Book contents
- Imperial Heartland
- Modern British Histories
- Imperial Heartland
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Sheffield, ‘Steel City’
- 2 The Sheffield Area’s South Asian Migration Networks
- 3 Working Lives
- 4 Marriage, Belonging and Tolerance in the Era of Moral Condemnation
- 5 Empire, Racism and Everyday Tolerance
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Working Lives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2023
- Imperial Heartland
- Modern British Histories
- Imperial Heartland
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Sheffield, ‘Steel City’
- 2 The Sheffield Area’s South Asian Migration Networks
- 3 Working Lives
- 4 Marriage, Belonging and Tolerance in the Era of Moral Condemnation
- 5 Empire, Racism and Everyday Tolerance
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Tracking rural South Asians from their lives as peasant farmers to their roles as lascar seamen, waged labourers and petty traders, Chapter 3 examines their remarkable working lives. It situates their experience of waged labour within that of other non-white immigrants, as well as that of the (mostly white) native working class. It proposes that current understanding incorrectly concludes that the fluidity of South Asian men’s working lives was a response to structural discrimination in the British labour market. In contrast, it asserts that many maintained their own agenda for economic independence. The chapter contends that South Asians often self-financed their migration to take up self-employment as pedlars in Britain, rather than simply being lascar seafarers jumping ship. This undermines claims that peddling was an imposed form of precarity. As fare-paying passengers, the growing number of pedlars during the 1930s resembles the economic migration of the post-Partition era. Thus the forms and networks of immigration were created prior to, and were bolstered by, the Second World War, rather than being solely a product of the post-war era.
Keywords
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- Information
- Imperial HeartlandImmigration, Working-class Culture and Everyday Tolerance, 1917–1947, pp. 74 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023