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Migration, Diaspora and Identity pp 51–74Cite as

‘When I Land in Islamabad I Feel Home and When I Land in Heathrow I Feel Home’

Gendered Belonging and Diasporic Identities of South Asian British Citizens in London, in Leicester and in North England

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Part of the book series: International Perspectives on Migration ((IPMI,volume 6))

Abstract

According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) ‘de-territorialization’ is followed by a moment of re-territorialization. This moment, however, has to be regarded as a continuing educational process that becomes a different spatial site of social practices. It is argued in this chapter that regional, local as well as global identification override national and mono-ethno cultural identities, while shaping particular notions of gendered belonging and creating specific diasporic practices. Based on a sample of interviews with professional and academic South Asian British citizens in London, in Leicester, and in a number of Northern English cities gendered and generational patterns in terms of local diasporic identities are explored. Apart from multiple cultural belonging, foremost, territorial bonds and notions of group loyalty collapse at a point where temporary migration and settlement alternate in individual biographies.

K., male, aged 40, living in Leicester; the chapter was accepted in 2011. By now, K. is older.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ways of being refers to the actual social relations and practices that individuals engage in rather than to the identities associated with their actions’. (2007, p. 163).

  2. 2.

    Ways of belonging refers to practices that signal or enact an identity which demonstrates conscious connection to a particular group.’ (2007, p. 164).

  3. 3.

    Tsagarousianou (2007, p. 112) modifies Appadurai’s (1996) term ‘ethnoscape’ into ‘diasporic ethnoscape’.

  4. 4.

    (Brah 1996, p. 190).

  5. 5.

    Levitt and Glick-Schiller (2007, p. 157) characterize transnational activity as ‘Simultaneity, or living lives that incorporate daily activities, routines, and institutions located both in a destination country and transnationally is a possibility.’

  6. 6.

    Confronted with concepts unsupportive of a critical understanding of the unfair treatment of black women and, thus, inadequate to grasp different social complexities, black feminist and academic Crenshaw (1989, 1991) initiated a theoretical debate on the intersections of different layers of social identities and group belonging in the United States.

  7. 7.

    http://www.esds.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=3685.

  8. 8.

    Mishra and Mohapatra (2001) draw similar conclusions concerning a more urban and white-collar profession for those with an ‘Indian profile’ (2001, p. 1); rather blue-collar for Pakistani and Bangladeshi social profiles (ibid).

  9. 9.

    Bagguley and Hussain (2007, p. 45) criticize the lack of stable resources here. One of my interview partners works in this filed of ‘widening participation’ and conformed staggering success despite unreliable funding for her job.

  10. 10.

    I will come back to some issues related to the scope and scale of the study later on.

  11. 11.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5032166.stm; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1702799.stm; http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/jun/10/race.thefarright.

  12. 12.

    The population of Bradford is counted as around 293.000; including 26,1 % South Asian, predominantly with Pakistani heritage.

  13. 13.

    Oldham is part of Greater Manchester with an estimate of 104.000 inhabitants; roughly 29, 4 % South Asian

  14. 14.

    12, 01 % of Londoners are categorised as South Asian; though a larger percentage of Indian heritage.

  15. 15.

    I interviewed eight women and seven men.

  16. 16.

    In Bradford, National Front allies gathered in a pub provoking protest and resistance among Asian South youth.

  17. 17.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/apr/22/lawrence.ukcrime.

  18. 18.

    Honeyford was a Bradford primary school head teacher, who disrespected ethnic-religious diverse pupils at his school and was dismissed as response to public local protest.

  19. 19.

    Some orthodox Muslim men burnt the book ‘Satanic verses’ in Bradford and this action was widely broadcasted adding to the negative of the Bradford Pakistani Muslim communities.

  20. 20.

    Pragna Patel was just named as one of the 100 most inspirational women by the British newspaper, Guardian, 08.03.2011.

  21. 21.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/apr/27/blair-peach-killed-police-met-report.

  22. 22.

    http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/whats-on/exhibitions/strikingwomen.cfm http://www.leeds.ac.uk/strikingwomen/ ; also see Anitha et al. (2012).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor and the helpful comments of the anonymous referee. The research was funded by the VSB, a Dutch grant, and carried out as a research project of the interdisciplinary research group ‘Inclusive Thinking’ in 2009–2011. I would like to thank particularly Halleh Ghorashi (VU Amsterdam) and James Kennedy (University of Amsterdam) for their generous support.

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  1. University of Sheffield, ICOSS, 219 Portobello, Sheffield, S1 4DP, UK

    Ulrike M. Vieten

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Correspondence to Ulrike M. Vieten .

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  1. School of Education, University of Ballarat, Ballarat, Australia

    Georgina Tsolidis

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Vieten, U.M. (2014). ‘When I Land in Islamabad I Feel Home and When I Land in Heathrow I Feel Home’. In: Tsolidis, G. (eds) Migration, Diaspora and Identity. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7211-3_4

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