Politics, Identity and Belonging Across British South Asian Middle Classes: Between Privilege and Prejudice

This book will discuss the growing socio-economic and political diversity of the groups that comprise the British South Asian diaspora, with a focus on the formation of the British South Asian ＂middle classes＂. They will be framed within this work as a heterogenous sub-population, but this book is be the first comprehensive effort to define them sociologically as a distinct ethnoracial collective with a unique political profile. It does this with reference to secondary statistical data and primary interview data, and engages with relevant academic and non-academic literature. It describes the ways in which socially mobile South Asian migrants and particularly their descendants in the UK relate to their racial, ethnic, religious, classed and gendered identities, their relationship with ’Britishness’, and their politics. It will therefore be of interest to students and researchers of political sociology, particularly those specialising in race, processes of racism and racialisation, ethnic and ethno-religious identity, class and social mobility amongst ethnic minority groups, and the interaction between minority identity and political identity.

Rima Saini is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Middlesex, UK.