Historical Background

Britain and the United States have seen major waves of South Asian immigration since 1945. Both countries have, of course, always been nations of migrants. Britain has long had black and South Asian populations, yet – despite this rich history – the numbers of people arriving in the postwar period from South Asia and the Caribbean were unprecedented. This well-known historical process, which followed decolonisation in the migrants' countries of origin, has dramatically altered the UK's demographic configuration. According to the national census in 2001, Britain's ‘minority ethnic’ population – composed mainly of British Asians and black Britons – increased by 53 per cent between 1991 and 2001, from 3 million to 4.6 million, with some 2.08 million people of South Asian descent registered in Great Britain.

As Dilip Hiro has shown, South Asians generally chose to emigrate to Britain for economic reasons, following the displacement brought about by Partition. They were responding to British demand for labour – doctors, nurses, and factory workers across industry – and they were able to move to the UK because they had British passports. Indeed, conditions were favourable for Indians and Pakistanis to move to Britain until 1962, when the first of a series of increasingly severe laws aimed at reducing immigration was passed. Hiro estimates that the numbers of South Asians in Britain ‘swelled from 7,500 in 1960 to 48,000 in 1961.