The experience of the Indian and Pakistani immigrant communities in Great Britain from 1948 to 1971

Résumé du document

The history of Indian and Pakistani presence in Britain is long as it dates back to the seventeenth century. Yet the influence of the South Asian community was almost insignificant at that time, for its size remained very small. Only after the Second World War (1939-1945) did South Asian migration to Britain develop into a mass phenomenon. Both reconstruction and the expansion of the economy during the 1950s and 1960s provoked a great need of labour force that the local population was not able to fulfil. The British government encouraged the entry of workers from the former colonies around the world and large-scale immigration of Indian and Pakistani labour started. By 1945, migrants from the newly independent British colonies, such as India and Pakistan , came to Great Britain to settle for a short period of time. In the beginning, they were single young men, attracted by the British lifestyle and the employment opportunities that Britain could offer even to unskilled workers. Most of them knew already someone who had come earlier and could rely on a network of contacts. They lived in simple and crowded accommodation, worked long hours under poor conditions and saved for their families back home. They came as sojourners with no intention of settling, thus they were willing to accept the poor living conditions and refrained from establishing their own ethnic and religious communities. But gradually their stay in Britain was extended, wives and children were brought to Britain, and Indian and Pakistani communities started to develop.
The South Asian migrants in Britain consisted in a number of different groups of people differing in their ethnic origin, language, religion, traditions, customs, dress and education. However, when we consider the size of India and Pakistan, it is surprising that emigration was limited to very small and confined areas such as Punjab, Gujarat and six areas in the two parts of Pakistan (see Appendix A, p. III). Four-fifth of the Indian migration to Britain were Sikhs . They came from two districts in Eastern Punjab - Jullundur and Hoshiarpur. They were the most mobile people in India and they were considered as pioneers. After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948, they and the Hindus were driven out of their farms across the new frontier. In the exchange of population, millions of refugees flooded into the Eastern Punjab where they took the smaller and sometimes poorer Muslim holdings. Jullundur had the highest percentage of poor landowners and also the highest population density in the Punjab . Therefore it is not surprising that people in that area were very likely to migrate to Britain.

Extraits

[...] Patterson estimates the proportion of Indian or Pakistani immigrants who experienced actual discrimination in connection with housing at between 63 and 67 per cent[131]. Furthermore the scarcity of housing in industrial cities was such that immigrants were considered as competitors by white locals, which accentuated the tensions between immigrants and the local population and exacerbated the feelings of racism. II. Disadvantage in the private sector. According to the Political and Economic Planning report per cent of Pakistanis and 19 per cent of Indians stated that they had experienced discrimination in private letting[132]. [...]

[...] As we have said earlier, the Indians and Pakistanis were mostly single men (frequently married men without their families at first) who came to Britain to earn money quickly. Their cultural background required them to help their kinsmen and fellow-villagers hence the rapid development of multi-occupation and of the lodging-house areas. It is reported that the Indians were better organised than the Pakistanis and that their conditions of living changed as soon as wives and children joined them. Yet the Pakistanis were less well-educated than the Indians and presented more problems. [...]

[...] New York: Random House Aspects of Britain. Ethnic Minorities. London: The Stationery Office, 2nd ed Charlot, Monica. Naissance d'un problème racial. Minorités de couleur en Grande-Bretagne. Paris: Armand Colin Clarke, Colin, Ceri Peach, Steven Vertovec, ed. South-Asians Overseas : Migration and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cross, Crispin. Ethnic Minorities in the Inner City. The Ethnic Dimension in Urban Deprivation in England. London: Commission for Racial Equality Desai, Rashmikant Harilal. [...]

[...] However Indian and Pakistani female workers were paid less than their male relatives. Indeed the average salary of a woman (immigrant or white) was generally lower than the average salary of a man. However there were very few differences between their earnings and the earnings of their female white colleagues the average weekly earnings of white women who worked full-time were 24.10 and of ethnic minority women 23.40 [43]. However the proportion of immigrant women with children and working full- time was higher than the proportion of white women, and they were also more likely to work longer hours[44]. [...]

[...] In this study, we will confine ourselves to giving an account of the experience of the Indian and Pakistani immigrant communities in Britain from 1948 to 1971. The choice of these dates is not fortuitous. In fact this period of twenty-three years corresponds to what is called “primary immigration from the New Commonwealth and Pakistan[5]”, that is to say the arrival in Britain of the first generation of immigrants from former British colonies. It was during this period that South Asian migrants enjoyed the freedom to enter Britain as British citizens, a right that they nevertheless progressively lost during these twenty-three years (see Appendix p. [...]