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3 - Working Lives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2023

David Holland
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Imperial Heartland
Immigration, Working-class Culture and Everyday Tolerance, 1917–1947
, pp. 74 - 161
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Working Lives
  • David Holland, University of Sheffield
  • Book: Imperial Heartland
  • Online publication: 03 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009216210.005
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  • Working Lives
  • David Holland, University of Sheffield
  • Book: Imperial Heartland
  • Online publication: 03 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009216210.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Working Lives
  • David Holland, University of Sheffield
  • Book: Imperial Heartland
  • Online publication: 03 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009216210.005
Available formats
×