The racialisation of class and the racialisation of the nation: ethnic minority identity formation across the british south asian middle classes

Abstract

This paper considers negotiations of social identity across British-born Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani professionals who experience racial / ethno-religious marginality alongside relative socioeconomic privilege. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews, it finds that beneath the generalised salience of British identity to their sense of self, the racialised limits of national belonging are implicit in discussions of social identity. The ways in which class is brought to bear in identity work which often seeks to subvert and/or align with British middle class norms underscores the relationship between the racialisation of class and the racialisation of the nation. This paper also identifies different modes of identity construction around the racialised idea of the nation across dimensions of religion and gender, and thus also stresses the need to consider the heterogeneity of the British South Asian middle classes when analysing the material and symbolic dimensions of their group belongings.