Pakistanis in Britain: Transients or Settlers?a

Abstract

My acquaintance with Pakistani migrants in Britain began quite casually during the summer of 1956 in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. During my periodic visits to that city during the next few years, I was able to observe the growth of the Pakistani community in Balsall Heath, Sparkbrook, and other parts of the city. On such occasions I took the opportunity to visit some of my Pakistani contacts and was able to observe and record events concerning them, their life histories, and the various stages of their career subsequent to their migration to this country. Later on, I was able to meet some of their kinsmen whom they had sponsored. My ties with them were maintained to the end of February 1961, when I left the country, and were renewed on my return at the end of 1963. When the plans for a study of Pakistani migrants in Britain began to materialize, I moved to Birmingham in the summer of 1964 and stayed in Pakistani houses for seven weeks. Subsequently, I spent another nine weeks in Birmingham during 1965-7, and visited periodically throughout the 1964-7 period. When I had a suitable lead from Birmingham to Bradford I moved to Bradford, during August 1964, and found myself a base in the migrant community there. I spent altogether some 62 weeks in Bradford, including 9 weeks during which I was accompanied by my sister who came to help me investigate life behind the purdah. During. this time I stayed in five houses in the different areas of migrant settlement, and throughout assumed the role of a ’participant observer’. Since the beginning of my acquaintance with Pakistani migrants in 1956 I had come across cases where individual migrants were said to have travelled on false documents for which they blamed travel agents in Pakistan; and there were Pakistani seamen who it was said had entered the country by jumping ship on arrival at a British port. Also, there have appeared in the British and the Urdu immigrant press reports that

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