Class, ‘Race’ and the British South Asian Diaspora

This chapter uses existing literature to map the British South Asian Diaspora in relation to their classed, racial, ethnic and religious identities. It will begin by teasing out an operationalisable definition of middle classness that is appropriate for the population in question, before outlining the racial, ethnic, religious and national components of British South Asian identity frameworks. It also will draw on some quantitative analysis of identity salience across professional and managerial British South Asians from the British Election Study Ethnic Minority Survey 2010 and the Citizenship Survey 2011 to understand how different group identities manifest across the dominant sub-groups—Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi—and, particularly, how class and occupation fare in relation to other group belongings.