British South Asian Middle Class Formation: Between Privilege and Prejudice

British South Asian middle classness is not a ‘new’ phenomenon. However, the contemporary post-war British South Asian middle classes have a unique formation history and have played a significant role in the economic and political life of the UK. Defining and understanding these groups is difficult due to their location at the apex of differential privileges and prejudices. This chapter will refer to existing literature to outline how social mobility and ‘middle classness’ as both an occupational and cultural phenomenon has been, to a large extent, racially and ethnically specific for British South Asians. Middle class practices specific to White middle class reproduction have historically been tied to the maintenance and reproduction of classed and raced privilege for the White middle classes. Theorisation of the racialisation of class can thus help us understand, in part, class and its ‘second existence’ for racialised minorities like the British South Asian Diaspora. It will also look at how, conversely, the ‘model’ minority myth has allowed these groups to framed as ‘good immigrants’ in relation to other less desirable migrants, perpetuating a racial fractionalism which pits racialised minorities against one another, in reductive and hierarchical ways.