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Writing British Asian Birmingham – Towards a Spatial Historiography

Writing British Asian Birmingham – Towards a Spatial Historiography. Richard Gale Department of Sociology University of Birmingham. Overview. Introduction : Urban Contradictions - Patterns or Paradigms?/Demographic Sketch

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Writing British Asian Birmingham – Towards a Spatial Historiography

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  1. Writing British Asian Birmingham – Towards a Spatial Historiography Richard Gale Department of Sociology University of Birmingham

  2. Overview • Introduction: Urban Contradictions - Patterns or Paradigms?/Demographic Sketch • Part 1: The Sociological Contribution: Community, Class and Conflict. • Part 2: Ethnography and Cultural Production. • Part 3: Alternative Histories • Concluding remarks: towards a spatial historiography

  3. Ethnicity by Religion in Birmingham, 2001 Census

  4. Urban contradictions – patterns or paradigms? • Birmingham’s economic characteristics transformed between late 1970s and 1990s: collapse of heavy industry, replaced by service sector production and retail: approx 80% of population currently occupied in service sector. • City Council has actively participated in the city’s economic transition with a view to promoting Birmingham as a ‘global city’, and has actively sought to enhance its capital and informational links to other post-industrial metropolises. • leader of City Council, Mike Whitby, expresses vision of Birmingham as ‘a global player’, to be achieved by forging stronger ties with key economic centres in America, India and China ‘to attract inward investment’. • Council’s planning and development strategy incorporates proposals that actively endorse celebration of cultural difference through the built environment. City Development Plan chapter on Sparkbrook and Small Heath wards states ‘throughout the Sparkbrook and Sparkhill areas, there are concentrations of specialist shops and restaurants in local centres’, suggesting that ‘the area as a whole has potential for development as a tourist attraction’ (Birmingham City Council, 2001: 401). • Council European Development Fund grant used to redevelop the Ladypool Road area of Balsall Heath, renowned Balti houses it hosts. The grant was used to commission bollards and street furniture in a ‘Mughal’ style, thus making an ‘attraction’ of the area in which the restaurants are clustered.

  5. Ethnic Groups by Areas of Multiple Deprivation in Birmingham (IMD 2004)

  6. Percentage under/over representation of South Asians in decile of most deprivation (IMD, 2004)

  7. South Asians in Birmingham – A Demographic Sketch • Pre-World War II: Links between Birmingham and South Asia longstanding, forged under aegis of imperialism: students and doctors came to city from India to study and work in city from late 19th century onwards. • By 1930, largest cohort of overseas students in British universities were from India: mainly concentred in London, Cambridge and Oxford, but also included significant numbers in ‘provincial’ universities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds (Visram, 1986). • Subsequently, ‘lascars’ from settlements in the port cities of Liverpool, Southampton and Cardiff moved to Birmingham and wider Midlands area to work in munitions factories and foundries, particularly during World War II (Desai, 1963; Visram, 1986). • On eve of the war, Indian population in Birmingham was approximately 100, 20 of which students and doctors; by 1945, number had increased to approximately 1,000 (Visram, 1986: 191-2).

  8. Demography Cont’d • Post World War II: Development of South Asian communities in Birmingham followed the same trajectory as other regions of the UK, beginning with processes of chain-migration bound intimately to Britain’s post-war economic reconstruction (Desai 1963; Aurora 1967; Rex and Moore, 1967; Dahya 1974). • Former seamen arriving in Birmingham in 1940s settled the inner-city districts (Balsall Heath, Sparkbrook). • Individuals acted as a bridgehead for the subsequent development of ethnic enclaves, sponsoring kinsmen and fellow villagers to work in local factories, as post-war economic recovery gave rise to acute shortages of labour (Dahya, 1974: 96). • Of the immigrants from Pakistan, most were from Mirpur in Azad Kashmir and the Chhach District (formerly known as Cambellpur); those from former East Pakistan (subsequently Bangladesh) were predominantly from Sylhet (Rex and Moore, 1967: 115-6). • Of the Indians, the majority were Punjabis, both directly from Jullunder district of the Punjab and via East Africa (Rex and Moore, 1967: 130-1). A smaller number originated from Gujarat (principally the Surat and Charottar districts) both directly and via East Africa. • Of the larger Punjabi group, the majority were Sikhs, accounting for differences in size of Hindu and Sikh proportions of the Birmingham population reflected in the 2001 Census returns.

  9. Percentage Males and Females by Place of Birth, 1971 Census

  10. 1) The Sociological Contribution • ‘Sojourner to settler’ transition, and its association with economic trends, richly documented and theorised in seminal work of John Rex and collaborators (Rex and Moore, 1967; Rex and Tomlinson, 1979; Ratcliffe, 1981). • Rex drew explicitly on early Chicago School ‘concentric zone’ model of city developed by Ernest Burgess and Robert Park. • ‘Chicago School’ assumed mutuality of processes of social and spatial mobility, whereby new ‘immigrant’ groups settled in inner-urban locations (the ‘transition zone’) and were concentrated in lowest employment sectors (Robert Park and Ernest Burgess). • Over time, immigrants/minorities would move outwards from the urban core to surrounding urban ‘zones’ in a process of ‘invasion’ and ‘succession’, as they experience upward mobility and ‘the ties of race, language, and culture weaken’ (Robert Park, 1920). • Whilst incorporating core elements of this thesis, Rex also saw himself as ‘correcting’ the implicit functionalism of the Chicago School account of urbanisation and residential sifting sorting, which in his view allowed insufficient scope to assess the conflicts (and as such the ‘agency’) of groups in different urban sectors/’zones.’ • Innovation was to combine Chicago School model with Weberian class analysis, enabling him to focus in on inter-group relations within/across areas of the city and to explicitly examine forms of urban struggle, and to give serious consideration to intersection of ‘immigrant’ group status (ethnicity) with class. • Simultaneously, avoided the ‘economic reductionism’ of Marxist class analysis, building on Weber’s contention that other class/status defining situations besides ownership (and not) of the means of production: ownership of private property, in particular, given an important role in Weber’s work. , without reducing class widened scope for assessing role of conflict and competition in the sifting and sorting of different groups.

  11. Sociology cont’d • Led to innovation of ‘housing classes’ concept, rested upon notion that ‘the city does to some extent share a unitary status-value system’ (Rex and Moore, 1967: 9). As such, assumed generality of aspiration to move to suburban housing. • Five housing-classes, ordered according to desirability of housing type, and corresponding broadly to different ‘zones’ of city: • Outright owner-occupiers • Council house tenants • Tenants of private houses • Lodging-house proprietors • Tenants of lodging houses • South Asian and other migrant groups concentrated in lodging houses of the ‘transition’ or ‘twilight zone’ of inner-city. • Pattern of concentration identified as spatial expression of societal and institutional constraint: discriminatory limitation on migrants’ access to council housing (the ‘5 year rule’) necessitated purchase of rundown inner city housing. • Unequal access to private housing market, due to cost and difficulty of obtaining credit. Result was purchase of rundown housing in inner urban areas, and letting of rooms to defray costs. • Rex and Tomlinson (1979) revised housing class thesis, and broadened scope of work to encompass other zones of struggle, including the workplace and education. • Partly a sop to Marxist critique of earlier work (e.g. Castles and Kossack, 1973), who objected to notion of autonomy of property and labour markets. Urban sociology/geography also theoretically reformulated along Marxist lines from 1970s onwards (e.g. Castells, 1972; Harvey, 1973) , leading Rex to recast work in terms of ‘Left Weberianism’/’Weberian Marxism’. • Work of geographers (P.N. Jones (1970; 1976) and R. Woods (1979)) shares some conceptual over-lap with that of sociologists, with greater emphasis on morphological characteristics of settlement patterns of South Asians and other post-migration groups in Birmingham. Tracks residential dispersal policy of Birmingham City Council in 1970s.

  12. 2) Ethnography and Cultural Production • Quite different account of link between South Asian ethnicity and urban context emerges from ethnographic accounts, some explicitly critical of sociological account. • Dahya (1974) provided early social anthropological critique of Rex and Moore, arguing they over-stated the societal constraints exerted upon migrants-cum-settlers (Pakistanis); in particular, no data provided on application rates of Pakistanis for mortgages or levels of demand amongst migrants for housing elsewhere than ‘twilight zone’. • As such, constraint factors emphasised at expense of choice. • Recent work in urban economics/economic geography, responding to cognate debate over ‘ethnic enclave’ economy (Henry et al. 2002; Ram et al. 2002, 2007). • Henry et al (2002) discuss post-industrial ‘ethnic entrepreneurship’ as agential success story of ‘globalisation from below’. Resonates with earlier work (Wilson Portes, 1980) on scope afforded by ethnic enclave economy for occupational mobility. • In contrast, Ram et all (2002) emphasise series of relationships between formal labour-market access and qualified enablement offered by ethnic entrepreneurial sector (e.g. the restaurant sector). • Cultural production, consumption and the spaces of identity – bhangra as ‘urban anthem’ (Dudrah, 2002; 2007); architecture as political symbol (Gale, 2004, 2005).

  13. 3) Alternative Histories? • Creative writing: contributions to Whispers in the Walls collection of short stories reflecting ‘New Black and Asian Voices from Birmingham’. • e.g. Kavita Bhanot’s ‘One last time‘, addressing issue of relationships between young South Asians of different religions. • From writing on urban space to writing in urban space: anger and anxiety raised amongst Sikhs in Birmingham and elsewhere by performance of Behzti, play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti which addresses issues of sexual exploitation, drug use and social power, setting these in interior of fictionalised Gurdwara. • Raises questions of complex relationship between ‘representational space’of theatre with ‘practical spaces’ of gurdwara as the locus of ritual practice and the street as locus of mobilisation. • Oral histories/archives: Range of resources in ‘raw’ form, permitting historical and historiographical re-assessment of critical moments in post-war history of South Asians in Birmingham. • e.g. Birmingham Black Oral History Project Archive (BBOHP). Series of interviews with Asian and African Caribbean 1st generation settlers in Birmingham, addressing first impressions and ‘grass roots’ experiences of racism, religion and culture. • Birmingham City Council initiative ‘Connecting Histories’, includes archive on Indian Workers Association (IWA). • Minutes and agendas of City Council committees, planning reports and decisions, etc. • Recent work of Vanessa Burholt (2004) on 1st generation settlers Gujaratis, Punjabis and Sylhetis in Birmingham. • Availability of archive material as rudiments of alternative accounts to rival or revise existing ones doesn’t obviate core issue of partiality/paradigmatic inscription of narrative.

  14. Concluding remarks • Birmingham is ‘a conurbation that has played a vital role in the shaping of the politics of race in British society’ (Solomos and Back, 1995: 3). • Empirical as well as analytical aspects to this importance: • Site of Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, delivered at Midland Hotel in April 1968, at the height of family reunification phase in Birmingham and elsewhere. • Analytical importance stems from extensive body of research literature written in and on the city, with much wider ramifications. • Urban sociological work of John Rex and collaborators (Rex and Moore, 1967; Rex and Tomlinson, 1979). • Birmingham University’s then Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS, 1982). • Key works of urban anthropology (Dahya, 1974). • An attention to spatial elements of these works can’t correct for the partialities of perspective on which they are founded, but may nonetheless enable a fuller account of South Asian urban experiences to emerge than one bounded by limits of disciplinary or narrative approach.

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