighted how minority ethnic groups have often felt restricted from certain spaces in the city. A recent study of Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets revealed that experiences and perceptions of white hostility in London actually impelled the female respondents to stay within the confines of the household.96 Finally, the discussion of racism in other parts of Leicester serves to underline the importance of the neighbourhood as a paramount source of respite and safety and arguably influenced the proclivity of South Asians and particularly, Muslims, to reside within the inner wards of the city.97 To sum up, social exclusion at the neighbourhood level was not a monolithic or ubiquitous entity, but rather respondents experienced different types of exclusions at different times. A predominant theme which structured the women’s narratives was their exclusion from the neighbourhood social life following their arrival in Leicester and this was due to multiple factors. It was compounded by what was perceived to be isolated and intermittent manifestations of white hostility, a subject that was present in both the men and women’s accounts, though those who arrived during the 1960s invariably stressed the rapid rise in racism in the ensuing decade. Conversely, those who arrived in the mid 1970s and 1980s tended to highlight exclusions within the South Asian populations; an issue which was absent from the accounts of the earlier arrivals. Nevertheless, forms of exclusion were not insurmountable, rather the respondents were able to generate their own networks and negotiate boundaries. Boundaries of Inclusion The role of social capital has stirred considerable debate, which basically stems from competing definitions. It would therefore be useful at this juncture to provide a brief conceptual overview. For Bourdieu the creation of social networks is driven by economic conditions and the opportunity for profit and social capital fundamentally acts as a resource to action. Conversely, for Coleman, social capital is not determined by economic factors but created by the free will of individuals, who trust each other and reciprocate favours. In this sense, social capital does not necessarily reap economic rewards but enables the attainment of human capital.98 Similarly, Putnam claims ‘social capital refers to the connections among individuals, social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.’99 However, whilst Coleman studied the degree of social capital within the orbit of the family and the community, for Putnam, social capital had political and economic 96 Phillipson et al., Women in Transition, 38–42. See also I. Taylor, K. Evans and P. Fraser, A Tale of Two Cities: Global Change, Local Feeling, and Everyday Life in the North of England: A Study in Manchester and Sheffield (London: Routledge, 1996). 97 This is discussed in Chapter 1. 98 J. Coleman, ‘Social capital in the creation of human capital’, American Journal of Sociology, 94 (supplement) (1988), 95–121. 99 R.D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2000), 19.

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implications for regions and nations and was considered on a much broader social scale. Furthermore, it can be argued that Putnam presented an erroneous and reductionist view of social capital, by equating it with social trust and in addition, implying that certain values were innate within individuals.100 This chapter therefore draws on Coleman’s and Bourdieu’s formulation of social capital as a set of processes and practices which form the basis of the accumulation of economic capital, or to secure certain values, namely trust.101 This section will elucidate the different types of social capital which the South Asian respondents generated and maintained and the different resources which emanated from these ties.102 One form of social capital evident from the interviews was the development of social ties which provided practical help and imperative guidance. The basis for these networks was a neighbourhood identity which cut across ethnic boundaries.103 Those who arrived in Leicester in the 1960s or before often recalled the assistance of white individuals. Bhoot stressed the help of one white woman who came to her aid when she was lost.104 She added, ‘you won’t believe the way they treated us then, they don’t treat us like that now. They respected us a lot. Any difficulty you’d have they’d try to understand, they’d help.’105 Similarly, Valand described living in Belgrave when she first arrived in Leicester, where she estimated only ten per cent of the population was South Asian. She insisted, ‘people were just quite tolerant of each other, if somebody wanted help they would just go and help them and if a South Asian lady say for example, wanted some kind of help on the road or picking shopping bags anybody would say “can I help you?”’106 This suggests that white people were forthcoming with help and initiated contact with South Asians. Other forms of help included the transmission of valuable local knowledge. Karim described relations in Highfields in 1970 and insisted that despite the presence of a few white families who expressed hostility towards him, the majority of white neighbours were ‘there to help’. He elaborated: helping in a way of if somebody finds some difficulty in taking their children to school, near a school, how to apply which school to go to, job or experience if someone says ‘I don’t have any experience, where I should go?’ and again, money wise nobody will give 100 For more detailed critiques of Putnam see J. Putzel, ‘Accounting for the dark side of social capital: reading Robert Putnam on democracy’, Journal of International Development, 7 (1997), 917–37, J. Harriss and P. Renzio, ‘ “Missing link” or analytically missing?: the concept of social capital’, Journal of International Development, 7 (1997), 920–36. 101 For further discussion of different definitions see in particular, Portes, ‘Social capital’. 102 Scholars have stressed the importance of marking these differentiations. See for example, Harriss and Renzio, ‘“Missing link” or analytically missing?’, 932–4 and Forrest and Kearns, ‘Social cohesion, social capital and the neighbourhood’, 2139–40. 103 Putnam termed this ‘bridging networks’ that is inclusive groups which facilitate the dissemination of information. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 22–3. 104 HL, HRA, H. Bhoot. See also EMOHA, Ethnic Elders Collection (EEC), 00643, EE/15/16 H. Shaikh. 105 Ibid. 106 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. The help of strangers was also a common theme in Gardner’s interviews. Gardner, Age, Narrative and Migration, 105.

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you cash money, but they will say ‘okay you go to such and such benefit section’ and they will help you out. Again if people say you find difficulty there are churches around the area, there are some kind of sales going on, jumble sale or brick-a-brac so people used to go there and buy clothes and used household items, so that kind of information they used to get from the neighbourhood.107

White neighbours, therefore, passed on imperative knowledge necessary for the completion of daily tasks and also offered useful tips for minimising expenditure. This urban knowledge encompassed a spatial dimension, such as the location of specific facilities and also a temporal dimension such as, the times and places of bargains.108 South Asian respondents who were assisted by whites were then able to provide support to newcomers. This was explained by Khan: I was actually the first person to receive them, first from Kenya that was ’60 something. First of all they were coming from Kenya then Uganda then Malawi and so on. When Kenya people come my business was flourishing and I was a young active man I received them and take them to the job centre and social security. The people from Uganda I do the same thing. Some people they come with lot of money they start businesses of course here I advise them, some people do very very well.109

Khan was able to pass on important commercial knowledge including business advice and this role of social capital has featured prominently in other studies of migrant groups.110 In addition, Khan’s narrative stressed his active and central role within this process and his claim that ‘some people do very very well’, served to accentuate the importance of his help and highlighted his success. As other studies have noted, Khan’s role was typically fulfilled by well-established entrepreneurs and was a source of considerable prestige, respect and rivalry.111 A further form of information which newcomers lacked was knowledge about urban space. Women relied therefore on friends to help familiarise them with the city and gain confidence. Bhoot explained, ‘we’d go shopping together. Some of us had a lot of difficulty and didn’t know how to come and go into town at first. In a group we’d go and come together.’112 Chitra recalled the importance of receiving this form of aid:

107 Karim 13 June 2002. See also EMOHA, CHC, 000524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel. 108 L. Faire, ‘Spatial and temporal knowledge of daily urban life in Britain, 1900–39’, paper presented at The Urban History Group Annual Conference, University of Glasgow, 29–30 March 2001. 109 Khan 4 July 2002. 110 See for example, V. Nee and J. Sanders, ‘Understanding the diversity of immigrant incorporation: a forms-of-capital model’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34, 3 (2001), 386–411. For a summary see Portes, ‘Social capital’, 13. 111 R. Ballard, ‘Differentiation and disjunction among the Sikhs’, in Ballard, Desh Pardesh, 105. 112 HL, HRA, H. Bhoot.

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Negotiating Boundaries in the City When I came to this country my parents were still in Kenya, I came to an uncle here and she [her friend] took me around. She showed me how to get on the bus, because we didn’t have buses in Kenya, we didn’t have traffic lights and things like that, so it was a completely different environment here. When I came to my first interview I got the job straight off and she showed me how to get from my job to her work place, work in the city centre and then we used to go home together, we lived quite close by, she was really, really supportive.113

Chitra’s friend helped her to negotiate the unfamiliar surroundings of the city and Chitra’s gratitude illustrates how help in times of need was greatly appreciated and bolstered personal friendships. Other scholars have noted how veterans typically express lifelong thanks towards those who helped them at particular times and perhaps this explains why recollections of help featured so prominently in the respondents’ narratives.114 In addition, this help was reciprocated as East Africa Asians provided valuable services for those from the Indian subcontinent. In particular, they were able to offer their skills relating to their knowledge of the English language and experience with bureaucratic systems as this enabled them to fulfil important administrative tasks. Karim recalled the form filling service he provided: So I used to fill the sick note in and they sign and take it away, fill the benefit form, other forms. From East Africa particularly from India and Pakistan they come here and settle down maybe four or five years they qualify for right of British subject in this country, so I used to fill their passport forms, British nationality forms and send them to the Home Office. So that knowledge, India and Pakistan didn’t have yeah where as we had bit.115

A system of self help and networks of interdependency evolved to overcome dayto-day problems. Another form of social capital was relations between female respondents and white female neighbours. Recollections of close relationships formed with white neighbours were particularly striking and were a salient theme throughout the interviews. These relations were often formed with elderly white women and represented the intergenerational relationships discussed in Chapter 2. The female respondents typically praised these neighbours and relayed anecdotes of mutual aid and trust. Mistry described her neighbours in 1967 and her sentiments were representative: We bought a house and I had all my neighbours English and at that time they were very very kind they treated me like my own daughters they were elderly though, they treated me like their own daughter and we were happy. There was also some times when we

113 Chitra 22 May 2002. 114 J. Gaines and O. Stanley, ‘Coping with prejudice: personal relationship partners as sources of socio-emotional support for stigmatised individuals’, Journal of Social Issues, 57 (2001), 126. 115 Karim 13 June 2002. The importance of this role was also noted in A. Shaw, A Pakistani Community in Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 37.

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wanted to go out and they looked after my kids also, so it was very nice. I miss them, they are dead now, but I can never forget them.116

The practice of white neighbours providing child care support was also noted in a study of Gujaratis in London, yet the interview reveals that the relationship was of tremendous personal value for Mistry.117 The reference to the neighbour’s treatment of her as a ‘daughter’ and her lifelong appreciation towards them, uncovers how the relationship was not simply based on requisite or obligation but was an important source of socio-emotional support. That is, the neighbour conferred affection, respect and social acceptance and fulfilled a fundamental psychological need.118 This was most important considering the social isolation Mistry experienced and the increasing hostility from the white population. This is confirmed by her following comment. ‘No trouble like today, fighting, you blackie, this and that, no, it wasn’t like that.’119 This suggests that her gratefulness for the relationship grew over time and was valued highly in retrospect. Saujani’s relationship with her neighbour was also clearly cherished: I think one of the good things I have very fond memories of, we used to have a white neighbour she was an elderly lady and she was very very helpful, she was on her own and she used to grow vegetables in her garden and what she used to do to because I used to be at the house so much she used to ask me if I wanted to help her or go shopping with her and I think that was really really nice because that was my first encounter of knowing a white person.120

Considering Saujani’s mother was anxious about her going outside the house Saujani was clearly grateful for the neighbour’s gesture of friendship. The relationship was also cultivated by acts of reciprocity. For instance, the neighbour would offer help with their laundry and Saujani would give her gifts in the form of the English dishes she had prepared at school. The neighbour would also accompany them to the cinema in the evenings; thus Saujani’s family provided a form of companionship and friendship. This evidence of mutual exchange characterised other neighbourly relations; Chitra’s neighbours bought her Christmas presents and Kaur’s neighbours baked her cakes and pies.121 These acts were tangible signifiers of recognition and goodwill. In addition, the length of time Saujani spent describing the ‘bond’ with her neighbour emphasises that this relationship was most valued, particularly in the context of racial exclusion. As Saujani explained: but it was so nice to have that experience you know whenever we’d thought of a racist remark being made outside or you felt angry about something we always had somebody to

116 Mistry 8 March 2002. See also HL, HRA, H. Sidat and K. Mistry. 117 S. Warrier, ‘Gujarati Prajapatis in London: family roles and sociability networks’, in Ballard, Desh Pardesh, 200. 118 Gaines and Stanley ‘Coping with prejudice’, 114. 119 Mistry 8 March 2002. 120 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 121 Chitra 22 May 2002 and BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur.

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Negotiating Boundaries in the City compare to say all English people are not like that and I think that was what kept us sane for a long long time and I think it’s nice to have that.122

This suggests that although the female respondents may have only developed a few friendships with white neighbours, they preferred to remember these relationships because they signalled a positive experience and perhaps helped to justify staying in Britain. This coping strategy was evident in other narratives. Naeema responded to her son’s experiences of racism by stating: ‘let’s balance it, there are good people and there are bad and let’s think about the good’.123 Whilst Sameeha claimed: ‘At first all we saw was the bad side of it all, the swearing and abuse, but once we made friends we thought: no, there are people out there who are understanding, you know, friendly, helpful, and we managed to survive on that.’124 Clearly, alongside social networks of practical help, the female respondents actively invested in more long term relationships with their neighbours.125 The importance of associations which proliferated in the 1970s and 1980s was also stressed by the respondents and will be briefly considered here. In particular, respondents emphasised how community organisations cultivated cohesion. For instance, Singh’s local hockey club was established in 1970. Sport was particularly important for Sikh migrants in Britain and clubs were initially established partly as a response to racism within white clubs.126 However Singh stressed the importance of inclusion. He claimed, ‘I got boys together, all the Asian boys, especially from East Africa but even poor people from India, Pakistan, they joined us.’127 This also spanned different generations; ‘even the elderly fifties, sixty, would come and join us, everybody it was a nice group.’128 For Singh this was ‘the beauty of the system’.129 Similarly, Saujani claimed the youth club was ‘the first time that Asian people were coming together as a group’.130 These associations also helped to counter the effects of stigmatisation. As Saujani explained, ‘it played a very strong role in giving us an identity as to who we are and also helped us balance it out in the outside world.’131 A similar ethos underpinned Patel’s dance society which was established in 1982. ‘Asian music and dance it’s one of the arts which is very very useful, it needs to be because without 122 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 123 Naeema 16 March 2004. 124 Sameeha 10 March 2004. 125 This is also a theme in P. Werbner, ‘Taking and giving: working women and female bonds in a Pakistani immigrant neighbourhood’, in S. Westwood and P. Bhachu, (eds), Enterprising Women: Ethnicity, Economy and Gender Relations (London: Routledge, 1988), 132–52. 126 See the research of J. Bains and S. Johan cited in A. Britton, ‘Club cricket and Asian communities in Leicester on the cusp of the 21st century’ (unpublished De Montfort University MA thesis, 2003), 16. 127 BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 131 Ibid.

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that and the language you can’t keep your identity and you can’t understand the root of your existence.’132 This shows how associations served to retain cultural links and how respondents drew on an ethnic or cultural heritage as a positive identification, to cultivate self pride and reassert a distinctive identity. They therefore helped to compensate for intolerance directed at them outside this sphere.133 It should be noted, however, that whilst immigrants may have sought to recreate ‘traditions’, this rarely reproduced a static ‘traditional’ culture but involved a process of cultural syncretism, whereby new cultural forms emerged.134 Furthermore, these associations and the concomitant ethnic assertiveness was not simply a response to racial exclusion, they also offered a temporary escape from the daily challenges and regimented life in Britain as in Patel’s words, ‘for some people it’s very mechanical life here, because from home to work from work to home.’135 Dance therefore offered a form of psychological succour. Many respondents were involved in religious organisations and this also enabled the possibility of ‘belonging’ again. Kapasi described the activities associated with her Muslim group, including the monthly meetings involving prayers and the exchanging of food, and it was through the practice of routines and habitual interactions that ‘home’ was recreated. Islam provided a ‘home’ that transcended time and space.136 This notion was also conspicuous in Singh’s comments. ‘People think about their roots but it’s only a story created. With the Sikh system your root is the whole world, whole earth is your root.’137 Therefore Singh did not subscribe to the collective memories and myths about a homeland, a consciousness which typified other diasporic groups.138 For him, Sikhism offered a form of belonging which was not confined to fixed origins.139 Initially, houses were used for religious meetings; however, the first mosque was established in 1962, the first Gurdwara in 1966 and the first Hindu temple in 1969.140 For many women in the 1970s, religious associations were perceived as an 132 EMOHA, CHC, 00601, CH/096/0155 D. Patel. 133 See A. Kershen, ‘The migrant at home in Spitalfields: the myth and the reality’, paper presented at Immigration, History and Memory in Britain Conference, De Montfort University, 6 September 2003. 134 This is a major theme of Back, New Ethnicities and Urban Culture. 135 For further discussion see T. Modood, S. Beishon, and S. Virdee, Changing Ethnic Identities (London: PSI, 1994). 136 C. McMichael, ‘Everywhere is Allah’s place: Islam and the everyday life of Somali women in Melbourne, Australia’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 15, 2 (2002), 171–88. See also EMOHA, EEC, 0633, EE/05/05 P. Kaur; BL, NSA, C900/09135A Y. Kapasi. 137 BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh. 138 R. Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1997), 26. 139 For further discussions see Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, 197. 140 S. Vertovec, ‘Multicultural, multi-Asian, multi-Muslim Leicester: dimensions of social complexity, ethnic organisation and local government interface’, Innovation, 7, 3 (1994), 270, R.T. Gale, ‘Pride of place and places: South Asian religious groups and the city planning authority in Leicester’, paper in the School of City and Regional Planning, 172 (Cardiff: Cardiff University, 1999), 9 and R. Bonney, ‘Understanding and celebrating religious diversity: The growth of diversity in Leicester’s places of religious worship since

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opportunity to socialise.141 Mandy claimed, ‘I did enjoy going to the gurdwara it was a way of the community getting together you know it was more the social life.’142 Similarly, for Saujani, Hindu temples countered feelings of alienation: I think I used to feel, before some years ago, twenty years ago, I used to feel really lost here. In a way that there wasn’t anywhere else where you could go to meet people on that religious basis and to share but no, I think in a place like Leicester for example, there’s so much to do, there is something every week. So I don’t feel so much a loss of not being able to practice it with other members.143

The male respondents, particularly those from East Africa, typically detailed their role and contribution to religious public life from the 1970s to the twenty-first century and their involvement clearly offered pride, status and personal satisfaction. Morjaria stressed, although he was ‘not very rich’, ‘whatever I have done for the community and God is the reward’.144 Yet women were also able to gain prestige within religious institutions. Sikhism encouraged women to partake in the public sphere of religious life and Mandy seized the opportunity to take a leading role within her local gurdwara and overcome social exclusion in the late 1980s.145 She commented, ‘I started doing a lot of the community work at the gurdwaras. I started filling in forms and so forth and all of a sudden they realised “oh God this woman’s got talent that we haven’t got and we need her” and that’s how then you know, I got accepted, but I really had to earn it.’146 Others participated in organisations that aimed to combat discrimination directly. Patel forged alliances within the Belgrave Asian youth project during the 1980s and this acted as a forum to contest the status quo. He claimed, ‘politically as well there was an opportunity for us to invite politicians to explain their role and responsibility so we could challenge them and ask questions.’147 The organisation helped to foster a collective voice and provided an opportunity to actively engage with the public 1970’, Studies in the History of Religious and Cultural Diversity, Academic Papers (Leicester: Centre for the History of Religious and Political Pluralism, University of Leicester, 2003), 4. 141 This aspect of religion was also noted in L. Ryan, ‘Moving spaces and changing places: Irish women’s memories of emigration to Britain in the 1930s’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 29, 1 (2003), 78 and S. Wray, ‘Women growing older: agency, ethnicity and culture’, Sociology, 37, 3 (2003), 511–27. For further information on religious organisations in Leicester see M. Banks, ‘Jain ways of being’ in Ballard, Desh Pardesh, 231–50, J. Seliga, ‘Neighbourhood … religion … community: the role of religious institutions in the Belgrave area of Leicester, 1965–1995’ (unpublished University of Leicester MA thesis, 1996), Gale, ‘Pride of place and places’ and P. Marett, ‘The Jain centre in Leicester’ (unpublished De Montfort University M. Phil. thesis, 2001). 142 Mandy 28 May 2002. 143 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 144 BL, NSA, C900/00066 T.V. Morjaria. See also BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh. 145 B. Dhanjal, ‘Sikh women in Southall (some impressions)’, New Community, 5, 1/2 (1976), 109 and P. Bhachu, ‘Apni Marzi Kardhi home and work: Sikh women in Britain’, in Westwood and Bhachu, Enterprising Women, 78. 146 Mandy 28 May 2002. 147 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel.

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sphere and question the local hegemony of the council. These youth movements emerged in other urban locales in the early 1980s such as London and Bradford and although they were formed as a result of events within their own communities they also represented a national network, which offered mutual support and aid.148 Since the 1970s then, the city witnessed the acceleration in associations and religious organisations and this coincided with the arrival of the East African Asians and with the phase of family reunion.149 By 1992 there were some 186 ethnic minority associations in Leicester and the growth of these social networks is similar to the processes that helped to create a civil society in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.150 Civil society has been seen as vital for enriching communities and cultivating attitudes such as loyalty, trust, co-operation and mutual respect.151 Yet the associations also had an important spatial dimension. As Soja has noted ‘there are no aspatial social processes.’152 Thus, whilst there were no purpose-built Hindu temples in Leicester, Baptist and Catholic churches, factories and private homes were converted into Hindu places of worship representing a wide range of caste affiliations.153 This included the conversion of a Baptist church in 1971 to the Shree Sanatan Mandir, Leicester’s largest Hindu temple, and the conversion of a Roman Catholic Church to the Shree Shati Mandir Hindu Temple in 1975.154 It was not until the mid 1980s that the city council actively endorsed the establishment of purposebuilt places of worship for minority ethnic groups, and the city’s first purpose-built Mosque was completed in 1987 in Loughborough Road, Belgrave.155 Consequently, the meaning of the landscape was dramatically altered so that it acted not as an index to the dominant white culture, but was an expression of an alternative cultural and religious identity.156 This was testified by Kumar’s reflections of living in Belgrave:

148 See S. Westwood, ‘Red Star over Leicester: racism, the politics of identity and black youth in Britain’, in P. Werbner and A. Muhammad, (eds), Black and Ethnic Leaderships: The Cultural Dimensions of Political Action (London: Routledge, 1991), 146–69 and A. Sivanandan, ‘From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain’, Race and Class, XXIII (1981–1982), 110–52. See also G. Stoker, The Politics of Local Government (London: Macmillan, 1991). 149 Vertovec, ‘Multicultural, multi-Asian, multi-Muslim Leicester’, 270. 150 Ibid., 265 and R.J. Morris, ‘Civil society and the nature of urbanism: Britain, 1750– 1850’, Urban History, 25 (1998), 289–99. 151 C.H. Persell, A. Green and L. Gurevich, ‘Civil society, economic distress, and social tolerance’, Sociological Forum, 16 (2001), 206. 152 E. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 46. 153 J. Seliga, ‘A neighbourhood transformed: the effect of Indian migration on the Belgrave area of Leicester 1965–1995’, Local Historian, 4 (1998), 238–9. 154 Bonney, ‘Understanding and celebrating religious diversity’, 37–8. 155 Gale, ‘Pride of place and places’, 10. By 2002, there were twenty mosques, six Gurdwaras, at least eighteen Hindu temples and one Jain temple in Leicester. See Bonney, ‘Understanding and celebrating religious diversity’, 30. 156 For details of this transformation see ibid.

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Negotiating Boundaries in the City I think till about you know mid 80s I always thought of myself well I never thought I was different, I always thought I was British, but since sort of last ten, twelve years, I think again because of my environment, the things are here, the facilities are here, I think I know that I’m an Indian, ’cause you can do your thing, your religious stuff, before I suppose you couldn’t.157

The subjective experience of sharing a particular social space gradually heightened Kumar’s awareness of his cultural heritage and this has been identified by some as a key feature of living within diasporic communities.158 Others also defined Leicester as a place where you could do ‘Asian things’ so, despite the diversity of affiliations, Leicester was generally perceived as an ‘Asian place’ which transcended ethnic and religious divisions.159 This was most evident in the growth of South Asian cinemas. Subedar arrived in Leicester in 1972 and claimed there were five or six South Asian cinemas in the city.160 This included the purpose-built Natraj cinema on Belgrave Road, Belgrave, which during the 1970s showed twenty-five South Asian films a week and included a ladies night.161 According to Musa’s recollections, Natraj’s audience encompassed ‘all Asian communities say Muslims, Gujaratis, Sikhs, everybody with their families’ from ‘all over the Midlands’.162 Another salient feature of these ‘South Asian spaces’ was that they were also experienced as sanctuaries. Drawing on Day’s work, sanctuaries are conceptualised as spaces which offer, ‘psychological safety and common understanding often missing in everyday life’.163 This aspect was stressed by Kumar: Yes as I say basically they feel at ease firstly and secondly if they can’t speak properly English or read and write they know they can get help round here, they’re with people even if they’re different, they all look the same, I don’t think they’ll communicate much to each other as long as they think they’re all Indians, they feel safer I’m sure.164

Belgrave therefore offered a friendly and supportive space and a feeling of protection and retreat from white domination.165 It can be surmised that this dimension of the neighbourhood paralleled the growth of associations in the 1970s and 1980s and

157 Kumar 16 February 2002. 158 S. Vertovec, ‘Three meanings of “diaspora”, exemplified among South Asian religions’, Diaspora, 7 (1999), 277–300. For further discussions see also T. Modood et al., Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage (London: PSI, 1997), 290–388. 159 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 160 HL, HRA, Councillor F. Subedar. 161 BL, NSA, C900/00006 J. Musa, 162 Ibid. Musa was the cinema manager of the Natraj. He claimed that cinema audiences declined in the late 1970s and 1980s with the growth of videos, thus the Natraj closed. For the importance of Indian films see BL, NSA, C900/09136 N. Kara. 163 K. Day, ‘Embassies and sanctuaries: women’s experiences of race and fear in public space’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 17 (1999), 321. 164 Kumar 16 February 2002. 165 This echoes hook’s conception of ‘homeplace’ in b. hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston: Turnaround, 1990).

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according to Chitra it was a perceptible characteristic of Highfields when she arrived in 1974: Like I said when we first started I’ve been one of the lucky ones, I can’t particularly remember anybody being hostile to me in that manner, our own community was very active and quite strong already even at that particular time it was already established and they used to organise day trips to the seaside and things like that you know, away, honestly I don’t think have any memories of me experiencing racism at any point.166

Thus the neighbourhood increasingly acted as a vital source of security and served as a buffer against racism. Overall, community organisations clearly helped to deflect the effects of exclusion and stigmatisation by encouraging engagement with society, providing places to meet, offering acceptance and belonging as well as providing a space for the expression of different cultures and the defence of different identities. Notwithstanding the positive effects of social capital, it is also necessary to discuss the negative ramifications to avoid a simple romanticisation of ‘community’ life. One respondent discussed the growth in extreme right-wing religious organisations in Leicester since the 1980s, specifically Hindu nationalism.167 More typically, respondents claimed religious associations often generated demands for conformity and promoted social control.168 A few male respondents discussed the pressure to adhere to specific cultural styles to signify their religious affiliation. Singh claimed that although he tried ‘to mix and blend things’ from different cultures, he encountered relentless pressures from his Sikh friends and this was amplified following the Indian army action against the Golden Temple in 1984.169 In his words, ‘a lot of my Sikh friends were continuously pressurising me to have long hair again and stop eating this and don’t drink and do that and that.’170 For Singh, the Sikh religion was ultimately experienced as a form of constraint and he was critical of overt displays of religiosity claiming, ‘the longer the Sikh’s beard the more lies he tells.’171 These concerns were also voiced by Patel: ‘you will actually find that in Africa we were not that religious. We were religious minded but we were not that religious showing the public.’172 Conversely in Britain, ‘even I have seen that people are showing too much, that believing it’s all external, all the religions are external which is dangerous.’ He added, ‘what we are doing here is just a show off, it’s a competition, that’s dangerous.’173

166 Chitra 22 May 2002. See also EMOHA, Leicester Oral History Archive Collection (LOHAC), 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru. 167 Karim 7 May 2002. Further discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this chapter, however see P. Mukta, ‘Hindutva in the West: mapping the antinomies of diaspora nationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23, 3 (2000), 407–41. 168 This is a major theme of A. Wardak, Social Control and Deviance: A South Asian Community in Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 169 BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh. 170 Ibid. 171 Ibid. 172 EMOHA, CHC, 00524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel. 173 Ibid.

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However, the pressure to conform to specific modes of behaviour was also strongly felt by the female respondents. This was illustrated by Bhambra’s account of her experiences of living in Leicester in the 1970s: The life we had in Kenya was totally different from the life we had in England. In Kenya we could just go anywhere without asking anybody but in England we were sort of frowned upon, how we dressed up, where we went, going to the local temples on Sunday, that was stopped by my brother saying that the girls are getting too much freedom. In the sense he was so frightened of holding onto his own culture and I found it very very hard to adjust to the family way of life.174

Here the term ‘frowned upon’, reveals how Bhambra’s sense of autonomy and freedom was curtailed by the disapproving ‘communal gaze’ of the neighbourhood.175 Her body was effectively policed within the streets to uphold communal and religious identities and so her style of clothing was closely monitored and scrutinised and her use of certain spaces was impeded. Other female respondents contrasted the ‘free life’ in Africa with the increased constraints placed upon them within the neighbourhood in Britain. Bilquis revealed the pressure she experienced from her brother-in-law to cover her face and she recalled, ‘but we lived a very free life in Africa, very free life, we just wore freely, make up everything.’176 This has also been observed in other Leicester-based studies, for instance Hill’s interviews with South Asian Muslim women revealed that the practice of purdah was more restrictive since coming to Britain and hindered their use of space.177 Arguably, the pressure to adhere to religious practices tightened as religious communities developed; yet other research has revealed how this surveillance of women was actually reinforced through the state’s pursuit of multicultural policies including the appointment of community representatives in the 1980s. These ‘ethnic brokers’ were invariably conservative males, who were granted a degree of autonomy to supervise their own communities and typically silenced internal differences and glossed over gender inequalities in the interests of presenting a unified ethnic community.178 Nevertheless, the female respondents established important informal networks with other South Asian women as a means to circumvent both the hierarchies of 174 BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 175 P. Watt, ‘Going out of town: youth, “race” and place in the South East of England’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 16 (1998), 694. 176 Bilquis 3 March 2004. Other respondents also discussed this from in-laws, although they also stressed that they ultimately decided when it was right for them to wear the hijab. 177 R. Hill, ‘The housing characteristics and aspirations of Leicester’s inner city Asian community’ (unpublished University of Leicester PhD thesis, 1987), 349–50. This aspect is also noted in Marett, ‘The resettlement of Ugandan Asians in Leicester 1972–1980’, 540. 178 S. Burlet and H. Reid, ‘A gendered uprising: political representation and minority ethnic communities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21, 2 (1998), 270–87. N. Yuval-Davis, ‘Ethnicity, gender relations and multiculturalism’, in R.D. Torres, L.F. Mirón and J.X. Inda, (eds), Race, Identity and Citizenship: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 112–25 and P. Patel, ‘Third wave feminism and black women’s activism’, in Mirza, Black British Feminism, 255–68. Alternatively, for the achievements of these representatives see Vertovec, ‘Multicultural, multi-Asian, multi-Muslim Leicester’, 259–76.

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power within the household and the neighbourhood. According to Bhoot, women from four to five Punjabi families would meet each day in each other’s houses. One day one of us would light a fire and all of us would come there. We’d spend the whole day together. Next day, the second one would invite us to hers. Like this we’d sit in front of the fire all day, nobody worked. We’d get some wool from town and do some knitting. Knitting jumpers and sweaters in front of the fire from morning till evening. In the evening we’d go home and invite each other around. That is how we passed our time.179

These networks clearly helped to counter feelings of isolation and alienation, yet they also offered an important sanctuary and a space of social and emotional support. Research has revealed how relationships between individuals from the same ethnic background can act as a vital means of assistance as individuals can empathise with each other and use the group as a forum to express or vent their emotions and help to solve problems.180 Bhoot revealed this aspect. ‘There were problems but when we used to go to each other’s houses we talked about our problems and solved them.’181 The female respondents created their own autonomous space and transformed the household into a temporary retreat away from hierarchies of power within the household and wider communities. However female respondents did not simply withdraw into the private sphere; several women organised activities for other South Asian women. Many women discussed the value of exercise groups which tended to be established towards the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s and were state-subsidised. Johan for instance, helped to mobilise an exercise class for South Asian women and claimed she actively encouraged other women to participate ‘we started pushing them out “come on lets go and lets do it lets do it.”’182 Several women also enjoyed swimming and claimed perceived barriers such as norms pertaining to dress code and privacy were gradually overcome. As Mistry explained, ‘you see many Asian ladies even elderly they enjoy their life, they go swimming, exercise and we never used to do that. I mean after fifty I learnt swimming and everything but before that people used to talk about everybody, but now lot has changed.’183 Thus exercise sparked feelings of empowerment and emancipation for the women and also contributed to a sense of achievement.184 Another woman recalled the importance of the ‘lonely women’s group’ which she anticipated all week and this was extremely valued as it provided emotional and social support for divorced women who were otherwise outcast

179 HL, HRA, H. Bhoot. 180 Miller and Kaiser, ‘A theoretical perspective on coping with stigma’, 87. 181 HL, HRA, H. Bhoot. 182 Johan 8 March 2002. 183 Mistry 8 March 2002. 184 This was also discussed in S. Wray, ‘What constitutes agency and empowerment for women in later life? Towards the development of a culturally sensitive theoretical framework with which to examine ageing’, paper presented at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference, 25–27 March 2002.

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from the South Asian communities.185 Consequently, she stressed her immense disappointment when this class closed. A further gender-based activity evident in the narratives involved venturing outside the confines of the neighbourhood for day trips.186 Devi, for instance, described how her friend regularly hired a van from the city council to take South Asian women to the seaside.187 This provided an opportunity for women to escape the scrutiny of the household and neighbourhood and, like exercise, the seaside signalled a form of emancipation. As other studies have noted, ‘the seaside has always been a place accommodating difference: you can be whoever you want to be.’188 Overall, genderbased networks were a core element of the women’s life stories. The interviews reveal how these networks cut across cleavages of caste and kin and show how women actively recreated their own friendships as part of a survival strategy and to foster a dynamic social life.189 They also highlight the importance of the semi-public space for women, defined by Harzig as situated ‘between the traditional confines of the home and the demands for public representation of the receiving society’.190 Having traced the different types of social networks, it should be noted that social ties were dynamic and configurations of social capital shifted and changed over time. Generally the respondents claimed that by the twenty-first century informal gatherings had declined due to the stresses and strains of paid employment and ‘scandals’ such as divorce and intermarrying between castes and ethnic groups, which encouraged individuals to distance themselves from others. Instead, the main focus of the respondents’ social life was confined to major religious events and in particular, weddings. Respondents encountered diverse and overlapping forms of exclusion within the neighbourhood. However, they did not retreat into silence and shame or disengage from society as some theorists have suggested.191 Instead, they responded by forging their own networks of social capital.192 These included neighbourhood networks of self help, female friendships with white female neighbours, community associations 185 Devi 24 June 2002. See also EMOHA, EEC, 00646, EE/19/20 U. Shamsunnisa, who as a widow was dependent on the Sharma women’s centre. 186 According to Watt this was a coping strategy adopted by Asian youth. Watt, ‘Going out of town’. 187 Devi 24 June 2002. 188 D.P. Tolia-Kelly and M. Carvalho, ‘Intimate distance: fantasy islands and English lakes’, Ecumene, 8 (2001), 116. 189 The importance of female alliances has been noted in other studies of migration: see Ryan, ‘Moving spaces and changing places’, Werbner, ‘Taking and giving’, and Gardner, Age, Narrative and Migration, 129. 190 C. Harzig, ‘Women migrants as global and local agents: new research strategies on gender and migration’, in P. Sharpe, (ed.), Women, Gender and Labour Migration: Historical and Global Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2001), 21. 191 This is a major theme of N. Elias and J.L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders (London: Sage, 1965). 192 This parallel’s Chamberlain’s findings in M. Chamberlain, ‘The family as model and metaphor in Caribbean migration to Britain’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2 (1999), 251–66.

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and South Asian female networks. These forms of capital were not primarily driven by economic profit but were associated with the positive aspects of human relations, providing practical aid, belonging, empowerment, participation, safety, and social and emotional support. Paradoxically, as networks developed new forms of exclusion transpired. Thus overall, there was no rigid dichotomisation between exclusion and inclusion, rather the neighbourhood was essentially remembered as a contradictory terrain. Furthermore, the interviews highlight how memories were constructed. That is, as the respondents interpreted their past, certain relationships were elevated and acquired new meanings both over time and in the context of present day concerns.

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Chapter 6

Education and the Workplace Education and work in Britain represented important themes in the narratives. As shown in Chapter 4, many male migrants envisaged Britain as a place where success and status could be achieved. Did this vision materialise? Chapter 4 argued that paid employment had a positive effect on household relations for women, but was work itself seen as rewarding by the women? What follows here is an exploration of how the respondents perceived and made sense of their educational and working environments, particularly their encounters with racist discourses. This will highlight the multiple manifestations of racism within the respondents’ everyday lives and uncover the spectrum of responses and coping strategies which they used to maintain their self esteem. The experiences of education in the 1960s and 1970s in a racialised setting is contrasted with women’s experiences of education in the 1990s, whilst narratives of work expose the divergent perceptual realms inhabited by the male and female respondents and highlight the vital need to consider the respondents’ previous experiences in order to fully comprehend their subjectivities. Education Several respondents recalled experiences of education, including primary and secondary schooling and further and higher education. These experiences were located in the 1960s and 1970s and predated the advent of multicultural approaches to education whereby a plurality of cultures, including different religions and histories, were recognised and celebrated. Instead, government education policies, and consequently the approach of Leicestershire Local Education Authority, were based on a model of assimilation with the explicit aim of ‘Anglicising immigrants’.1 This not only reduced African Caribbean and South Asian children to the category of ‘immigrants’ but the notion of assimilation was underpinned by the belief that British culture was inherently superior and ethnic and linguistic and cultural diversity was problematic and should be suppressed. Furthermore, white racism was often ignored

1 ‘Immigration and education: the view from the blackboard’, Leicester Mercury, 16 December 1968. See also ‘Teaching the new Britons’, Leicester Mercury, 15 February 1964. For details of Leicestershire Education Authority see L. Chessum, From Migrants to Ethnic Minority: Making Black Community in Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 163–95, T. Allcott, ‘Anti-racism in education: the search for policy in practice’, in D. Gill, B. Mayor and M. Blair, (eds), Racism and Education: Structures and Strategies (London: Sage, 1992), 169–82.

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and was attributed to the perceived excessive concentration of newcomers in specific areas.2 Within this context, the respondents’ narratives of schooling often resembled what Bourdieu has termed ‘symbolic violence’. This refers to the imposition of a dominant culture, chiefly within an educational setting, and the process by which minority groups are encouraged to accept the dominant culture as legitimate and their own culture as illegitimate and inferior.3 ‘Dominant culture’ is used here to refer to a white middle class culture and ‘minority groups’ to South Asian students, though the latter could also apply to white working class students.4 A key manifestation of this symbolic violence was the way in which minority languages were viewed as a sign of backwardness and were strongly discouraged.5 Respondents typically claimed, ‘I remember that I dare not be seen speaking in Punjabi or any other language other than English’, whilst others recalled the disapproving comments of teachers that children were ‘jabbering in their own language’.6 For Devi this sense of marginalisation was exacerbated by the ethnic make up of the school, as there were only two other South Asian girls. She stressed, ‘I was totally lost in school.’7 However, it is important to note that an important factor that shaped these experiences was competence in English language. Munisa for example, did not share these negative feelings. She explained: because I spoke good English I was really well accepted by the head mistress and I had a lovely time. I really related well with teachers … I can remember there were a few Asian girls, not too many just a few who sort of had come from, had emigrated from India with very, very little English and they were really, I could see they were struggling you know sort of not having enough friends and so on.8

The devaluing of their ‘home culture’ was also experienced through the National Curriculum, which typically excluded the histories and cultures of minority ethnic groups. Bhambra explained, ‘I mean the art, I was very art orientated and I was totally discouraged to use any Indian images, any Indian colours or any Indian art. We sort of had to follow the western culture, we had to look at the western artists 2 For further details see A. Rattansi, ‘Racism, culture and education’, in J. Donald and A. Rattansi, (eds), ‘Race’, Culture and Difference (London: Sage Publications, 1992), 11–48, D. Gillborn, ‘Race’, Ethnicity and Education (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990) and B. Troyna and B. Carrington, Education, Racism and Reform (London: Routledge, 1990). Troyna notes that multicultural education was not a profound improvement. 3 P. Bourdieu and J-C. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage, 1977), 5. 4 For a discussion of Bourdieu and ethnicity see J.R. Hall, ‘The capital(s) of cultures: a nonholistic approach to status situations, class, gender and ethnicity’, in M. Lamont and M. Fournier, (eds), Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 257–85. 5 For further details see Chessum, From Migrants to Ethnic Minority, 176–9. 6 British Library, National Sound Archive (BL, NSA), C900/00007 U. Valand and BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 7 Devi 24 June 2002. 8 Munisa 3 April 2004.

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who were totally alien to us.’9 For Bhambra this was remembered as part of the process whereby ‘we had to shed a lot of our Indian ways, we had to shed a lot of our Indian sort of cultural values our dressing up to be part of the host community’.10 The emphasis on having to ‘shed her Indian ways’ reveals how Bhambra felt stripped of her previous culture and history. Her own cultural capital, including her particular knowledge and skills were unrecognised; instead she had to learn a second way of being, which was viewed within the college and the wider society as legitimate and as the ‘norm’.11 According to Bourdieu, dominated groups are largely unaware of the process of exclusion within education and consequently actually view the dominant culture as intrinsically legitimate, which in turn generates low self-expectations. However, Bhambra did not totally reject her cultural heritage but responded by consciously practising Indian art within her own free time. Her reaction resonates with Mac an Ghaill’s concept of ‘resistance with accommodation’ whereby minority ethnic students may conform on an instrumental and superficial level but do not actually accept the dominant model of white society propagated within schools.12 Respondents were also alerted to their difference from the white norm through racist bullying from white children. Singh for instance claimed he was ridiculed at primary school due to his long hair. He elaborated: Sometimes they’d even just call me top knot and while I was playing they would start pulling my hair and they’d say ‘how comes you’ve got hair like that?’ Or ‘what’s that tennis ball doing on your head?’ And then you think was that one of the reasons why I asked my parents if I could cut my hair so that perhaps I can fit in with everyone else?13

However, with support from the teachers Singh was able to negotiate this by playing football. He claimed, ‘at the end of the day we used to play football and it doesn’t really matter, you learn the game and then you just play it doesn’t really matter if you can’t speak your friends’ language but you just get involved in sports and that’s what the teachers tried to do.’14 Sports activities provided an opportunity to integrate and bridge differences and perhaps allowed Singh to assume a masculine identity based on sporting ability, which transcended a racialised identity.15

9 BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. 10 Ibid. 11 This draws on Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital as legitimate knowledge determined by the investment of the family or group members and enhanced by education. For a discussion on the national curriculum see S. Khan, ‘The role of culture of dominance in structuring the experience of ethnic minorities’, in C. Husband, (ed.), ‘Race’ in Britain: Continuity and Change (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 197–216. 12 M. Mac an Ghaill, ‘Coming of age in 1980s England: reconceptualising black student’s schooling experience’, in Gill et al., Racism and Education, 42–58. 13 BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh. See also S. Westwood et al., Sadness in My Heart: Racism and Mental Health (Leicester: University of Leicester, 1989), 19. 14 BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh. 15 A. Phoenix, ‘Mapping present inequalities to navigate future success: racialisation and education’, British Journal of Education, 23, 3 (2003), 509.

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Another example of these themes was provided by Kumar who recalled incidents of physical bullying at his secondary school. Those days it was like the English lads against the Indian lads. I can remember on one occasion … the elder lads would stand around and get the younger lads, they used to mess around, bullies (laughs) and we couldn’t do anything because they were standing there and I think I don’t know if you can blame the teachers but you know, I think the teachers even found it petty so they didn’t act on that as well.16

The sense of helplessness that Kumar felt was exacerbated by the teachers. He elaborated, ‘what it was I remember going as a bunch and saying to the teachers “we are being intimidated or hit or punched or kicked” and I think even they accepted it as just bullying, nothing to do with racism.’17 The important role of teachers in challenging racism has been stressed by other scholars and in Kumar’s case, the failure of the teachers to appreciate the gravity of the harassment and respond allowed a racist culture to persist unchecked. This resulted in the retaliation from the youths as they were forced to defend themselves by forming gangs and violence escalated.18 According to Kumar, a ‘gang used to come from one school and hit on us and we used to go and hit on someone else’.19 Arguably, the presence of South Asians within the Belgrave neighbourhood triggered fears amongst white inhabitants that South Asians were ‘taking over’ and prompted a form of white male territorialism, whereby gangs fought to redefine ‘who rules round here’.20 Despite this collective resistance, the incidents of racist bullying had a considerable impact on Kumar. He revealed: You know because you get bullied and intimated and intimidated everywhere you go I think you’re always expecting something to happen (laughs). Mentally I do think small children suffer a lot but I mean I would say yeah, it affected my education I’m sure, you know a few years when I was a youngster I was very bright; then because of the bullying I skipped school and had less interest in studying that sort of thing. Academically it has affected me.21

Kumar presented a stark image of school as an extremely hostile environment; a place where he felt threatened on a daily basis and the danger of white racism was ever-present. Kumar’s response was unequivocally one of disengagement: to 16 Kumar 16 February 2002. 17 Ibid. 18 P. Connolly and M. Keenan, ‘Racist harassment in the white hinterlands: the experiences of minority ethnic children and parents in schools in Northern Ireland’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23, 3 (2002), 350–54. Retaliation has been noted as a typical response. See D. Glover et al., ‘Bullying in 25 secondary schools: incidence, impact and intervention’, Educational Research, 42, 2 (2000), 141–56. 19 Ibid. 20 For further discussion see P. Cohen, ‘Labouring under whiteness’, in R. Frankenberg, (ed.), Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (London: Duke University Press, 1997), 244–82. 21 Ibid.

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reject schooling. This strategy of avoidance was conspicuous in other accounts and had adverse implications for respondents’ life chances, particularly employment opportunities.22 For instance, when Balbir attended school in the late 1960s she could not adequately converse in English and as a result was unable to inform the teachers of the bullying she experienced. She withdrew from school and this was remembered with a deep sense of regret: ‘I wish I had stayed on a bit longer, worked a little bit harder and got into college somehow, then I would have been a different person all together. I always wanted to be a nurse.’23 Yet for Kumar, racist bullying also incurred psychological costs. He admitted, ‘I mean obviously it does have a lot of mental effect on you, I don’t think I grew out of it until probably I was thirty.’24 Kumar discussed how at the age of thirty he finally accepted his South Asian identification. His narrative exposes how the pervasiveness of racism within his school not only spurred feelings of self doubt and a process of internal questioning but had a debilitating and long lasting effect on his sense of self. Other respondents encountered hostility from the teachers. Valand recounted the comments she received during her teacher training in the 1970s. The tutors (sighs) some of them were very, very helpful, the others didn’t want to know you because you were Asian. I remember the comment one of the tutors made quote, ‘go home and check your passport, if it’s not Britain you shouldn’t be here’ unquote. I was very upset about it. After the lecture I went to her and I said ‘I do have a British passport and I do know what I’m doing.’ She didn’t like it but then she knew I was doing the right thing.25

The teacher’s insensitive remark inferred that Valand did not fully belong to British society, yet Valand did not withdraw from the course, instead she showed resilience and assertively confronted the teacher. Alongside this, Valand claimed she was frequently treated as an ancillary and was told to clean the toilets and wipe the tables.26 Again, Valand’s experiences illustrate how the deployment of racist stereotypes and unwitting remarks contributed to a racist culture. However this bolstered her ambition and determination to prove her competence. In her words: Those were the comments that people made. Although they were not racist comments, they hurt, they did hurt me very much. But that made my will power much more stronger (laughs) and no matter what people said I wanted to be there, I wanted to be even more in that situation, so they helped me by saying those comments.27 22 Research conducted in Leicester has shown a distinct correlation between occupational status and educational qualifications. See K.B. Duffy and I.C. Lincoln, Earnings and Ethnicity (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1991). 23 BL, NSA, C900/00009 B. Kaur. 24 Kumar 16 February 2002. 25 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. 26 This has been noted in other life stories of teachers. See C. Pole, ‘Black teachers giving voice: choosing and experiencing teaching’, Teacher Development, 3 (1999), 322. 27 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. Rakhit was also struck by the determination demonstrated by South Asian teachers in response to racism. See A. Rakhit, ‘Silenced voices: life history as an approach to the study of South Asian women teachers’, in P. Connolly and B.

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In contrast then to the household and their local neighbourhood, the education system was, for the majority of the respondents, remembered as a racialised setting, where their ethnic and religious identities were marked out and stigmatised. Within schools they encountered the hidden process of symbolic violence, covert white harassment and thoughtless assumptions which fostered feelings of exclusion and created a climate hostile to ‘outsiders’.28 However, these experiences were mediated by their ability to speak English and the treatment from their teachers. Responses varied considerably and included not only a rejection of schooling or a staunch resolve to succeed, but also tactics of negotiation, such as playing sport to counter exclusion temporarily and resisting the dominant white culture by conforming at a perfunctory level. Furthermore, the prominence of these narratives within the respondents’ life stories discloses how their experiences of schooling had a profound and cumulative impact on their lives and sense of self. Despite the pervasiveness of these negative experiences, an alternative narrative genre can be gleaned from the accounts which stressed the positive experiences of education. This was expressed by women who pursued education at middleage, particularly during the 1990s. These women unequivocally identified their experiences of education as empowering and emphasised their success. Sue for instance, gained a diploma in interpretation. She claimed, ‘I took six exams you have to take specialisations in English law and I got one distinction and five passes.’29 Devi attended a local community college with her daughter and obtained an art GCSE. She recalled, ‘I joined the class and then we had exams and I passed and it was really good. I felt so happy that I had done something.’30 Similarly, Chitra took a part-time law degree at De Montfort University and concluded, ‘I said it was more fulfilling my own ambitions that I undertook the study as opposed to money and it’s paid off you know, none of it has suffered in vain.’31 For these women, the process of gaining qualifications was therefore a principal source of achievement and self fulfilment. Middle-age has been identified by some scholars as a period of ‘self development’, yet the comments by the female respondents need to be considered in the context of their specific past life experiences.32 In particular, the constraints they encountered in their youth and as daughter-in-laws, including their exclusion from further education as discussed in Chapter 4.

Troyna, (eds), Researching Racism in Education: Politics, Theory and Practice (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998), 55–66. 28 This reflects the findings in A. Brah and P. Golding, The Transition from School to Work among Young Asians in Leicester: A Pilot Study (Leicester: University of Leicester, Centre for Mass Communication Research, 1983), 4.1–4.4. 29 Sue 10 July 2002. 30 Devi 24 June 2002. 31 Chitra 22 May 2002. 32 J. Pilcher, Age and Generation in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 89–97.

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Employment: The Local Economic Context The respondents’ experiences of work in Leicester were influenced by labour market conditions. Availability of employment and conditions of the type of work available were all significant factors, though they have often been ignored in research on minority ethnic groups and work.33 Leicester’s prosperity built on its staple industries had been a major attraction for immigrants. In the nineteenth century, Leicester was an expanding industrial centre with hosiery and footwear manufacture established as the main local industries. From 1955 to the mid 1970s, Leicester’s local economy enjoyed sustained growth and diversification.34 Manufacturing developed in the twentieth century with light engineering, printing, adhesive manufacturing and food processing. By the late-1960s and early-1970s, employment in the electrical and electronic engineering superseded the footwear industry as the largest manufacturing industry and the knitted textile industry sustained its leading role in the local economy, influenced by the rise of large clothing retailers and mail order businesses.35 Leicester therefore boasted a relatively diverse and buoyant economy and consequently avoided the structural unemployment, which afflicted the English northern industrial towns from the 1930s to the 1960s.36 Nevertheless, Leicester was not immune from economic decline and demand for labour fell considerably in the mid 1970s with the national recession. In 1983 Leicester’s unemployment rate was 14.9 per cent with higher levels of unemployment reported amongst South Asians.37 In 1982 it was reported that the unemployment rate was 20 per cent for South Asians and 17 per cent for non-Asians.38 At the national level there was a shift from the manufacturing to the service sector, yet whilst Leicester has witnessed a growth in service industries in the 1980s, the city remained unusually dependent on manufacturing employment, particularly the textile industry, with manufacturing accounting for 40 per cent of total employment in 1984.39 Despite this, employment in the textile industry was cyclically unstable and has been characterised by longterm decline.40 Furthermore, Leicester has had a tradition of low pay compared to 33 V.S. Kalra, From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks: Experiences of Migration, Labour and Social Change (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 107. 34 Leicester City Council, Key Facts about Leicester No. 3 the Economy (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1988–90), 1. 35 D. Nash and D. Reeder, (eds), Leicester in the Twentieth Century (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1993), 61–75. 36 G. Singh, ‘Multiculturalism in contemporary Britain: reflections on the “Leicester model”’, International Journal on Multicultural Societies, 5, 1 (2003), 44–5. 37 Leicester City Council, Survey of Leicester 1983: Initial Report of Survey (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1984), 3. 38 Brah and Golding, The Transition from School to Work, 2.4. See also A. Sills, M. Tarpey, P. Golding, ‘Asians in an inner city’, New Community, 11 (1983), 34–41 and C. Griffin, Black and White Youth in a Declining Job Market (Leicester: Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, 1986). 39 Leicester City Council, Key Facts about Leicester No. 3 the Economy, 1. 40 Duffy and Lincoln, Earnings and Ethnicity, i, 152 and J. Husband and B. Jerrard, ‘Formal aid in an informal sector: institutional support for ethnic minority enterprise in local

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both the East Midlands and Britain as a whole and in 1985 an estimated 40 per cent of Leicester’s workforce was classified as low paid.41 It is necessary to consider the following narratives within this local economic context. Men and Work Whilst women’s stories were organised around the key theme of relationships with others, whether in the household, within the neighbourhood or at work, male narratives were dominated by stories of work.42 The subject of work often constituted the main section of the interview and was clearly the preferred topic of discussion. For instance, when Singh was asked a question about the weather he simply replied, ‘the money is coming in’ and the male respondents typically recalled their life through an account of their past occupations.43 There were many possible explanations for this. As other scholars have noted, the need for the male respondents to establish themselves economically was a priority.44 Work was simply imperative for familial survival, that is, to pay for accommodation to secure the basis for family life in Britain, and to support the immediate household as well as perhaps kin within the extended family and relatives from their country of origin. Remittances were most important in the early stages of settlement in the UK as male migrants sought to pay back loans for travel fares.45 Yet work was also the foremost concern because it offered the possibility of enhancing family wealth and economic success, and the concomitant increase in symbolic status has been a shared principal goal within the Indian population.46 clothing and textile industries’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27, 1 (2001), 116. 41 Evidence from Leicester Low Pay Unit cited in S. Westwood, ‘Red Star over Leicester: racism, the politics of identity and black youth in Britain’, in P. Werbner and A. Muhammad, (eds), Black and Ethnic Leaderships: The Cultural Dimensions of Political Action (London: Routledge, 1991), 150, Duffy and Lincoln, Earnings and Ethnicity, 149. 42 This was also a finding in K. Gardner, Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 77. 43 East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), Ethnic Elders Collection (EEC), 000629, EE01/01 K. Singh. 44 V. Marett, Immigrants Settling in the City (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989), 169. 45 In 1969 migrants from the Indian subcontinent remitted one-third of their incomes to India. See M.C. Madhavan, ‘Indian emigrants: numbers, characteristics and economic impact’, Population and Development Review, 11, 3 (1985), 473. R. Ballard, ‘The impact of kinship on the economic dynamics of transnational networks: reflections on some South Asian developments’, WPTC-01-14 (Manchester: Centre for Applied South Asian Studies, University of Manchester, 2001). For a discussion of the differences between South Asians relating to remittances see V. Burholt, ‘Transnationalism, economic transfers and families’ ties: intercontinental contacts of older Gujaratis, Punjabis and Sylhetis in Birmingham with families abroad’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27, 5 (2004), 800–829. 46 V. Robinson, ‘The Indians: onwards and upwards’, in C. Peach, (ed.), Ethnicity in the 1991 Census, Volume Two: The Ethnic Minority Populations of Great Britain (London: HMSO, 1996), 97.

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South Asians from the Indian subcontinent typically maintained strong feelings of loyalty to their country of origin and their status ‘back home’ was most important. As Kofman and Raghuram have noted, for migrants class is not rooted in a single society but transcends national boundaries.47 That is, migrants maintain their class location in their country of origin. The pressure to achieve economic success was reinforced by the perception of Britain as a place where success and status could be achieved, as discussed in Chapter 3. The male respondents’ expectations, therefore, had a paramount bearing on their experiences and the construction of their life stories.48 Furthermore, whilst forms of masculinity were culturally specific and varied across different classes and groups, it is widely recognised that work was central to the construction of masculine identities and ‘what it means to be a man’.49 Common notions of masculinity were also rooted in conceptions of men as the ‘breadwinners’ and ‘providers’ for their family.50 For instance, Shaikh claimed that although the family would have benefited financially if his wife had taken paid employment, he asked her not to work but to ‘cook, pray and look after the children and nothing else’.51 He added, ‘when I married her I did not say to her you have to work, I had the strength to support her and then I married her.’52 Thus, Shaikh felt solely responsible for the household income and his ability to support the household signalled ‘strength’ and was a fundamental source of honour and pride.53 It may have also boosted his class status ‘back home’ by demonstrating his economic achievements as a migrant. In contrast to other oral history accounts, the male respondents did not retell the familiar story of the migrant’s rise to success but instead stressed the obstacles

47 E. Kofman and P. Raghuram, ‘Reproducing cities, reconfiguring class: an analysis of contemporary female migration’, paper presented at the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference, London, 30 August–1 September 2006. 48 For further discussion see K.F. Olwig, ‘Constructing lives: migration narratives and life stories among Nevisians’, in M. Chamberlain, (ed.), Caribbean Migration: Globalised Identities (London: Routledge, 1998), 63–80. 49 D. Morgan cited in R. Simpson, ‘Masculinity at work: the experiences of men in female dominated occupations’, Work, Employment and Society, 18, 2 (2004), 352. 50 C. Jackson, ‘Men’s work, masculinities and gender division of labour’, Journal of Development Studies, 36 (1999), 89–108 and F. Osella, and C. Osella, ‘Migration, money and masculinity in Kerala’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6, 1 (2000), 117–33. 51 EMOHA, EEC, 000643, EE15/16 H. Shaikh. 52 Ibid. 53 These attitudes were not specific to South Asian communities but also influenced white working class women and other migrants groups in Britain, such as Greek Cypriots. S. Josephides, ‘Honour, family and work: Greek Cypriot women before and after migration’, in S. Westwood and P. Bhachu, (eds), Enterprising Women: Ethnicity, Economy and Gender Relations (London: Routledge, 1988), 34–57. The notion of marriage followed by full time housewifery was an enduring ideal for working class women, although since the 1950s there was a gradual acceptance of married women working outside the home. See J. Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain 1890–1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity (London; Routledge, 1994), 62–135 and J. Lewis, Women in Britain Since 1945: Women, Family, Work and the State in the Post War Years (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 66.

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and hardships they endured.54 These experiences were unequivocally influenced by their former class status and those from East Africa frequently delineated their initial loss of occupational status and their exclusion from white collar jobs in the 1970s.55 Travadi worked as an assistant chief accountant for Mercedes in Kampala for eleven years but despite this experience was unable to find similar work in Leicester. He explained, ‘I tried to get some job, I wish I could get it because wherever I went I was told I had no local experience.’56 Travadi encountered indirect discrimination, which the 1976 Race Relations Act sought to eliminate. That is, the requirement for the post excluded specific groups, as recent immigrants would not possess local experience. This demoralising experience corresponds with other accounts. Mashru, who had earned a reputation as a prestigious photojournalist in Uganda, encountered derision of his abilities and training by employment agencies in London and consequently found work as a sales assistant in a photography shop in Leicester. He summarised, ‘my career changed completely in this country … my life changed from holding my camera in my hand to giving the camera to someone else’s hand.’57 These extracts clearly convey the consequent sense of disappointment, frustration and powerlessness, and show how the male respondents grappled with their experience of deskilling. This downward mobility was a recurrent theme in the narratives of the elderly men who typically accentuated and discussed at great length their previous entrepreneurial success in East Africa. For instance, Ganatra claimed he ‘started in poverty’ and progressed from the status of a clerk to managing three factories in Uganda.58 These men articulated how their former habitus appeared out of step and incongruous with their new social world. Their cultural capital, such as their training and education, did not have the same currency in Britain but was devalued as they were automatically regarded as inferior to whites. Furthermore, it can be inferred from the subtext of the interview that the respondents also attempted to dispel any assumptions held by a white interviewer that dark skin colour was necessarily synonymous with a low social standing or that they were actually low skilled, because they were compelled to do low skilled work in Britain.59 This was implicit in Karim’s comment on his former life in Kenya; ‘you’ll be surprised if I tell you that I was a bank clerk.’60 The respondents were therefore engaged in a process of challenging dominant perceptions and contesting 54 See for instance, P. Werbner, ‘Rich man poor man – or a community of suffering’, Oral History, 8 (1980), 43–8. 55 This correlates with other research which showed that two-thirds of Ugandan Asians in Leicester had suffered downward occupational mobility. B.N. Adams and V. Jesudason, ‘The employment of Ugandan Asian refugees in Britain, Canada and India’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 7, 4 (1984), 474. See also ‘India clerk is disillusioned’, Leicester Mercury, 31 January 1962. 56 BBC Radio Four, ‘Haven of refugees, Ugandan Asians’, 2 November 1982, 8.50pm. 57 EMOHA, Leicester Oral History Archive Collection (LOHAC), 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru. 58 EMOHA, LOHAC, 836, LO/200/151 G. Ganatra. 59 For further discussion see M. Banton, ‘The race relations problematic’, in E. Cashmore and J. Jennings, (eds), Racism: Essential Readings (London: Sage, 2001), 286–94. 60 Karim 7 May 2002.

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racism which sought to define and homogenise them by defining themselves and constructing a masculine identity. Furthermore the loss of status and sense of powerlessness incurred within the wider society casts considerable light on the contested and dynamic nature of household relations discussed in Chapter 4. That is, the male respondents’ reassertion of power within the home may have represented an attempt to reclaim and reconcile a masculine identity which they felt was threatened and undermined within the workplace. The household represented a sphere where they could restore a dominant position. Whilst respondents from East Africa tended to mention how they used adverts to search for jobs, those from India often lacked fluency in English and were more dependent on networks of social capital such as friends and relatives to find work.61 This severely restricted their job opportunities and many found unskilled labouring jobs in the factories and foundries. For instance, Sissodia described searching for work in the 1970s and claimed, ‘wherever I saw a big chimney, I used to go and ask for work, this was taught to me by my brother. I did not know any English but wherever I used to see the big chimney I used to go and ask for work. They would either say “yes” or “no”. Then I would go on.’62 A dominant feature of these narratives was the focus on the hard and demanding nature of the work. For instance Khan obtained work in a local factory in mid 1950s and claimed, ‘at the beginning when I see the working people, they were very tough and very dirty you know, we had some kind of feeling, oh I can’t cope with this country.’63 The sense that the type of work was often unbearable was echoed by Sandhu who worked in a foundry for ten weeks in 1962; he defined this as ‘very hard work’, ‘very bad job, hot’.64 This provoked the desire to return ‘home’. Thus, he claimed ‘I think many times I go back and it will be better for me.’65 Work was essentially remembered as a struggle. Respondents recalled the long hours such as twelve hour shifts and the long journey to work. Sissodia for instance walked seven miles daily from East Park Road in Highfields to his workplace in Wigston.66 Others stressed the more damaging costs to their physical health. For example, Kumar claimed his father, a labourer who worked in a local foundry, tragically died aged thirty-nine from a heart attack due to the ‘hard work’, and Khan claimed his poor health stemmed from the tiredness of working night shifts in a bakery in the 1950s.67 These interviews support existing research conducted within Leicester and at the national level in the 1970s and 1980s which showed that the 61 For the use of adverts see EMOHA, Community History Collection (CHC), 000524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel. Research conducted in 1975 revealed that Ugandan Asians in Leicester were more likely to use adverts to apply for jobs in contrast to Ugandan Asians in Ealing who relied on friends and the Employment Exchange. Community Relations Commission, Refuge or Home? (London: Community Relations Commission, 1976), 26. 62 EMOHA, EEC, 00637, EE/09/010 P. Sissodia. See also EMOHA, LOHAC, LO/317/268 Sandhu. 63 Khan 4 July 2002. 64 EMOHA, LOHAC, LO/317/268 Sandhu. 65 Ibid. 66 EMOHA, EEC, 00643, EE/15/16 H. Shaikh and 00637, EE/09/010 P. Sissodia. 67 Kumar 16 February 2002 and Khan 4 July 2002.

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majority of South Asians were concentrated in unskilled manual work, particularly in traditional industries. This work was characterised by low pay, job insecurity, unsociable hours and health risks.68 However, this literature tends to present South Asians as passive and exploited workers. Yet the life stories reveal that whilst the respondents certainly gave prominence to these particular experiences, this type of work was generally temporary and intermittent. Indeed, many respondents were employed in various occupations throughout their life cycle and were often consistently engaged in a quest to find better work. This was illustrated in Khan’s life story, as he moved from Birmingham to Coventry to Leicester in the 1950s and 1960s in search of what he termed his ‘betterment’. This included working a night shift in a bakery and as a store keeper in the Dunlop factory, a bus conductor and a butcher before establishing a Turkish delight factory in 1970 which ultimately proved unsuccessful.69 Thus, whilst the respondents consistently emphasised the hard work they endured, they simultaneously presented themselves as active agents. Why then did the notion of hard work constitute such a prominent theme within the narratives? Whilst the men did endure very real hardships, the focus on hard work could be interpreted as an attempt to reassert masculinity since amongst lower status groups in India manual labour was a highly prized and respected male attribute.70 This narrative also helped to construct a masculine identity, whereby they were the heroic men who struggled and survived against the harsh working conditions.71 It is important to note that the theme of hard work was not simply confined to personal experiences of unskilled manual labour. Rather, the respondents consistently stated that hard work was a defining and often intrinsic element of all South Asians. Morjaria stressed: ‘There are certain things which are inborn in the Asians because they are very hard working people.’72 Similarly Singh claimed, ‘they [westerners] also can learn a lot from us because you know we Asian people I believe are very hard working people; even in England what I noticed was it was always Asian people who would do the back breaking jobs. Like my father he really did work hard.’73 Karim described working for the Imperial Typewriter firm in the early 1970s and contrasted the hard work he observed amongst the South Asians to the lax behaviour of whites. In his words:

68 For the situation in Leicester see Brah and Golding, The Transition from School to Work, Sills et al., ‘Asians in an inner city’ and Duffy and Lincoln, Earnings and Ethnicity. For a discussion on the national level see, for example, D.J. Smith, The Facts of Racial Disadvantage: A National Survey (London: P.E.P., 1976), C. Brown, Black and White Britain: The Third PSI Survey (London: Heineman Educational, 1984). 69 Khan 4 July 2002. 70 Jackson, ‘Men’s work’, 9. 71 See R. Johnston and A. McIvor, ‘Narratives from the urban workplace: oral testimonies and the reconstruction of men’s work in the heavy industries in Glasgow’, in R. Rodger and J. Herbert (eds), Testimonies of the City: Identity, Community and Change in a Contemporary Urban World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 72 BL, NSA, C900/00066 T.V. Morjaria. 73 BL, NSA, C900/00005 S. Singh.

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absenteeism, sickness very many from the white people. Slight injury off, back injury they will get letter from the doctor to the industry, after long time they are sleeping on hospital bed because it was very easy at that time, anything back trouble, you are there and enjoying all the benefits in the hospital.74

This process of identifying their own ethnic group as superior workers has also been observed in the narratives of recent migrant groups in London, such as Eastern Europeans and West Africans, and can been seen as a coping mechanism that helped to compensate for their low status job, by emphasising their value as an ethnic group.75 It was one way of transforming the stigma of the low paid job into an honour.76 It can also be seen as a response to the racial discourses discussed in Chapter 2, which defined South Asians as essentially undisciplined and unworthy. According to the white respondents, South Asians were undeservedly living off the welfare state and were guilty of flaunting their money and social status which they had acquired through their cunning and sly ways. Thus, the South Asian male respondents responded by constructing a moral boundary between themselves and whites, which classified whites as lazy and defined the collective identity of South Asians as hardworking and, therefore, morally superior. A further core theme of the male respondents’ narratives was the salience of racism within the workplace. This included daily hassles from whites. For instance, Singh described the hostility he encountered when he started working in 1968: I did face some discrimination or some jealousies from some young people when I worked at the shoe factory but in the end I think it’s your will power to overcome these. You expect some discrimination at the end of the day. You are in a different country thousands of miles away and you can’t speak good English so that didn’t help and you didn’t know anybody, ‘cause I didn’t go to any school in that country so there was some discrimination. I sort of took it and then I started my next job at the factory where they were all English people, there were only two Asians, me and my other friends and we did face some discrimination.77

Singh’s claims that ‘he just took it’, that such hostility was expected, discloses a perception of racism as universal and inevitable, and ultimately suggests a degree of acceptance. This was supported by his following comment that it was ‘just a bit of name calling which was quite normal in those days.’78 This also shows how Singh attempted to minimise the racism, perhaps because his lack of fluency in English hindered his capacity to challenge the perpetrators and assert control over the situation. Yet his comments also imply that these incidents did not represent a considerable threat. Racism, albeit ever present, was simply not an important issue or a defining part of his life. Furthermore, his reference to ‘jealousies’ can be construed 74 Karim 13 June 2002. 75 C. McIlwaine et al., ‘Gender and ethnic identities among low paid migrant workers’, Working Paper no. 4 (London: Queen Mary, University of London, 2006). 76 J. Wills, ‘Work, identity and new rhetorics of mobilisation’, paper presented at ESRCseminar, Working Class Lives, London, 20–21 October 2005. 77 BL, NSA, C900/09138b G.S. Singh. 78 Ibid.

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as an attempt to reject the effects of racism by stressing the inadequacies of whites he was also protecting his own self esteem.79 Consequently, Singh’s narrative revealed evidence of acceptance, alongside a desire to downplay the effects of racism and rationalise the situation. This was consistently reflected in other accounts of racism within the workplace. For instance, Tripathi recalled his experiences as a bus conductor including an incident whereby a customer responded to Tripathi’s consistent requests to show his bus ticket with the comment ‘why don’t you go back to India?’80 However Tripathi claimed, ‘I just laughed at it you know, it’s not much to do with the colour but because of their own selfishness.’81 Like Singh, Tripathi’s recollection suggests that he perceived the incident as trivial. His response was simply to laugh and to locate the problem unequivocally with white people. Others conceptualised racist taunts as ‘resentment’, whilst according to Karim, it emanated from the ignorance of whites.82 Karim expanded his hypothesis by contrasting the past experiences of South Asians who travelled internationally, to whites who ‘just go to Skegness, very few go overseas’.83 Karim reflected, ‘that’s why you find these white people fighting very very hard and difficulty with us, they say “oh no we don’t want immigrant” because they don’t have wider knowledge and understanding of the people.’84 Here Karim stressed the disparities, between the world views of East African Asians and whites and his comments alluded to the nature of white working class habitus, which as Bourdieu formulated, framed how they saw the world and acted in it. This indicates an astute evaluation of the complex causes of racism, yet it also shows how encounters with racist remarks did not precipitate feelings of inferiority, anxiety or shame, as some scholars have assumed.85 Instead, the respondents were again constructing a moral boundary between themselves and whites, whereby they deflected the blame from their own groups and, in Elias’s terms, asserted a ‘group charisma’, in which their group was seen as superior.86 Furthermore, these quotations also highlight the different narrative genres used by the male and female respondents. Put simply, the male respondents preferred to postulate theories for their experiences in contrast to women who tended to recall personal emotions.87

79 C.T. Miller and C.R. Kaiser, ‘A theoretical perspective on coping with stigma’, Journal of Social Issues, 57, 1 (2001), 81–2. 80 EMOHA, LOHAC, LO/333/284 U. Tripathi. 81 Ibid. 82 BL, NSA, C900/00003 C.M Vadhia. 83 Karim 13 June 2002. 84 Ibid. 85 See in particular, N. Elias and J.L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders (London: Sage Publications, 1965) and Miller and Kaiser, ‘A theoretical perspective on coping with stigma’. 86 Ibid. This is also a salient theme in M. Lamont, The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class and Immigration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). 87 Other histories have explored these differences. See for example, I. Bertaux-Wiame, cited in R. Samuel and P. Thompson, The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 1990), 7.

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However, the male respondents articulated a clear distinction between individual racism from whites and actual processes in the workplace which placed them in positions of material disadvantage. According to Anthias, a racist practice can be any practice that produces racist effects and differential treatment correlates with ethnic differences.88 These racist practices, such as the denial of promotion, constituted major threats to their life opportunities, yet they were principally hidden and for many were not realised instantaneously. For instance, during the 1970s Kapasi worked as an accountant in a knitting manufacturing firm and after seven years he claimed, ‘I realised this is the glass ceiling.’89 He then sought work elsewhere and obtained a job in a book-binding company, but stated ‘again I soon reached the glass ceiling.’90 Kapasi described his increasing awareness during the 1970s and 1980s of racist practices and as he attempted to overcome these difficulties and establish his own company, new patterns of exclusion surfaced. For instance, the bank refused to lend him money because according to Kapasi they ‘never trusted our people they always felt that if you lend money to these Asians they may one day run away from the country’. Saddled with this, white businesses would not trade with his company, and as Kapasi commented ‘there were constraints everywhere.’91 Kapasi’s narrative creates the impression that racism was experienced as all pervasive and ubiquitous within the workplace and this was mirrored in Mashru’s life story, which retold similar predicaments, including barriers to promotion and the absence of financial aid from the bank. The impact of these experiences can be gleaned from Mashru’s conclusions: ‘that’s the vicious world we live in and we can’t change this vicious world’, reinforced later with the comment, ‘this is one of the vicious worlds we find and we are to accept it.’ 92 This reveals how racist practices by ‘gatekeepers’, such as staff responsible for promotion, had a profoundly different impact on their lives compared to whites who were not placed in positions of authority. Whilst racism from white individuals could be explained and dismissed, the respondents clearly felt that racist practices presented intractable problems, experienced primarily as a barrage of inescapable constraints. Hence, Mashru’s comments that ‘we can’t change’ and ‘we are to accept it’.93 Perhaps these racist practices also provoked considerable concern and anxiety because they were concealed. As Singh stated, ‘I don’t think there’s justice as you can say. It’s a game unless you can know that you are being discriminated and many times because of your education and your level you can’t know that you’re being discriminated.’94 However, despite this rhetoric of resignation, the respondents were not passive recipients of unjust practices and the strategy of establishing their own business was itself presented as a pragmatic response to racism and an escape route from low status

88 F. Anthias, ‘Institutional racism, power and accountability’, Sociological Research Online, 4, 1 (1999), 4. 89 BL, NSA, C900/09135B J. Kapasi. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 EMOHA, LOHAC, 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru. 93 Ibid. 94 BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh.

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jobs.95 Furthermore, as the respondents confronted additional forms of exclusion, chiefly in the process of establishing their business, they responded by adapting to new constraints and displaying determination.96 This was epitomised by Mashru who decided to set up a photography business in 1974 and without financial aid from the bank, circumvented the high rates and rents in the city centre by establishing the business in Belgrave. He claimed, ‘I had the guts and I had the faith and I had the confidence that I might break it … it was the determination which kept me going.’97 Mashru described a process of gradually accumulating funds and expanding through the profits. He reflected, ‘I had to be a carpenter on that there to build up the partitions. I’d never done it in my life but you know when you got determination nobody stops you.’98 Mashru’s response clearly involved a determination to actively negotiate constraints combined with a resolve to succeed.99 A manifestation of this success can be seen with the proliferation of South Asian businesses. By the late 1970s South Asians had already captured a significant share of the retail trade. In 1976, 59 per cent of shops on Belgrave Road and 27 per cent on Melton Road were South Asian owned shops, compared to 1966 when there was only one shop under South Asian management in the Belgrave area.100 Furthermore, by 2002 there were over 10,000 registered South Asian businesses in the city.101 Alongside these experiences, which were defined by a gradual realisation of racist practices, other respondents’ experiences of racism were more apparent. Patel worked for Leicester City Transport in the late 1970s as a bus conductor and described an occupational culture infused with racism. Patel’s experiences correspond with Essed’s definition of ‘everyday racism’, whereby racism itself could not be diminished as a sporadic or unique event but was experienced through manifold relations and situations and was systemically created and reinforced 95 This is not to suggest that racial discrimination was the sole impetus for South Asian business formation. Previous research in Leicester has cited the desire for independence and entrepreneurial experience possessed by East African Asians as further contributory influences: see K.N. Okoronkwo, ‘Business development and ethnic minorities in the UK. A case study of East African Asians in Leicester’ (unpublished University of Leicester Ph.D. thesis, 1993) and M. Ram, Barriers and Drives for Ethnic Minority Businesses in the East Midlands (Leicester: Small Business and Enterprise Research Group, Leicester Business School, 2001). For further discussion see also P. Clark, ‘Asian entrepreneurs from Leicester in wholesaling and manufacturing. Their organisations and environments’, New Community, 11 (1983), 23–33 and E. Aldrich et al., ‘Business development and self segregation: Asian enterprise in three British cities’, in C. Peach, V. Robinson, and S. Smith, (eds), Ethnic Segregation in Cities (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 170–90. 96 This was also noted in Aldrich et al., ‘Business development and self segregation’, 173. 97 EMOHA, LOHAC, 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru. 98 Ibid. 99 See also BL, NSA, C900/09135B J. Kapasi and EMOHA, CHC, 000524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel. 100 J. Seliga, ‘A neighbourhood transformed: the effect of Indian migration on the Belgrave area of Leicester, 1965–1995’, Local Historian, 28, 4 (1998), 234. See also Aldrich et al., ‘Business development and self segregation’. 101 Singh, ‘Multiculturalism in contemporary Britain’, 45.

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through everyday practices.102 For instance, Patel described seating divisions within the canteen, as whites refused to sit next to South Asians and African Caribbeans.103 This racial segregation within the canteen was also noted in Singh’s life story as a worker for Leicestershire police in the 1970s.104 It depended on the tacit consent of whites to demonstrate their loyalty and unity to a white identity, regardless of whether they harboured racist views as individuals and it served as a daily reminder to minority ethnic groups of the unequivocal demarcation between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This illustrates how racism was not simply rooted in individual prejudice but was inscribed within particular occupational cultures.105 Patel also recalled examples of racism from staff in positions of authority, including forms of harassment whereby ethnic minorities were subject to greater levels of disciplinary action, coupled with more subtle racially coded comments. He claimed, I can remember my experiences with the chief inspector, I put some money in the vending machine and the machine had some defect and kept on rejecting my coins and he turned around and said ‘perhaps you ought to try some rupees’ and I put in a complaint to the managing director. They tried to play it down and said ‘look it was a joke’. I said ‘look it may have been a joke to you but to me it’s not a joke and I expect the behaviour of this individual to be put right because he is in authority and if he is in a position of exercising that sort of behaviour then what does it leave for the rest of the workforce?’106

The connotations of the chief inspectors’ seemingly flippant remark were that Patel was viewed as intrinsically different; he did not belong and was ‘out of place’. Yet the comment evoked particular meanings for Patel in the context of the multifarious and daily experiences of racisms within work. As Essed explained, ‘each instantiation of everyday racism has meaning only in relation to the whole complex of relations and practices.’107 For Patel, this included disparaging comments from union members that South Asians were from the colonial empire and persistent name calling from passengers and staff, such as ‘you peasant’ and ‘wog Patel’.108 The chief inspectors’ reference to rupees could not be disentangled from the racialised construction of South Asians as intrinsically primitive, uncivilised and ultimately inferior. Furthermore, as Patel noted, the failure of whites in authority to challenge racism effectively was an indication of a tolerance and endorsement of a racist culture and this parallels the respondents’ experience of institutional racism within education.

102 P. Essed, ‘Everyday racism: a new approach to the study of racism’, in P. Essed and D.T. Goldberg, (eds), Race Critical Theories: Text and Context (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 176–95. 103 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel. 104 BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh. 105 See S. Holdaway, ‘Constructing and sustaining “race” within the police workforce’, British Journal of Sociology, 48, 1 (1997), 19–34. This was also emphasised in the Macpherson report. 106 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel. 107 Essed, ‘Everyday racism’, 189–90. 108 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel.

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A further visible manifestation of this racist culture cited by Patel was the appearance of National Front graffiti in the late 1970s. Patel recalled, ‘there was actual graffiti appearing on the cabs of buses which in my view could have been quite clearly pinpointed if management took the initiative to find out’; however, ‘that didn’t take place and that was where anger really started building in.’109 Unlike derogatory remarks by white colleagues, which could be experienced as a hassle, the National Front graffiti signalled a critical threat and an unambiguous attack directed at the mere presence of minority ethnic groups. However, Patel refused to accept the situation and whilst at an individual level he consistently challenged racist comments with direct rebuttals he also responded on a collective level.110 This included joining forces with six other colleagues and complaining to the union and local management. However, although the graffiti was removed there were no further efforts to investigate or monitor the situation. ‘We were very angry about it we demanded this thing needs sorting out, investigated, that never took place’, rather, ‘that graffiti repeatedly began appearing.’111 Added to this, the union was not only unsupportive but actively reinforced racism.112 Consequently Patel turned to pressurising and lobbying the council in the late 1970s and advances were secured in the form of an investigation and subsequent report by Leicester City Transport. Patel cited the vital role of South Asian councillors, specifically Paul Sood, Sarinda Sharma and Councillor Prama as instrumental to this achievement. This highlights how Patel’s experience cannot be divorced from the institutional structures of the city such as local government.113 In particular, the transformation of the power base of the local Labour party in the 1970s coupled with the electoral success of South Asian councillors, enabled Patel to mobilise support and challenge prejudice through normative channels.114 This collective response to racism was not unique to Leicester, but was also evident in other cities from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.115 109 Ibid. 110 Collective responses were evident in other accounts. Kapur and Sandhu were active in the Indian Workers Association and Karim participated in the Indian Typewriters Dispute in 1975. EMOHA, LOHAC, 970, LO/325/276 S. Kapur, 962, LO/317/268 Sandhu and Karim 13 June 2002. 111 BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel. 112 See also EMOHA, LOHAC, 970, LO/325/276 S. Kapur. 113 This theme is discussed in N. Jewson, ‘Migrant populations, community divisions and ethnic mobilisation’, in N. Jewson, (ed.), Migration Processes and Ethnic Divisions (Leicester: The Centre for Urban History and the Ethnicity Research Centre, University of Leicester, 1995), 108–33. 114 Nash and Reeder, Leicester in the Twentieth Century, T. Brindley and G. Stoker, ‘Asian politics and housing renewal’, Policy and Politics, 13, 3 (1985), 281–303. Not unconnected to the changing electoral topography of Leicester was the highly commended council policy of removing racist graffiti within twenty-four hours. Afrikan Caribbean Support Group Research Project, African Caribbean People in Leicestershire: First Interim Report (Leicester: Centre for the Study of Public Order, 1993), 31. 115 Race Today Collective, The Struggles of Asian Workers in Britain (London: Race Today Publications, 1983).

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Overall, work was irrefutably a dominant theme of the male narratives and this was intricately linked to the respondents’ sense of identity, as work was fundamental to their sense of self, as a male migrant. However, work was not remembered as a satisfying experience, rather the loss of status and the hard work endured were central to these narratives. The emphasis on hard work highlighted their manliness, restored value to their low status job and can also be read as a direct response to racial discourses which classified South Asians as unworthy and undeserving of their economic success. A further salient theme was the diverse experiences of racism; responses hinged on a host of factors such as education and linguistic skills. Racism from white colleagues or the public was experienced as immediately perceptible and was typically minimised and rationalised. This can be seen as an attempt by the male respondents to create a buffering life space, as opposed to internalising the negative views. Conversely, racist practices were less explicit and manifested as tangible economic constraints. The reaction to this form of racism was not immediate but involved a process of gradual awareness by the respondents and was only acted upon following several years of residence in Britain. Patel’s experience, meanwhile, illustrates the everyday nature of institutional racism and as Macpherson stressed, similar racist structures could be detected in other public bodies and agencies.116 Nevertheless, it is important to note that racism is historically and geographically variable and Patel’s experience reflected the emergence of the National Front in Leicester as a white ‘backlash’ to the arrival of Ugandan Asians in 1972.117 Moreover, concepts of racism, whether ‘individual’, ‘indirect’ or ‘institutional’ often fail to incorporate a consideration of how minority ethnic groups respond and assert their own choices. This was demonstrated in the interviews through the preference for self-employment and whilst there were examples of collective responses to eradicate racism, the respondents also stressed a personal responsibility and determinacy to navigate and supersede racist exclusions. Women and Work The core themes which dominated the male respondents’ memories of work were also enmeshed in women’s narratives. For instance, some women mentioned the hard work they endured. This was conspicuous in Shenta’s narrative which detailed her various factory jobs, consistently described as ‘very hard work’.118 Most notably, one job was remembered as particularly distressing. Shenta claimed, ‘I find one job in a sausage factory so cold in there and I see the meat and I cry, my fingers all swollen and cold.’119 Similarly Johan claimed she worked from eight in the morning till eight at night in a box factory and she recalled, ‘I used to get tired a lot, I just left school and came here and the work was so hard.’120 Nevertheless, it was not just paid work 116 Such as the police and criminal justice system, D. Mason, Race and Ethnicity in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 119. 117 See Chapter 2. 118 Shenta 8 March 2002. 119 Ibid. 120 Johan 8 March 2002.

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itself which was the struggle, but relations within the extended family which meant combining full time work with taking full responsibility for the housework. This was testified by Johan’s ensuing comment, ‘then come home and cook dinner and everything and my father-in-law was with me as well as my husband, so there was three of us, and I was only seventeen so first I find it bit hard.’121 Similar examples abound. For instance, Devi recalled ‘four o’clock I used to get up and god I had three children that time, my youngest daughter was six I think six months old or three months old, something like that and in newspaper shop you have to pick the bundles outside in winter, really hard work.’122 These quotes mirror the male narratives, in that work was essentially remembered in terms of a phenomenal body, such as the sensations of the cold conditions and physically demanding work. These extracts therefore offer an insight into how the recollections of bodily sensations provide a lens through which to view and interpret the past.123 Likewise, Sue described her job in her father-in-law’s shop, which consisted of putting lentils into different bags. She summarised, I was like looking after my daughter, my new born daughter, doing all the shop work and doing all the house work and I was washing clothes and sounds like a Cinderella story but yes, I was hoovering the whole house it had to be done every day, polishing, cooking, washing clothes washing up, everything you name it yeah.124

The interviews convey the palpable sense that women’s work was arduous although, in contrast to the male narratives, this was related to their experiences of the ‘double burden’; a theme discussed in Chapter 4. Moreover, Sue and Devi’s experience of shop work illustrates how South Asian women often participated in hidden work, which according to previous research was vital unpaid family labour that contributed to the development and success of family businesses.125 Alongside the theme of hard work, a few women also relayed experiences of racism. Like men, some women noted that they were confined to low waged, factory work despite their educational credentials.126 For instance, Sagoo’s objectified cultural capital in the form of a degree did not bestow economic and symbolic capital in Britain. According to Bourdieu, an academic certificate is a ‘certificate of cultural competence which conferred on its holder a conventional, constant, legally guaranteed value with respect to power’.127 However, despite searching for a job as a

121 Ibid. 122 Devi 24 June 2002. 123 B. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2003), 77. 124 Sue 10 July 2002. 125 A. Phizacklea, ‘In the front line’, in A. Phizacklea, (ed.), One Way Ticket: Migration and Female Labour (London: Routledge, 1983), 95–112. 126 This has been noted elsewhere. See for example, G.F. Rafiq, Conversations with Educated Asian Women: Their Experience of Racism and Discrimination (Norwich: Social Work Monographs, University of East Anglia, 1999), 44. 127 P. Bourdieu, ‘The forms of capital’, in A.H. Halsey et al., (eds), Education, Culture Economy and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 51.

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teacher or clerk she reluctantly took her first job in a hosiery firm in 1974 and recalled, ‘I was very annoyed, very sad because I thought I have enough qualification to go for better jobs but I ended up doing the machinist because that was the only job I could do in those days.’ 128 She added, ‘I find out quite few girls like me … I was very shocked actually in those days, they didn’t recognise South Asian qualification.’129 Sentiments of fundamental injustice saturated Sagoo’s narrative and her occupation as a machinist highlights how her experiences of the labour market were both racialised and gendered. That is, women migrants in various societies have tended to cluster in occupations which were shaped by gender roles and expectations, such as employment in the clothing industry.130 This is not to suggest however that Sagoo was simply a victim of structural and ideological forces. For instance, Sagoo worked for a textile firm, Corah, in the 1980s and was appalled by the unjust treatment directed at fellow South Asian women, particularly from one white female union representative. She claimed: Because some of the Asian people they couldn’t speak like I couldn’t speak when I came from India, she used to tell them off for no reason and the Asian people they didn’t know their rights and they were scared, they were very scared to speak their own piece of mind, but I think it could be something in me or I don’t know what, I was always strong minded person and when I used to think how the Asian people have been treated it used to really get my blood, heart and I really used to get annoyed myself and I couldn’t see one person treating another person that bad.131

Sagoo’s feelings of anger were clearly evoked and she not only defined herself as strong but took decisive action to exert control and stood for the position of union representative, which she gained in 1984. She consequently fought for higher wages and an increase in South Asian representation within the union. Sagoo’s case exemplified the important role of women in forging campaigns to improve working conditions.132 A further form of racism encountered by the female respondents echoed the experiences of symbolic violence depicted within educational settings. For instance, Saujani worked for Leicester Council for Community Relations in the 1970s and recalled: 128 BL, NSA, C900/00040 R. Sagoo. 129 Ibid. 130 S. Lee, ‘Issues in research on women, international migration and labour’, Asia and Pacific Migration Journal, 5 (1996), 13 and P. Sharpe, (ed.), Women, Gender and Labour Migration: Historical and Global Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2001). Also, in Leicester hosiery represented the main industry for women, whilst men were concentrated in engineering. See Duffy and Lincoln, Earnings and Ethnicity. 131 BL, NSA, C900/00040 R. Sagoo. 132 This is well documented elsewhere. See, for instance, A. Wilson, Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain (London: Virago, 1978), R. Moore, Racism and Black Resistance in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1975), 73–115, A. Sivanandan, ‘From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in Britain’, Race and Class, XXIII (1981–1982), 110–52 and S. Westwood, ‘Workers and wives: continuities and discontinuities in the lives of Gujarati women’, in Westwood and Bhachu, Enterprising Women, 114–6.

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Saujani’s comment, that she was made to feel ‘very small’, reveals how she felt humiliated as she experienced the imposition of a white dominant culture which masqueraded as the ‘norm’ and ultimately deemed her culture as inferior. She responded however, by consistently attempting to challenge and contest dominant perceptions, exhibited in her claim ‘I felt, with Leicester Council for Community Relations, it was very much in terms of you fighting all the time for things to change, so it was very much a role of saying over and over and over and over and over again “no this isn’t how people should be treated.”’134 Saujani stressed, ‘but in those days everything was a battle and it was trying to change ideas.’135 Despite these examples, racism was not perceived as ubiquitous within the workplace and accounts of racism within employment were only discussed by three female respondents. This parallels Ramji’s study of professional South Asian women, who posits that women were unwilling to condemn organisations which they have benefited from.136 Whilst this factor may have contributed to the limited cases of racism within work, it can also be surmised that the women had other pressing problems, such as constraints within the household, isolation and confining gender roles, that had a greater impact on their sense of well being and the quality of their lives.137 Moreover, many women entered the labour market in the late 1980s and 1990s, when racism was less covert compared to the 1960s and 1970s. To elaborate briefly, the Race Relations Act of 1976 outlawed racial discrimination within various activities including employment and also distinguished between direct and indirect discrimination. This legislation, albeit limited and flawed, has been credited for

133 BL, NSA, C900/00011 R. Saujani. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 H. Ramji, ‘Engendering diasporic identities’, in N. Puwar and P. Raghuram, (eds), South Asian Women in the Diaspora (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 227–41. Jayaweera’s findings were similar in relation to African Caribbean women. See. H. Jayaweera, ‘Racial disadvantage and ethnic identity: the experience of Afro-Caribbean women in a British city’, New Community, 3 (1993), 383–406. Other studies have noted the salience of racism within employment. See Rafiq, Conversations with Educated Asian Women. Research in Leicester revealed that South Asian women felt discriminated within employment on the basis of ethnicity, age and gender. M.O.R.I and Leicester City Council, Asian Women Workers in the Hosiery, Knitwear and Clothing Industries (Leicester: Leicester City Council, 1993). 137 See Chapters 5 and 6.

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restraining potential discriminators as they were compelled to consider the legal consequences of actions.138 This was evident in Sue’s interview: Did you ever face any hostility like when you first came to Leicester or in your jobs, any barriers to your employment? Because I’m an Asian? Yes And because I’m a woman? Yes Never … I’ve been working for the police for the past almost thirteen years and honest to god and I’m not just saying just to make it sound good but in thirteen years of experience I’ve never come across one police officer who made me feel that I’m an Asian and that I’m a woman not just only Asian but a woman, and so I have not had any sexist problems like you know “you’re a woman oh my god”, nothing like that. I’ve had so much respect from all the people, social workers, immigration officers, police officers, solicitors.139

Thus Sue was unambiguously adamant that she had not encountered patriarchal or racial discourses within the workplace which defined her as inferior or as an ‘other’. In reviewing accounts of work, several themes can be identified. The themes which dominated the male respondents’ accounts such as hard work and racism could also be traced in the women’s narratives, however for these women, hard work was not simply confined to the workplace but was experienced in conjunction with the household chores. Furthermore, despite some recollections of racism, a defining facet of the women’s narratives was that work was essentially evaluated as a positive experience. Many women conceded that although they sometimes experienced a downward shift in occupational status, it was relatively easy for them to find paid employment. For instance, Johan claimed in 1967, ‘I didn’t find it that hard to find a job it took me a couple of weeks to find a job’, and Mistry stated ‘I didn’t find any trouble to find a job.’140 Similarly, when Chitra arrived in 1974, she recalled, ‘I certainly didn’t struggle to find a job. Like I said my friend took me to the job centre, he took down my qualification sent me for this interview to this place.’141 She summarised, ‘so I walked into the job basically.’142 Moreover, paid work was principally seen as a way of forging friendships and this was a fundamental concern for the women considering the isolation they

138 H. Goulbourne, Race Relations in Britain Since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1998). See chapter five. 139 Sue 10 July 2002. 140 Mistry 8 March 2002 and Johan 8 March 2002. 141 Chitra 22 May 2002. 142 Ibid.

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experienced.143 For instance, Sagoo claimed she ‘grabbed’ her first job because ‘I was glad I could just get out from the house to do anything.’144 Devi related the long hours she worked in a factory but added, ‘but then you need money so you go and you meet friends’.145 The respondents often recalled one particular friendship. Devi recalled, There was a lady called Mabel and she taught me how to do overlocking how to do it and she became such a good friend she was old lady, very nice, very gentle. I used to go to her house and visit her at the hall but because she was older she passed away. Oh often I think about her, such a wonderful lady I used to go and visit her all the time. I remember she used to make banana jelly, frothy with milk and then she used to slice bananas on top, you know such a wonderful; I will never forget that bit.146

This mirrors the close relationships formed with white elderly women within the neighbourhood.147 The emphasis is on the valuable help offered within the workplace and the friendship and hospitality provided.148 The importance of work as a source of friendships was also a conspicuous theme of Sue’s life story and served as a counter balance to the considerable isolation experienced within the household. For instance, she worked intermittently in 1979 and recalled excitedly, ‘I was allowed to work for two months at Millans store, which is a big store on Belgrave Road. So I really liked it because I made few friends.’149 However work not only helped her to overcome the problem of isolation, but this form of social capital also enabled her to gain valuable advice and confidence. She professed: I worked throughout the day from seven in the morning I worked till five non stop, doing everything you name it, housework chores, everything in the shop five thirty and I would drive to Leicester General hospital and work as a domestic assistant cleaning the floor and cleaning the toilets. But I didn’t mind because I made one friend there an Irish woman and she started to say if I pronounce something wrong because by this time I had no confidence at all I honesty believed I’m really bad person I’m stupid, I’m thick and whatever English I could speak I didn’t have confidence because other people would laugh at me because I had very strong accent and therefore I wouldn’t say anything I was just so so in a shell. I was so so no confidence at all really like that, so that was good because then she’d say you know I’d talk about my children growing up and she say ‘oh don’t worry’. I’ll say ‘look 143 This was also a theme in S. Westwood, All Day Everyday: Factory and Family in the Making of Women’s Lives (London: Pluto Press, 1984). See chapter five. See also K. Stone, ‘Motherhood and waged work: West Indian, Asian and white mothers compared’, in Phizacklea, One Way Ticket, 38–9. 144 BL, NSA, C900/00040 R. Sagoo. 145 Devi 24 June 2002. 146 Ibid. 147 See Chapter 6. 148 Food was a common memory and acted as a tangible signifier of this friendship. See also Chitra who recalled her lunch breaks with a white female colleague, which centred on visits to Bradgate Park and eating ice-cream. Chitra 22 May 2002. For the salience of food in memories see Chapter 4. 149 Sue 10 July 2002.

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sometimes my son pretends as if he’s smoking and I’m really worried.’ She’d say ‘don’t worry Sue, it’s the part of growing up, all children do it’. I said ‘oh really?’ So it was like I started to get a bit of general knowledge and not take things so seriously and then if I said something wrongly in a funny way, like some words I still do, it doesn’t bother me now but it did at the time, then she’d say ‘look Sue you don’t say it like this you say it like this’ you know and I started to learn English again actually communicate in English and that was such a good feeling.150

Thus Sue stressed that although she was engaged in low paid work, it was nevertheless highly valued because the friendship she established was a vital source of knowledge. Most importantly it enabled her to relearn English and this was recalled as a pivotal stage in the process of asserting control over her life. Indeed, each successive job occupied by Sue was evaluated in terms of accumulating new skills. For instance, she worked as an assistant in a play group and claimed, ‘I started to learn how to handle children, how to play with them, I was a better mother’, whilst her work in a fashion store and electronic equipment shop enabled her to further develop her communication skills and enhanced her confidence.151 For other women, success at work conferred recognition and personal fulfilment. Balbir worked in a biscuit factory from 1977 to 1993 and stated that she had put all her energies into work to counter the adversities within her home life. ‘I was into saving money for the company you know I very much thought it was my own business. I was conscientious. I was passionate about my work that took my mind away from my marriage at home.’152 Moreover, she was successful despite lacking formal qualifications and progressed from working as a packer to a senior supervisor. She claimed: I got the recognition from work and that was enough you know I was just a high flyer so it was good cause I’d sort of got nothing I’d got no education behind me I’d got good English, but other than that I haven’t got any academic qualifications or anything but I was on the same wage as people who had come out of university. I was recognised, I got a pat on my back every time, know what I mean? So that did a lot for me that made me think I was worth something.153

Balbir’s lack of cultural capital was not experienced as an insurmountable obstacle, as she successfully acquired symbolic capital in the form of a prestigious job. According to Balbir her work was also satisfying and rewarding, evident by her comments. ‘I enjoyed my job, that gave me total fulfilment you know I enjoyed the job.’ She added, ‘I left after sixteen years but that sixteen years was real, I left in 1993 and I feel as though I’m still there, in my mind because that’s how much I enjoyed it, but that’s unusual that is because people don’t usually think of work like that.’154 As memories are inseparable from the temporal perspective of the present, Balbir’s current status as unemployed may have shaped these positive memories of 150 Ibid. See also BL, NSA, C900/00040 R. Sagoo. 151 Ibid. 152 Balbir 8 May 2002. 153 Ibid. 154 Ibid.

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her past employment. Yet despite this, her narrative also exposes how work offered an alternative identity based not on her role within the household but an occupational status and furthermore served as a paramount source of self worth and respect. Similarly, Munisa detailed her struggles in her personal life, including her unhappy marriage, but emphasised her success as a teacher. She claimed ‘my work was my life’ and reflected ‘I was always hard working and I was always very determined. I think I was meant to be a career woman.’155 A further consequence of employment was that it spurred a consciousness for minority ethnic women that their life was not fated and could be subject to transformation.156 This was evident in Valand’s comments when she became a teacher: ‘I felt so proud that yes it is true, one can decide what one wants to do in life.’157 Thus, Valand realised that she could pursue her own goals and was capable of creativity and choice. Evidently, for these women, work was conceptualised as an important milieu through which social and symbolic capital was attained. This is not to suggest that all women achieved successful careers. For instance, a study of Leicester in 1991 revealed that whilst a quarter of white women occupied management positions, only one in fourteen South Asian women were in management posts and instead were over-represented in the production industry.158 Nevertheless, though factory work did not confer symbolic capital it was conceived as an opportunity to forge friendships which transcended ethnic boundaries.159 This is most important considering previous research has stressed the exploitation of South Asian women within the labour market.160 Whilst it is not denied that South Asian women were both racialised and gendered within employment, it is significant to acknowledge that the women themselves did not subjectively view it as such. The respondents who were educated in the 1960s and 1970s typically recalled their racialised identity within educational settings through the process of symbolic violence, white harassment and unwitting remarks. An alternative experience of education was also detected which cited education as empowering, albeit this was specifically confined to women who pursed education in the 1990s. The male narratives of work were framed by their expectation of Britain, ideological constructions of masculinity and the ethnicity of the interviewer. For the male respondents, racism was experienced as all pervasive within work and they typically distinguished between different types of racism, which demanded different responses, both at a collective and individual level. Conversely, for many women paid work 155 Munisa 3 April 2004. 156 M. Morokvasic, ‘Birds of passage are also women’, International Migration Review, 18, 4 (1984), 14. 157 BL, NSA, C900/00007 U. Valand. 158 Duffy and Lincoln, Earnings and Ethnicity, 148. This was based on a main sample of 750 interviews and a booster sample of 500 interviews. 159 See BL, NSA, C900/00040 R. Sagoo, who claimed they were a ‘happy family’ within the factory. 160 Phizacklea, One Way Ticket and A. Phizacklea, ‘Entrepreneurship, ethnicity and gender’, in Westwood and Bhachu, Enterprising Women, 20–33. This is also a theme which occurs in research on other migrant women. See for example, Lee, ‘Issues in research on women, international migration and labour’.

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outside the home was experienced as a new phenomenon and was largely couched in beneficial terms. Whilst previous research has emphasised the importance of work to masculine identities, the findings here have shown that work was also central to the women’s identities and their sense of self as a ‘successful woman’. Yet their evaluations of work can only be fully understood in relation to other aspects of their lives. As Chapter 4 revealed, employment granted some women the leverage to negotiate power relations within the household. It also enabled the attainment of symbolic capital and most importantly, it represented an escape route from the isolation they had previously endured.

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Chapter 7

Conclusion: Complexities and Connections Leicester’s story of its multicultural success has been widely narrated. This book has posited a different interpretation of the city; one that privileges the experiences of a local white population and South Asians within the commonplace and contested spaces of their everyday lives: the neighbourhood, the household, school and the workplace. Though these specific sites have been explored separately, it is important to acknowledge that they were not actually experienced as discrete or exclusive from each other but interconnected and overlapped. A key theme that emerged from the narratives of the South Asians was their feelings of marginalisation from British society due to the barriers of racism, experiences that are rarely acknowledged in success stories of minority ethnic groups.1 It has been shown that there was no uniform exclusion from British society, which itself was not homogeneous. At the neighbourhood level, the respondents encountered diverse forms of exclusion at different times and within different geographical spaces. Those who arrived in Britain in the 1960s typically claimed that white hostility intensified in the 1970s, although overall racism was envisaged as presenting a tangible threat beyond the confines of the immediate neighbourhood, particularly in the predominantly white estates, the villages and certain parts of the city. For Muslim women, the distinction between the neighbourhood as a place of safety and other parts of the city as sites of danger and anxiety was heightened following 11 September 2001. These findings are significant in relation to recent concerns voiced by the current chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and policy makers that Britain’s minority ethnic communities live in segregated and inward looking communities.2 This notion tends to blame minority ethnic groups for choosing to live together and ignores the role of white hostility in informing these decisions. For the South Asians, boundaries of exclusion were not insurmountable. They accrued their own forms of social capital, evident in both informal relationships established at the individual level and through a variety of cultural and religious associations which flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. These social networks signalled an active engagement with society and fulfilled a range of functions, from practical aid to socio-emotional 1 H. Goulbourne and J. Solomos, ‘Families, ethnicity and social capital’, Social Policy and Society, 2, 4 (2003), 333–4. 2 ‘Ruth Kelly’s speech on integration and cohesion’, The Guardian, 24 August 2006 and ‘Ghettos in English cities “almost equal to Chicago”’, The Guardian, 23 September 2005.

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support. Yet they also transformed the neighbourhood so that their locality was not only valued as a place of security, but was also seen as a vital space where they could express, consume and preserve their culture. The importance of femalebased networks was stressed by the South Asian women, and a salient theme was the friendships established with white women within the neighbourhood and the workplace; these are connections that are not acknowledged in a rhetoric of divided and isolated communities. In the recent debate about how to manage ethnic diversity in multicultural Britain, the white population has tended to evade scrutiny. This book has offered insights into why some white people may use racial discourses. This showed that racist narratives provided a framework through which to interpret transformations within their local landscape and, more broadly, changes within their own working class identity. Racial discourses were also gendered. White women criticised South Asians for defying values of white femininity and in the process boosted their own self image. The analysis therefore reveals the pervasiveness of racist ideologies as the white respondents consistently sought to construct a boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Nevertheless, inter-ethnic contact was clearly beneficial; South Asians were viewed as exemplary neighbours and many whites differentiated South Asians from the negative racial stereotypes. The white people interviewed had also developed meaningful relations with South Asians and treated them as individuals. They had gained knowledge and understanding into the differences within South Asian communities and often employed a rhetoric of equality. Working class white people were not endemically racist; rather their perceptions were contradictory and complex. Moreover, the boundaries between whites and South Asians proved to be more malleable and permeable and this has important implications for how white racism could be effectively contained. The aim throughout the book has been to highlight the complexity of experiences which defy simple generalisations. It has been shown that integral to the respondents’ experiences was the combination of specific factors which shaped their social location and subjectivities and complicates the notion of ‘South Asian’. This included not only the web of structural factors – gender, race, economic and class status (in the country of origin and Britain) – but also a host of other variables such as ethnic origin, language ability, their place within the family hierarchy, timing of arrival, education, religion and household type. Overall, the various axes of differentiations coalesced and interacted dynamically within different social, spatial and temporal contexts of the respondents’ lives. These factors also formed layers of the respondents’ habitus, and influenced their access to types of capital. Yet their forms of capital were not necessarily legitimated within British society. For instance, the conversion of institutionalised cultural capital, such as an educational qualification, into economic capital was often blocked by indirect or direct racism within employment. However, a prominent ‘difference’ existed between East African Asians and other South Asians and this was reflected in perceptions of ‘back home’. Respondents from India often cited examples of poverty in India, which were contrasted with the economic security found in Britain. Comments such as ‘the life was very hard

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there you know’ and ‘it was a very hard tough life’ were typical.3 As Gheewala from Gujarat commented, ‘If you are in India it’s like a continuous struggle, even if you have to catch a bus it’s a struggle. If you want to travel from one place to another it is a struggle. Over here you don’t know what the name of the struggle is.’4 Conversely, those from East Africa often stressed their comfortable and high standard of living prior to migration and in particular, the servants they relied on. Mashru lamented that the servants were one of the ‘luxuries’ he missed, whilst Kotecha claimed, ‘African used to do everything. That was the luxury life there, now we got to do everything.’5 This was also stressed by Karim: [In Kenya] you don’t have to worry because what you do mainly cooking there is someone there washing up, cooking, serving up, cleaning whole house, mopping, brushing everything, cleaning windows, so as such the life was relaxed because there was helping hand there and why the life was good and relaxed because people must be earning good money in order to pay servants. So in that terms it was good, very relaxed. Over here yeah you got to cook yourself, DIY, everything, cooking at home, washing up, cleaning house, looking after children and at the same time you struggle for money … they used to work in the industry, light industry, heavy industry, shoe industry whatever, all mechanical, people never did that before but they had to over here, they found it very hard.6

Clearly, experiences of transition and settlement in Britain were deeply affected by the respondents’ ethnic origin and former economic and class status. Perceptions of ‘home’ were also differentiated by gender. The female respondents typically insisted that, although they continued to visit their country of origin, they did not possess a desire to return permanently. As Bhambra explained, Kenya to me was where I was born and everything was so familiar like now today in this country everything is so familiar and I’m so adjusted to this life if I was to go back to India or Kenya I don’t think that I would survive. I have adopted all the culture all the values in England today to suit my needs the way I can survive in this country … If I were to die here I would like my children to scatter my ashes in the back garden that’s it full stop (laughs), you know I wouldn’t want them to take all the trouble of going to India, a country that’s unknown to me a culture that’s unknown to me.7

For Bhambra, Britain was unequivocally viewed as her ‘home’ and this was evident by her conviction that following her death her ashes should remain in Britain. Conversely, the male respondents, particularly the elders, frequently expressed a utopian view of ‘back home’. As Khan explained,

3 Devi 24 June 2002 and Shenta 8 March 2002. See also East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), Ethnic Elders Collection (EEC), 00644, EE/16/17 A. Bibi. 4 Gheewala 25 June 2002. 5 EMOHA, Leicester Oral History Archive Collection (LOHAC), 919, LO/274/225 M. Mashru and British Library, National Sound Archive (BL, NSA), C900/09083 B. Kotecha. 6 Karim 13 June 2002. 7 BL, NSA, C900/09149 M. Bhambra. See also BL, NSA, C900/09083 B. Kotecha and BL, NSA, C900/09135 A.Y. Kapsai.

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Negotiating Boundaries in the City when I went back [to Kashmir] I was taking so many medicines because of here but there I give up all medicines, only the atmosphere and the food, and the fresh air and fresh water and fresh everything. It was very suitable for me. It suited me and the whole distress and depression and these types of anxieties it was overcome and I was feeling better. So I will say there are big diseases here in this country the distress, lonely and the depression and you have everything but you are still not satisfied.8

For Khan, Britain was detrimental to his mental health. It was synonymous with depression and distress, whilst Kashmir was the antithesis; once there his ailments dissipated.9 Other male respondents also professed a preference for their country of origin. For instance, Patel commented that a return to Zambia ‘was my aspiration and is still my desire’.10 This supports previous research on gender and migration which has revealed that men tend to express a desire for eventual return to the ‘homeland’, whilst women favour the prospect of permanent residence in the new country of settlement.11 However, it is vital to interpret these gendered attitudes towards ‘home’ in the context of the respondents’ complete life story and with an understanding of the divergent experiences of migration and settlement for women and men. Put simply, for women, racism was not presented as a defining problem; it was not uppermost in the minds, particularly on arrival in Leicester. Rather, the initial isolation and the lack of a social life constituted a paramount concern. Yet this adversity could be overcome and proved to be intermittent. In addition, women’s participation in the labour market typically enhanced their relative power within the home and enabled them to forge social networks and in the process acquire valuable social knowledge. For those engaged in white collar occupations, employment also offered prestige and the affirmation of an alternative identity which was not confined to their gendered role within the household. Thus, migration presented both greater ruptures for the female respondents, but also more opportunities. This is not to suggest that Britain was equated with a new found liberation for the women or that migration in itself was empowering for the interviews reveal that they were engaged in a continual struggle to navigate and negotiate restraints. This typically involved attempting to assume control over their lives by accepting reality at a given time and making pragmatic decisions, with an eye for their long term aims. Sue’s decision to become pregnant as a means of staying in Britain is a prime example. However, women’s relative position of power within the household did increase throughout their life course, particularly for those who arrived as the daughter-in-law, and there was a palpable sense that for the women the experience of migration had been fundamentally transformative. Hence 8 Khan 4 July 2002. For other examples see EMOHA, LOHAC 978, LO/333/284 U. Tripathi and BL, NSA, C900/00014 H. Patel. 9 This association between Britain and ill health was also a theme of V. Raja, ‘Conceptions of health and health care among two generations of Gujertai-speaking Hindu women in Leicester’ (unpublished University of Leicester Ph.D. thesis, 1993). 10 C900/00014 H. Patel. 11 P.R. Pessar and S.J. Mahler, ‘Transnational migration: bringing gender in’, International Migration Review, 37, 3 (2003), 812–47.

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Bhambra’s emphasis on having ‘adjusted to this life’ and ‘adopted all the culture’. This dimension was explored in Chapter 4, which showed that the women’s role as cultural reproducers granted them a degree of authority and respect and enabled them not simply to pass on a static culture that they had inherited but also to reassess and revise their values in the context of their experiences. Conversely, the male respondents grappled with more intractable problems. This included their loss of relative authority within the household, coupled with their disillusionment and frustration that their hopes and expectations of achieving wealth and social status were thwarted. Most notably, the male respondents from East Africa recalled their acute sense of loss that they were demoted socially as they attempted to rebuild their lives in the 1970s. They experienced stigmatisation because of racism and by working in a low status job. From this perspective, the quotations regarding ‘home’ are most poignant, so that, for example, Khan’s idealistic vision of ‘back home’ helped to reconcile his failure to achieve economic success in Britain.12 Religion may have fulfilled a similar function and served to give meaning and identity to the male elders’ lives.13 It is also worth noting that although some men expressed a yearning for eventual return, they generally conceded that their wives and children were settled in Britain and that, despite their experiences, Britain remained a place where economic and educational advancements could be attained. In short, their children would benefit from their sacrifices. For instance Patel explained, ‘in Africa we couldn’t send our children to the higher education, because of the money problem, but in this country we have found very easy.’14 The female respondents also stressed the achievements of their children. Devi proudly claimed, all my children are grown up and they’ve all got a degree. I told them, I told them ‘you must get a degree, I don’t want you to end up like I ended up in hosiery because my English wasn’t very good, at that time.’ So they’ve all got a degree, two of them are married and I’m a grandmother now (laughs).15

Similarly, Johan explained, when I left India I was seventeen and I was so clever at school I used to come first in the class, but when I came here, because I couldn’t understand English, although could write English, but I couldn’t understand it so I couldn’t go back to college or I couldn’t go back to school and I had to go back to work because of the money problem and everything and I really regret that because at that time I wanted to be a doctor but now I’m satisfied because my daughter, she’s a doctor now.16 12 For a similar interpretation see D. Plaza, ‘Strategies and strategizing: the struggle for upward mobility among university education black Caribbean-born men in Canada’, in M. Chamberlain, (ed.), Caribbean Migration: Globalised Identities (London: Routledge, 1998), 248–66. 13 This is discussed in V.S. Kalra, From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks: Experiences of Migration, Labour and Social Change (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 14 Patel 3 July 2002. See also BL, NSA, C900/09135 J. Kapasi. 15 Devi 24 June 2002. 16 Johan 8 March 2002.

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Thus, their children’s success justified their struggles and their migration was ultimately posited as successful. This illustrates how respondents seek composure as they construct their memories and attempt to align the past, present and future, although as the life stories reveal this composure was never absolute.17 It is clear from the interviews that migration was not a singular event and that the ramifications were felt throughout the respondents’ lives. At one level then, the methodology of oral history serves as a social microscope with which to view the spectrum of personal experiences and capture rich detail, complexity and specificity. The experiences recalled by the South Asian respondents spanned different historical decades, though many memories tended to focus on the initial period of settlement, particularly the 1960s and 1970s. Arguably, these experiences were specific to the locality of Leicester, most notable, the social influence of the East African Asians who originated from a predominately middle class, urban background and brought with them a range of transferable skills. For instance, respondents from East Africa claimed they fulfilled a vital organisational role in the creation of cultural and religious associations.18 Similarly, their previous entrepreneurial experience may have fuelled the development of the South Asian business sector in Leicester, though another important variable here was the relatively buoyant local economy. The lack of competition for public housing also marked Leicester out as distinct from other cities and may have helped to placate racial tensions. Yet whilst these factors shaped the Leicester experience, parallels can be drawn with other cities. For instance, Hindu Gujaratis from East Africa who settled in London also responded to a hostile environment by building their own networks of support and community associations and, like Leicester, London experienced relative economic affluence compared to the northern towns such as Oldham and Bradford.19 Similarly, the racial discourses used by the white respondents in Leicester, such as complaints about the habits and hygiene of South Asians, fears that they were taking over the locality and making unreasonable demands on the welfare state have been shared by white inhabitants in Bethnal Green.20 Moreover, although the narratives were intensely personal and by definition were unique, they also possessed a wider resonance. That is, they illuminated the human condition of migration. For many the experience of migration and settlement was, in essence, contradictory. The neighbourhood encompassed experiences of friendship and hostility; it provided security and social identity, but also generated pressures for social control. Likewise, the household for women was a source of intimacy but also of social constraint. This human element was also highlighted through the respondents’ visions, expectations, losses, loneliness, conflicts, injustices and 17 A. Thomson, ‘Anzac memories: putting popular memory theory into practice in Australia’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson, (eds), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 300–301. 18 See for example BL, NSA, C900/00066 T.V. Morjaria and BL, NSA, C900/00049 M. Singh. 19 R. Hasmita, ‘Journeys of difference: the use of migratory narratives among British Hindu Gujaratis’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29, 4 (2006), 702–24. 20 G. Dench, K. Gavron and M. Young, The New East End: Kinship, Race and Conflict (London: Profile, 2006).

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resiliencies. The narratives exposed feelings of empowerment and powerlessness, a sense of displacement and the consequent need to belong; a key characteristic of a diasporic consciousness.21 The process of inhabiting a new space as an embodied experience was also uncovered, evident through memories of tastes, smells and other physical sensations. These dimensions of human experiences transcend the specificity of Leicester, historical dates and categories of social location such as economic status and religion. Furthermore, these insights into social relations and the human condition are a further strength of the oral history method and are valuable facets which simply cannot be accessed from quantitative methods, such as official statistics or large scale social surveys. This book has also offered some glimpses into the construction of life stories. The form and content of the interview was informed by a myriad of factors including the respondents’ present day concerns. For instance, Devi’s current status at the time of the interview as unemployed, in conjunction with her ill health, arguably influenced her nostalgia for the ‘good old days’.22 Similarly, the events of 11 September 2001 may have reinforced the proclivity of white respondents to perceive South Asians as a threatening ‘other’.23 The core themes which structured the interviews also emanated from the specific encounter between the interviewer and the interviewee. Many ‘stories’ represented an attempt to educate a white interviewer and this aspect was most evident in the accounts by South Asian men. The emphasis on hard work could be interpreted as a response to racial discourses that defined South Asians as undeserving of their economic success. The tendency for East African Asians to stress their previous high standard of living was partly a counter to white racism that declassed migrants and reduced all South Asians to the status of ‘backward peasants’. Moreover, the decision by the male respondents to detail the legacy of colonialism imparted a significant message: that the South Asian respondents were not ‘black immigrants’ or ‘strangers’ but were actually British passport holders with full legal rights to settle in Britain.24 This was further emphasised by their insistence that prior to migration, Britain had felt familiar to them. According to Hall, racism stemmed from the

21 S. Vertovec, ‘Three meanings of “diaspora”, exemplified among South Asian religions’, Diaspora, 7 (1999), 277–300. For a useful discussion on empowerment see S. Wray, ‘Women growing older: agency, ethnicity and culture’, Sociology, 37, 3 (2003), 511– 27. 22 See also K. Gardner, ‘Narrating location: space, age and gender among Bengali elders in East London’, Oral History, 27, 1 (1999), 69–70. 23 Many white respondents mentioned 11 September 2001 and the discovery of an al-Qaeda cell in Highfields, Leicester 2002. For further details of this see R. Bonney, ‘Understanding and celebrating religious diversity: the growth of diversity in Leicester’s places of religious worship since 1970’, Studies in the History of Religious and Cultural Diversity, Academic Papers (Leicester: Centre for the History of Religious and Political Pluralism, University of Leicester, 2003), 70–71. 24 The representation of South Asians as ‘alien’ and ‘outsiders’ was articulated by Powell. See A.M. Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality: Britain, 1968–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

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collective repression and denial of the British colonial legacy in the 1950s. As Hall eloquently puts it: The development of an indigenous British racism in the post war period begins with the profound historical forgetfulness – what I want to call the loss of historical memory, a kind of historical amnesia, and decisive mental repression – which has overtaken the British people about race and Empire since the 1950s. Paradoxically, it seems to me, the native, home-grown variety of racism begins with this attempt to wipe out and efface every trace of the colonial and imperial past.25

The interview, therefore, provided an opportunity for the South Asian men to remind a white interviewee of the ramifications of the colonial legacy, to reinstate their integral place within British history and to reaffirm their British citizenship. A defining feature throughout the accounts by South Asian women was the emphasis on their independence and personal strength. Their narrative scripts highlighted the multitude of restraints encountered but also their creative capacity and resourcefulness to overcome adversities and secure outcomes that enhanced their well-being. Several women also claimed that the sum of their past struggles had reinforced their sense of fortitude in the present. As Sue claimed, ‘so all the trouble, the hell I’ve been through you know ... I’m very happy, I mean it’s all over now, I couldn’t go through it again I don’t think, but one thing is I’m much more stronger. I’m a very very strong woman now.’26 Their memories clearly constituted their self identity in the present, yet arguably this focus on their personal strengths was also a response to racial stereotypes that classified South Asian women as intrinsically passive and submissive.27 This also shows that although the South Asian women may have used a genre of suffering to frame their life stories, by stressing the struggles they had encountered, particularly in their private lives, the direction of their narratives revealed how their situations had improved. This emphasis on struggling was also evident in the South Asian men’s narratives and similarly showed that they too had survived despite the obstacles. Clearly, the interviews were not simply a window through which to view the internal world of the migrant but encapsulated rhetorical tropes and particular genres.28 These ways of telling stories were not spontaneous constructions; rather, ‘hardship tales’ were highly developed narratives that first generation South Asians passed onto their children to instil them with a sense of work ethic and obligation

25 Hall quoted in ibid., 132. 26 Sue 10 July 2002. 27 See A. Rattansi, ‘“Western” racisms, ethnicities and identities in a “postmodern” frame’, in A. Rattansi, and S. Westwood, (eds), Racism, Modernity and Identity: On the Western Front (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 68–9. 28 For further discussion on genres see for instance, S. Leydesdorff, ‘Genres of migration’, in Chamberlain, Caribbean Migration: Globalised Identities, 81–91, M. Chamberlain and P. Thompson, ‘Introduction, genre and narrative in life stories’, in M. Chamberlain and P. Thompson, (eds), Narrative and Genre (London: Routledge, 1998), 1–22 and A. Portelli, ‘Oral history as genre’, in ibid., 23–45.

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to succeed in Britain.29 The stories that have been presented here are not simply alternative narratives to Leicester’s multicultural success, but rather they also reveal the histories and struggles behind this apparent ‘success’. Moreover, the contrasting fortunes of the South Asian respondents and the divergent range of their subjective experiences problematises grand claims to Leicester’s multicultural success and prompts the question: success for whom?

29 D.S. Raj, Where Are You From? Middle Class Migrants in the Modern World (London: University of California Press, 2003).

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Appendix

Biographical Details of Interviewees White Respondents Name Marge Marge William Gladys Doris Trevor Christine Stan Phyllis Gladys B. Phyllis Stan Phyllis Cynthia Pauline Alice Joan Pat Doris

Date of Interview 30 January 2002 5 March 2002 5 March 2002 13 March 2002 14 March 2002 21 March 2002 21 March 2002 21 March 2002 29 April 2002 2 May 2002 6 May 2002 13 May 2002 20 May 2002 28 May 2002 28 May 2002 9 July 2002 9 July 2002 9 July 2002 9 July 2002

Date of Birth 1923 1923 1917 1917 1917 1917 1935 1918 1911 1922 1911 1918 1911 1925 1930 Not known Not known Not known Not known

South Asian Respondents Name Kumar

Date of Interview 16 February 2002

Shenta

8 March 2002

Johan Mistry

8 March 2002 8 March 2002

Chitra

22 May 2002

Karim

7 May 2002

Date of Birth and Path of Migration Male, born in Fuji 1959. Moved to UK 1968. Female, born in Kericho, Kenya. Moved to UK 1970. Female, born in Nairobi, Kenya. Female, born in Zanzibar 1950. Moved to UK 1967. Female, born in Gujarat, India 1957. Moved to Kenya to UK 1974. Male, born in Nairobi, Kenya 1941. Moved to UK 1970.

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Name Balbir

Date of Interview 8 May 2002

Mandy

28 May 2002

Karim

13 June 2002

Devi

24 June 2002

Gheewala

25 June 2002

Patel

3 July 2002

Khan

4 July 2002

Sue

10 July 2002

Bilquis

3 March 2004

Mrs Karim

10 March 2004

Sameeha

10 March 2004

Naeema

16 March 2004

Munisa

3 April 2004

Date of Birth and Path of Migration Female, born in Punjab, India 1958. Moved to UK 1966. Female, born in Punjab, India 1960. Moved to UK 1965. Male, born in Nairobi, Kenya 1941. Moved to UK 1970. Female, born in Gujarat, India 1948. Moved to UK 1969. Male, born in Gujarat India 1951. Moved to UK 1981. Male, born in Nairobi Kenya 1927. Moved to UK 1965. Male, born in Pakistan 1928. Moved to UK 1952. Female, born in Tanzania 1957. Moved to India to UK 1976. Female, born in India 1947. Moved to Malawi to UK 1989. Female, born in Gujarat, India 1944. Moved to Kenya to UK 1970. Female, born in Zambia 1962. Moved to UK 1977. Female, born in Zimbabwe 1958. Moved to UK 1981. Female, born in Tanzania 1949. Moved to UK 1964.

Additional respondents P. Winstone 7 June 2002 PC Phillips

19 March 2002

Male, Director of Race Relations and Equal Opportunities, Leicester City Council. Male, Community Police Officer, Asfordby Street Police Station, Highfields, Leicester.

The British Library National Sound Archive (BLNSA) Millennium Memory Bank (MMB) (1999) Reference C900/00001

Name A.H. Choudhury

C900/00003

C.M Vadhia

C900/00005

S. Singh

Date of Birth and Path of Migration Male, born in Punjab, India 1917. Moved to UK 1938. Male, born Kampala, Uganda 1945. Moved to UK 1972. Male, born in Punjab, India 1964. Moved to UK 1969.

Appendix: Biographical Details of Interviewees

Reference C900/00006

Name J. Musa

C900/00007

U. Valand

C900/00009

B. Kaur

C900/00011 C900/00014

R. Saujani H. Patel

C900/00022 C900/00040 C900/00049

M. Dosanjh R. Sagoo M. Singh

C900/00062 C900/00066

P. Patel T.V. Morjaria

C900/00080 C900/00081 C900/00090

S. Kanji K. Vaz D. Rajput

C900/09064

B. Sharad

C900/09083

B. Kotecha

C900/09101

S. Bagum

C900/09135A

Y. Kapasi

C900/09135B

J. Kapasi

C900/09136 C900/09138a

N. Kara L.D. Singh

C900/09138b

G.S. Singh

C900/09145 C900/09149

S. Singh M. Bhambra

C900/12596

B. Vora

Date of Birth and Path of Migration Male, born in Nairobi, Kenya 1941. Moved to UK 1974. Female, born in Lindi, Tanzania 1953. Moved to India to UK. Female, born in Punjab, India 1956. Moved to UK 1967. Female, born in Mbale, Uganda 1953. Male, born in Lusaka, Zambia 1959. Moved to UK 1976. Male, not known. Female, born in Amritsar, India 1952. Male, born in Punjab, India 1934. Moved to Uganda to UK 1972. Male, born in Mombassa, Kenya 1960. Male, born in Teber, India 1938. Moved to Uganda to UK 1972. Male, born in Karachi, Pakistan 1972. Male, born in Aden, Yemen 1956. Female, born in Arua, Uganda 1970. Moved to UK 1972. Male, born in Mombassa, Kenya 1960. Moved to India to UK 1991. Female, born in Uganda 1952. Moved to UK 1972. Female, born in Bangladesh 1972. Moved to UK 1972. Female, born in Tanga, Tanzania 1959. Moved to UK 1976. Male, born in Uganda 1950. Moved to UK 1976. Female, born in Mobassa, Kenya 1960. Male, born in India 1964. Moved to UK 1989. Male, born in India 1952. Moved to UK 1967. Male, born 1964. Female, born in Nairobi, Kenya 1957. Moved to UK 1968. Male, born in Jamnager, India 1922. Moved to Kenya to UK 1968.

181

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East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), Leicester Oral History Archive Collection (LOHAC), (1983-1989) Reference 740, LO/108/059 820, LO/184/135 829, LO/193/144 836, LO/200/151 864, LO/228/179 866, LO/230/181 919, LO/274/225 934, LO/289/240 962, LO/317/268 970, LO/325/276 978, LO/333/284

Name C. Singh J. Desai

Date of Birth and Path of Migration Male, born in India. Moved to UK 1961. Male, born in India. Moved to UK 1937, returned to India 1958. A. Haq Male, born in Punjab, India 1917. Moved to UK 1938. G. Ganatra Male, born in India 1907. Moved to Uganda to UK 1972. C. Sharma Male, born in Gujarat, India 1902. Moved to Kenya to Uganda to UK 1972. Anon Male, born in India 1940. Moved to Nairobi to UK 1967. M. Mashru Male, born in Uganda 1947. Moved to UK 1972. S. Pandirker Female, born in North Kanara, India 1943. Moved to UK 1981. Sandhu Male, born in Punjab, India 1921. Moved to UK 1962. S. Kapur Male, born in Punjab, India 1936. Moved to UK 1965. U. Tripathi Male, born in Pakistan 1932. Moved to UK 1960.

East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) , Community History Collection (CHC) (1993-2000) Reference Name 000524, CH/037/0154 M. Patel 00601, CH/096/0155

D. Patel

0600, CH/095/0104

P. Winstone

Date of Birth and Path of Migration Male, born in India 1931. Moved to UK in 1970s. Male, born in Mombassa, Kenya 1934. Moved to UK 1974. Male, born in UK.

Transcripts Highfields Library (HL) Leicestershire Multicultural Archive Project, Highfields Remembered Archive (HRA) (1996) D. Alam B.S. Anwal E. Bhayat H. Bhoot B. S. Claire

Appendix: Biographical Details of Interviewees

S. Johl T. Hansrani K. Mistry H. Sidat B. Singh A. Singh A.S. Shokki Councillor F. Subedar East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA), Ethnicity Research Centre, Ethnic Elders Collection (EEC) (1999) 00629, EE/01/01 K. Singh 00633, EE/05/05 P. Kaur 00634, EE/06/06 N. Kaur 00637, EE/09/010 P. Sissodia 00638, EE/10/11/A/B M. and P. Thakorbhai 00642, EE/14/15 S.P. Chowdary 000643, EE15/16 H. Shaikh 00644, EE/16/17 A. Bibi 00645, EE/17/18 R. Sultana 00646, EE/19/20 U. Shamsunnisa BBC Radio 4 ‘Haven of refugees, Ugandan Asians’, 2 November 1982, 8.50pm. ‘Bangladesh’, Women’s Hour, 26 September 2002.

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Bibliography Newspapers and Newsletters The Guardian, 12 December 2001, 1 January 2001, 5 January 2002, 15 January 2002, 20 June 2002, 6 November 2002, 18 January 2003, 6 November 2003, 23 September 2005, 24 August 2006. The Independent, 2 October 2002. The Leicester Mercury, 28 August 1958, 31 January 1962, 15 February 1964, 16 February 1968, 14 April 1968, 18 July 1968, 16 December 1968, 13 April 2001, 30 May 2001. New Life (Asian Weekly), 14, 26 July 1985. New York Times International, 8 February 2001. The Observer, 25 November 2001. Race Relations, 20 Autumn 1974. Sunday Telegraph, 3 September 1972. Sunday Times, 26 May 2002. The Times, 8 December 2000, 5 January 2002. Websites BBC News BBC Education Windrush Asian Community Leicester City Council, Leicester Wards: Index of Multiple Deprivation 2000 Leicester Partnership Against Crime and Disorder National Statistics Official Publications Allen, C. and Nielsen, J., Summary Report on Islamophobia in the European Union after 11 September 2001 (Vienna: European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. 2002). Cabinet Office, Improving Labour Market Achievements for Ethnic Minorities in British Society (London: Cabinet Office, 2001). Cantle, T., Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team (London: Home Office, 2002).

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Index

Note: Major entries on migrant groups refer to Leicester except where otherwise indicated. Numbers in brackets preceded by n refer to footnotes. Abraham, M. 113 adult education 146 affirmative action 38-39 Afghani asylum seekers 19 African Caribbean community 6, 14, 19, 22, 50-51, 70 Afshar, H. 89(n82) age issues 47, 49, 50, 85, 164 agency, models of 5, 6 alienation 109, 113, 137 Aliens Act (1905) 16 ambivalence 54-55 Amin, Idi 15, 53 Anti-Nazi League 27 Antigua 19 Armstrong, K. 67(n33) arranged marriage 26(n79), 90, 91-96, 105 divorce/separation and 98, 100-101 husband/wife relations in 94 in-laws in 84, 94-97, 98, 100, 101-102 and suicide 92, 93, 100 violence/physical force in 92, 96-97, 100 arts 130-131 in education 142-143 Asian music/dance 130-131 assimilation 141 asylum seekers 19 Australia 13, 68 ayahs 13 Ballard, R. 15 Bangladeshi migrants 14, 15, 22, 125 housing issues and 37 marriage in 97, 100(n141), 102 timing/settlement patterns of 17, 18, 24 national 26 banks 155, 156 Bannister, J. 121

Belgian immigrants 19 Belgrave Asian youth project 132 Bengal 14, 25(n73), 26 Bethnal Green 37, 174 Bhabha, H. 67(n35) Bhoot, H. 137 Bhopal, K. 105(n175) Billig, M. 31(n1) bingo 111 Birmingham 20, 24(n66), 28, 36, 123, 152 re-branding of 1 Birstall 120 Black, L. 33(n13) black men, stereotypes of 41 Blackburn 20 Bosnian asylum seekers 19 boundaries 2-3, 47, 54, 57-58, 169, 170 competition over space 40, 41, 43-44, 120-121 and employment 152-153, 154 and housing 77-78 of inclusion/exclusion see exclusion; inclusion in interviews 9-10 negotiating 125 public/private spaces 44 within South Asian communities 2, 117-119 caste divisions 118-119 Bourdieu, P. 43, 78 agency model 5-6 on education 142, 143, 160 on habitus 72, 154 on social/symbolic capital 40, 110, 125-126 Bradford 2, 18, 133, 174 Brah, A. 14, 102(n156) bridging networks 126(n103) Bristol 1

222

Negotiating Boundaries in the City

Britain colonial legacy see under colonialism idealised view of 66, 66-67(n32), 67 immigrant population of 22 immigration legislation 16-17, 28-29 Aliens Act (1905) 16 Commonwealth Immigration Act (1962) 16 Commonwealth Immigration Act (1968) 16 Immigration Act (1971) 16 Nationality Act (1948) 14, 16 Race Relations Act (1968) 76 Race Relations Act (1976) 150, 162-163 South Asians in 13-19 in nineteenth century 13 post-WWII 13-14 British citizenship 63-64, 128, 145 British Empire see colonialism British National Party (BNP) 4 Britishness 17, 34, 59, 63-64 and education 145 Brixton riots 27(n87) bullying 143-145, 166 bureaucracy 128, 132 Burnley 2, 37 Burrell, K. 6 bus conductors 152, 154, 156-157, 158 Cantle Report (2001) 4 capital, symbolic 63 carceral discipline 81 Caribbean immigrants see African Caribbean immigrants Cashmore, E. 33(n12) caste system 18-19, 26, 51-52, 106 associations of 133 divisions in 118-119 chain migration 15, 20-21, 68 Charlesworth, S.J. 42 Chessum, L. 6 children 173-174 brother/sister relations 93 childcare 102, 103 girls 88-90, 93-94 racism suffered by 113 see also under education relations with parents 47, 85-87, 88-89, 90-93, 104

father/daughter 91-92, 93 mother/daughter 90, 94, 101 violence/threat of violence in 92 see also arranged marriage see also education Chinese immigrants 22, 38, 51 Christians, South Asian 25(n73) churches 40 cinemas, Asian 134 cities, decline of 1 civil society, decline of 42 civilising process 80-81 class 18, 52, 118, 170 and employment 149-150 of white community 31, 35 cleanliness 44-46, 77, 80, 174 clothing/dress 44, 53-54, 87 school uniforms 88-89 Cohen, P. 114 cohort 31(n3), 106 and housing 75-76, 78, 80, 82-83 Coleman, J. 78, 125, 126 colonialism 61-67 and citizenship 63-64, 74 legacy of 10, 14, 18, 31-32, 44, 64, 175-176 and self identity 62-63, 67(n35) Commission for Racial Equality 169 Commonwealth Immigration Acts (1962,1968) 16 community associations 130-135, 138 Cooley, Charles 89(n82) council housing 37, 75(n2) Coventry 20, 28, 152 crime 51 cultural capital 143, 143(n11), 150, 160-161, 165, 170 cultural heritage 130-131, 134, 142-143 cultural shock 70-72 Dar es Salaam 16 Day, K. 134 De Montford University 146 Dench, G. 3, 36 deportation 16, 100(n141) discipline, carceral 81 divorce 84, 93, 99, 100, 107, 137-138 Diwali 38, 117 doctors, Indian 36

Index Dominica 19 drugs 51 Dunlop factory 152 Durkheim, E. 86 Eade, J. 2 East African migrants 7, 15-16, 18-19, 6264, 113, 171 class of 18, 52-53, 118, 171, 175 economic success of 18 in employment 150, 173 households of 86, 87 housing for 82-83 and Indian migrants 117-118, 128 and marriage 96-97, 100(n141), 102 memories of ‘home’ 72-73, 117 motives for migrating 66 and networks 20-21 social cohesion of 132 timing/settlement patterns of 17-18, 20, 23-24 see also Kenyan migrants; Ugandan migrants East India Company 13 Eastern European migrants 19, 153 economic recession 1 economic success 18, 118, 127, 148, 173 education 7, 69, 141-146, 150, 159, 170 adult 146 and British Empire 32, 64-66 family and 90-91, 106 further 141, 146 government policies 141 higher see higher education Islamic schools 25 language issues in 141, 142, 145, 146, 173 positive experiences of 142, 146, 166 primary schools 141 racism in 11, 65-66, 91, 141-146 bullying 143-145, 166 coping strategies 144-145 effect of 144 ‘home’ culture devalued 142-143 symbolic violence 142, 166 teachers complicit in 144, 145 and school uniforms 88-89 secondary schools 141, 144-145 women and 90-91, 99, 103(n159), 141

223

elderly 85, 164 electrical/electronic industries 147 Elias, N. 46, 154 embodiment 71-72 employment 17, 20, 35, 39-40, 141, 147-167 and education 145(n22), 150 and family/friends 148, 151, 163-165 language issues in 151, 153, 164-165 local context 20, 147-148 men and 148-159 downward mobility/deskilling 150, 173 hard conditions of 151-152 importance of 148-149, 159 self-employment 152, 155-156 and status 151-153, 159 racism in 141, 153-159, 166, 170 coping strategies 154 ‘everyday’ 156-157 institutionalised 155-157, 159 segregation 157 stereotyping 150-151, 153 workplace hostility 153-154 and self identity 159, 165, 166, 167 self-/entrepreneurs 52-53, 155-156, 174 and social capital 164, 166 wages 147-148 remittances of 148, 148(n45) women’s 11, 79, 83, 87-88, 91, 102-104, 111, 159-167 and friendship 163-165 hard conditions of 159-160 and household 160, 165, 166, 167 positive experience of 163, 165-166, 167, 172 racism in 160-162, 166 and social capital 164, 165 English language 86, 105-106, 112-113, 128 and education 141, 142, 145, 146, 173 and employment 151, 153, 164-165 Englishness see Britishness entrepreneurs 52-53, 155-156, 174 equal opportunities 38-39, 47 Essed, P. 115, 156, 157 Essex 81 established, the 46 Estonia, migrants from 19 ethnic absolution 59 ethnic diversity 1-2

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European migrants 6-7, 13, 14 ‘everyday racism’ 156-157 excercise groups 137 exclusion 11, 109, 110-115, 117, 120-125 see also under neighbourhood factory work 91, 151, 159, 165, 166 family 6, 68-69, 125, 170 children/parent relations 61-62, 85-87 see also arranged marriage and employment 148, 151, 163-165 impact of migration on 11 networks 15, 17, 68, 74 and housing 83 religious observance of 87 reunion 133 and symbolic capital 63 values 50 women’s role in see under household see also household feminism 5, 104 Fiji, migrants from 7 food processing industry 147, 165 food/cooking 44, 53, 69, 73, 74, 80, 96-97, 129 footwear industry 147 Foucault, M. 5, 77, 81 foundry work 91, 151 France 14 friendship 58, 109, 128, 129-130, 138, 170 and employment 163-165 networks 68, 151 see also neighbourliness further education 141, 146 Fyfe, N. 121 ‘gatekeepers’ 7, 10 Gavron, K. 3, 36 gender 5-6, 44-45 equality 106 and household 75, 83 and networks 77-78 see also women geography of fear 121 Giddens, A. 63 Glasgow 81 glass ceiling 155 Goans 18, 25(n73) Goffman, E. 51(n125), 89

Golden Temple massacre (1984) 135 gossip 44, 46, 90-91 grafitti 158 Greek Cypriots 149(n53) Grenada 19 group charisma 154 Gujarat 25(n73), 26, 29, 129, 171, 174 Gujarati language 18, 26 Gujaratis 18, 129, 134, 174 Gujrat, District (Pakistan) 15 Gurdwara 131, 132 Guyana 19 habitus 10, 61, 62-63, 67(n35), 71, 72, 170 class 33, 154 use of concept 5-6 Hage, G. 34 ‘half-way generation’ 7 Hall, S. 175-176 health 151, 171-172 Herbert, Anthony Read 26 heterotopias 77 higher education 79, 141, 145, 173 Asian women and 91, 146, 160-161 hijab 89(n83), 123, 124-125 Hill, R.A. 25(nn70, 72), 136 Hindu nationalism 135 Hindu temples 131, 133 Hindus 18-19, 24, 25-26, 29, 51-52, 102(n156), 105(n175) festivals/ceremonies of 53 and Muslims 25 support networks of 174 ‘home’ 11 culture 86, 142-143 perceptions of 72-73, 117, 170-173 home centredness 44, 111 home ownership 38 honour (izzat) 84, 88, 90, 92-94, 149 household 11, 15, 75-107 children/parent relations 47, 85-87, 88-89 in country of origin 83-85, 86, 87 elderly in 85 gender aspects of 75, 78-79, 84-85 patriarchal hierarchy in 84-86, 137, 151 public/private domains 86, 88-89 income 83, 85, 148, 149

Index and morality 86-87 use of term 75(n1) women in 75, 78-79, 84-85, 87-98 childbearing/motherhood role 99, 104-106 control finances 97-98, 103(n159) coping strategies 99-104 and cultural change 105-107, 173 as earners 83, 87-88, 102-104, 149(n53) girls 88-90, 93-94 as head of 79 independence/strength of 99-103, 176-177 public/private domain 86, 88-89 role in decision process 69, 74 as role model 104-105 as transmitters of ‘home’ culture 86 young see arranged marriage see also family housework 103-104, 105 housing 20, 23-24, 37, 75-83 class aspects of 83(n52) council 37, 75(n75), 174 and exclusion 82 finding 75-83 gender aspects of 75, 78-79, 83 home ownership 38, 78, 98 as aspiration 79, 83 mortgage issues 76 market 76, 81 and networks 77-78, 82, 83 private rented 37, 75(n75), 76-79 conditions in 77, 78, 82-83 sub-letting 78 see also lodging houses racism and 76 shortages 81 hybridity 54 hygiene 44-46, 77, 80, 174 image repertoire 41 immigration 2-3 control 64 and family 11 and gender 5, 6 hostility towards 10 legislation 10 temporary 17

225

timing/settlement patterns 17-18 see also migration Immigration Act (1971) 16 Imperial Typewriter 152-153 strike (1974) 26 in-laws 94-97, 98, 100, 101-102 inclusion 10, 11, 109 boundaries of 125-139 see also under neighbourhood India doctors from 36 migrants from 7, 13, 14, 61, 72 and East African migrants 117-118 in education 142-143 education of 64-65 housing for 82-83 in Leicester 21, 24 marriage in 97-98, 102 motive for migrating 67-68 perceptions of ‘home’ 73, 170-172 strong links with ‘home’ 148-149 timing/settlement patterns of 17 partition of (1947) 14 self identity in 68-69 women’s social life in 112, 113 in WWII 36 see also specific regions Indian art 142-143 Indian Workers Association 76 individual/society dichotomy 5 Inter-Racial Solidarity campaign 27 interdependency 68-69, 74, 77, 84, 128 interviews 7-10 English used in 8(n31) interviewees’ details 179-183 interviewer’s profile 9-10 and oral history 8-9, 174-175 respondents’ profiles 7-8, 7(n30) of whites 8 Iranian asylum seekers 19 Iraqi asylum seekers 1 Irish immigrants 14, 19, 71 Islamic schools 25 Islamophobia 4, 123-124 izzat (honour) 84, 88, 90, 92-94, 149 Jamaica 19 Jews 16, 19 Jewson, N. 1

226

Negotiating Boundaries in the City

Jhelum 15 Kampala 16, 62, 150 Kashmir 14, 171-172 Kenya Uganda railway 62 Kenyan migrants 15, 53, 62, 69, 127, 128 and housing 78 perceptions of ‘home’ 171 religious life of 136 social life of 117 Khanum, S.M. 84 kin networks 15, 17, 51-52, 53, 68, 109 and employment 148, 151 kinship obligations 86-87 Kofman, E. 149 Kosovan asylum seekers 19 Kristeva, J. 45 Labour government 27 language issues 50, 58, 71, 86, 105-106, 112-113, 170 in education see under education lascars 13 Latvia, migrants from 19 Leicester 6-7, 19-29 Abbey ward 24(n61), 27 Belgrave area 1, 23-24, 24(n61), 28(n95), 39, 126 employment in 156 social/religious cohesion in 133-135 diversity in 19-20 economy of 147-148, 174 ethnic composition of 21-23 Evington ward 24(n61), 38 Eyres Monsell ward 24 Highfields area 2, 7, 8, 10, 23, 26, 41 disturbances in 27 inclusion in 54, 126 NF in 27 social cohesion in 135 history of migration in 19 industry in 20, 147-148 multiculturalism in 1-2, 5, 7, 109, 169, 177 North Brauntsone ward 24 Northfields area 8, 42 Rushey Mead ward 24(nn61, 62) Spinney Hills ward 24, 25, 110 white communities in 2

Leicester City Council 133 affirmative action in 38-39 elections 26-27 housing policy 24(n64), 75(n2) reaction to immigrants 26 South Asian councillors in 158 Leicester City Transport 152, 154, 156-157, 158 Leicester Council for Community Relations 161-162 Leicester Mercury 26-27 Leicester, Survey of 23, 25(n73) Leicestershire Education Authority 141 Lithuania, migrants from 19 Liverpool 13 local knowledge 126-127 lodging houses 76-78 conditions in 77 and networks 77-78 Lohana caste 118-119 London 13, 17, 20, 28, 116, 129, 133, 153, 174 Brent 21(n49) multiculturalism in 2 Tower Hamlets 21(n47), 125 lonely women’s group 137-138 ‘looking glass’ theory 89(n82) Loughborough Road Mosque 133 Mac an Ghaill, M. 143 mail order business 147 Malawi 15 Manchester 18, 20, 28 manufacturing industry 147, 151, 165 Marett, V. 75(n2), 148 marriage 84, 149(n53) gendered view of 94 see also arranged marriage masculinity 149, 159, 166 media 36, 38 local 27-28, 45 memories, cultural 72-73, 74 Merleau-Ponty, M. 71 Midlands 17 migration 61-74 causes of 10, 28, 61-64 chains/networks 15, 20-21, 68 and class 18 disorienting effect of 70-72

Index forced 18, 70 and gender 61, 172-173 internal 19, 20, 67 literature/theories on 14-15 motives for 61-68, 74 casual/spontaneous 67-68 personal factors in 16, 67-68 post-WWII 13-14 push/pull factors in 14 see also immigration Miles, R. 34 Mirpir 15 Mistry caste 26 moneylending 77 Montserrat 19 Moore, J. 78 morality 86-87, 88 mortgages 76 mosques 25, 25(n72), 40, 53, 131, 133 mothers-in-law 94-97, 98, 101-102 multiculturalism 1-2, 169, 177 in education 141 problems with 4 music 130-131 Muslims 51, 131 Bengali 26 festivals/ceremonies of 53 Gujarati 26 and Hindus 25 and marriage 105(n175) motives for migrating 66-67 Punjabi 15 sects in 18 women 90, 102(n156), 123-124, 136, 169 myth of return 18 Nairobi 16, 53, 62, 72 National Front 26-27, 116, 121, 158, 159 National Health Service 35, 36 nationalism 34 Nationality Act (1948) 14, 16 Natraj cinema 134 negotiation processes 5 neighbourhood 10, 11, 39, 43-45, 59, 109139, 169-170, 174 civility in 116 and exclusion 117-119, 138, 169 hierarchies/restrictions in 135-136, 137

227

identity 126 and inclusion 10, 54, 116-117, 125-139, 170 cultural/community associations 130-135, 174 neighbourliness 47-49, 114, 116, 126-130 Netherlands 14, 19 Newcastle 13 9/11 attacks 4, 123, 125, 169, 175 North America 13 Norway 19 objectivity/subjectivity dichotomy 5 Oldham 2, 174 ontological security 71, 74 oral history 8-9 Osborne, Cyril 26 otherness 34, 35, 50-51, 80, 170 and inclusion 116 redefining 57-60 outsiders 46 Pakistani migrants 14 in Leicester 22-23 marriage in 97, 100(n141), 102 timing/settlement patterns of 17, 18, 24 Patel caste 26 Patel, P. 100(n141) patriarchies 3, 5, 88 private/public 98 see also arranged marriage patrilocality 97 phantom acceptance 51 police 157, 159(n116), 163 Polish immigrants 19 positive discrimination 38-39 Powell, Enoch 10, 32-33, 34, 54-55, 59 power 175 and childbearing 99 and inclusion 55 loss of/lack of 41-42, 86, 124, 150, 173 relations 81, 88, 92, 95-97 pride 43, 149 see also honour primary schools 141 printing industry 147 privacy 43-44, 111-112 public/private spheres 86, 88-89, 136-137 pubs 110, 111, 121

228

Negotiating Boundaries in the City

Punjab 13, 14, 20, 25(n73), 76 Jullunder Doab 15 Mirpir 15 Sikhs from 26 Punjabi language 106, 142 purdah 84, 136 Putnam, R.D. 125-126, 126(n103) qualifications 160-161, 170, 173 Race Relations Act (1968) 76 Race Relations Act (1976) 150, 162-163 Race Relations Board 26(n85) racial violence/harassment 27-28, 113-115, 116 bullying 143-145, 166 racialised spaces 11, 120-125, 169 racism 26-29, 31-37, 113-117, 120-125, 169-170 and colonial legacy 31-32, 64 depictions of 4-5 diversity within 31 and education see under education and fear 41, 41(n64), 120-121, 123 gendered 121-125, 170 hegemonic/cultural 32-33, 34, 141, 142 and housing 76 identifying 115 institutional 17, 155-157, 159 in interviews 8-9 of local media 26-27 and multiculturalism 4, 29 and nationalism 34 new 50-51 reactions to 122, 129-130, 144-145, 154 studies of 3 and welfare state 35-37 and working classes 32-33 as world view 33 Raghuram, P. 149 Rahat, N. 99(n139) Ramadan 53 Ratcliffe, P. 11(n41) Rawalpindi 15 reciprocal responsibility 84 refugees 13, 19, 63-64 traumatising experience of 70 religion 7, 58, 87, 105 see also specific religions

religious associations 131-132, 133, 135, 169-170, 174 religious festivals 53, 81, 117, 138 remittance of wages 148, 148(n45) resettlement camps 80 resistance with accomodation 143 respect 43, 66, 133 retail trade 147, 156, 160 return migrants 66 Rex, J. 78 Right, New 33, 51 rioting/disturbances 2, 4, 27 Roland, A. 67, 67(n35) Rotherham 42 Said, E. 55 St Kitts and Nevis 19 St Lucia 19 sanctuaries 134 saris 87(n75) Scheff, T.J. 42 Scotson, J.L. 46 Second World War 36 legacy of 38, 44 secondary schools 141, 144-145 self esteem 141 self identity 62-63, 67(n35), 68-69, 89(n82), 120, 130-131 and education 145 and employment 159, 165, 166, 167 women’s 89, 95, 100-102 self-employment 155-156 Sennett, R. 41, 55 sensory experience 72 servants 171 service industries 147 shame (sharam) 84, 88-89, 90, 92-93 and violence/threat of violence 92 Sheffield, re-branding of 1 Shi’ite Muslims 26 shops, local 39, 48, 49, 52-53, 112, 156 Shree Sanatan Mandir 133 Shree Shati Mandir 133 Sikhs 15, 24, 25, 51, 102(n156), 105(n175) in education 143 militancy amongst 135 Punjabi 26 sexual equality of 98, 132 social cohesion of 130, 131

Index Skeggs, B. 44 slavery 33, 38, 58 small businesses 39, 155-156 snow 70, 71 social capital 11, 109, 110, 151 and employment 164, 166 and exclusion 119 formulations of 125-139 see also neighbourhood; neighbourliness social cohesion 40, 130-135 social exclusion see exclusion social networks 15, 17, 53, 68, 110, 125, 169-170 community associations 130-133 women in 136-139 social security 35-36, 38, 79 social world 71-72, 110-113 Somali migrants 19 South Asian communities 1-2, 13-29 age structure of 23 boundaries imposed on 2-3 boundaries within 2, 117-118 in Britain see under Britain countries of origin of 7 disturbances in 2, 4 Hindu/Muslim segregation 25 men in 5 racism towards 8, 26-29 religious differences in 51-52 settlement patterns 10, 23-26 stereotypes of 37-38, 45-46, 122-123 use of term 2(n9) women in 2, 3, 5 see also Bangladeshi migrants; East African migrants; Pakistani migrants; and see under India South Asian household 83-85 South Asian migration 14 19th/early 20th century 13 motives for 66-67 and social networks 15, 20, 68 Southern African migrants 7, 17 Soviet Union, migrants from 19 space, contested 40, 41, 43-44, 169 private/public 43-44, 138 restricted 136 in sub-letted houses 78 see also urban space spitting 45, 80

229

Spivak, G.C. 67(n35) sport 130, 137 in education 143 racism and football 120, 121 status 148-149 loss of 150-151, 159 symbols 40 stereotypes 37-38, 41, 45-46, 51, 52, 122123, 145 strategy of equalisation 64 structuralism 5 subjective realities 109, 170 suicide 92, 93, 100 Sunni Muslims 26 Sweden 19 swimming 137 Sylhet District, Bangladesh 15 symbolic capital 63, 165, 166 symbolic violence 142, 146, 161-162, 166 taboo 93 Tanzanian migrants 15, 69, 78 textile industry 91, 147, 155, 161 Thatcher, Margaret 33 toilet habits 45, 80 Toxteth riots 27(n87) trade unions 42 racism in 157, 158, 161 training 146, 150 Trinidad and Tobago 19 trust 42, 126, 128 ‘twice migrants’ 18 Tyler, K. 36 Ugandan Asian migrants 15, 28, 62, 69-70, 73 divisions in 118-119 education of 65 in employment 150, 159 and housing 80-82, 83 resettlement camps 80-81 impoverishment of 81-82 networks of 81 social life of 112 witness atrocities 70 Ugandan Resettlement Board 81 Ukrainian migrants 19 unemployment 147, 165-166, 175 United States 114

230

Negotiating Boundaries in the City

university education see higher education urban space competition over 40, 41, 43-44, 120-121 knowledge of 127-128 racialised 11, 120-125, 169 sanctuaries 134 vacations 138 veil (hejab) 89(n83), 123 Vertovec, S. 4 Vietnam 19 virginity tests 16 wages see under employment Walby, S. 98 Walton, J. 2 wealth and aspiration 79, 79(n29) weather 70, 71, 72-73, 74, 111 welfare state 35-37, 153, 174 Werbner, P. 82(n45) white community 2 and inclusion 10, 116-117, 126-127 in interviews 8 romanticised view of 41 settlement patterns 24-25 white ethnicity 2(n9), 3 white flight 39 ‘white highlands’ 24 white immigration 17 white nation fantasy 34, 42 white supremicism 8 whiteness 10, 31-60 and colonialism 31-32 and cultural racism 32-34 and empowerment 34 exclusion narratives 35-47, 59-60 inclusion narratives 47-57 and welfare state 35-37 and white defeat 38-42

women in careers 166 in education 90-91, 99, 141, 146 and employment see under employment in household see under household in interviews 10 isolation of 110-112, 117, 137-138, 163164, 172 in patriarchies 2, 3, 5, 11, 84-85, 88 perceptions of ‘home’ 171-172 and purdah 84, 136 racism suffered by 121-125, 160-162, 166 from white women 45, 170 responses to 129-130 social capital of 49, 128-129, 131-132, 136-139 stereoptypes of 122-123 support networks for 113, 136-139, 170 white 41, 44-45, 170 in work 83, 111, 112, 141 work see employment work ethic 37, 176-177 working classes 31, 32-33, 70-71 decline of identity of 40 perceived as non-white/threatening 35, 44 women 44-45 workplace, racism in 11 York 81 Yorkshire 17-18, 20 Young, M. 3, 36 youth clubs 130 Yugoslavia, former 19 Yuval-Davis, N. 87 Zanzibar 69 Zimbabwean asylum seekers 19