Politics, Identity, Representation and UK Asian Suburban Youth: Voices from the Margins

Abstract

This chapter shifts away from the more familiar focus on the urban in youth cultural studies to the somewhat neglected category of suburban youth: those residing in districts of big cities that are at their edges not their cores. Whilst suburb-dwellers might once have been presumed to be ethnically white, the chapter draws on interviews conducted with young people of Asian origin in the suburban towns of Bury in greater Manchester (North West England) and Kingston in greater London. In this sense it is also a corrective to criticisms that youth culture studies has been ‘too white’ in outlook, redressing the balance along with others such as Nayak (2010) and Watson and Saha (2012) who have also examined Asian suburbia. From the transcript excerpts included it can be seen that the young people interviewed are fashioning their own narratives of identity and belonging in seeking to encompass multiple cultures, to which their British citizenship, country of origin, faith background and location as suburban all contribute. In this way the chapter presents voices from the margins literally and metaphorically as they reflect on political themes; it also shows how the media were ever-present in their understandings of big and small p politics.