Asian British

British Asians (also referred to as Asian Britons) are British people of Asian descent. They constitute a significant and growing minority of the people living in the United Kingdom, with a population of 5.76 million people or 8.6% of the population identifying as Asian or Asian British in the 2021 United Kingdom census. This represented an increase from a 6.9% share of the UK population in 2011, and a 4.4% share in 2001.

Represented predominantly by South Asian ethnic groups, census data regarding birthplace and ethnicity demonstrate around a million Asian British people derive their ancestry between East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and West Asia. Since the 2001 census, British people of general Asian descent have been included in the "Asian/Asian British" grouping ("Asian, Asian Scottish or Asian British" grouping in Scotland) of the UK census questionnaires. Categories for British Indians, British Pakistanis, British Bangladeshis, British Chinese, British Hongkongers and other Asians have existed under an Asian British heading since the 2011 census. In British English usage, especially in less formal contexts, the term "Asian" usually refers to people who trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent or South Asia, contrary to other Anglosphere countries such as Australia, Canada, Latin America, and the United States, where the term "Asian" usually refers to people who trace their ancestry to East and Southeast Asia.

There is a long history of migration to the United Kingdom (and its predecessor states) from across Asia. British colonies and protectorates throughout Asia brought lascars (sailors and militiamen) to port cities in Britain. Immigration of small numbers of South Asians to England began with the arrival of the East India Company to the Indian subcontinent, and the decline of the Mughal Empire, at the end of the 16th century. Between the 17th and mid-19th century, increasingly diverse lascar crews heading for Britain imported East Asians, such as Japanese and Chinese seamen, Southeast Asians, such as Malays, South Asians such as the Indians (including the people from Pakistan), Bengalis and Ceylonese and post-Suez Canal; West Asians, such as Armenians and Yemenis, who settled throughout the United Kingdom.

In particular, Indians also came to Britain for educational or economic reasons during the British Raj (with most returning to India after a few months or years) and in greater numbers as the Indian independence movement led to the partition of 1947, eventually creating the separate countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The most significant wave of Asian immigration to and settlement in the United Kingdom came following the Second World War with the resumed control of Hong Kong, the breakup of the British Empire and the independence of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and later Bangladesh, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. An influx of Asian immigrants also took place following the expulsion or flight of Indian communities (then holders of British passports) from the newly-independent Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania in the early 1970s.

Since the 2010s, British Asians have achieved positions of high political office; Sadiq Khan (of Pakistani descent) became Mayor of London in 2016, Rishi Sunak (of Indian descent) became the first British Asian Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in October 2022 and Humza Yousaf (also of Pakistani descent) became First Minister of Scotland in March 2023.

Terminology

In Britain, the word "Asian" most frequently refers to people with ancestry from the South Asian's Indian subcontinent (Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans) This usage contrasts to that in the United States, where it is used primarily to refer to people of East and Southeast Asian origin.

In British English usage, the term ''Asian'' usually refers to people who trace their ancestry to South Asia, in particular the former British Raj and Ceylon (the modern countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives). The British Sociological Association's guidelines on equality and diversity suggest that "South Asian" is more precise than "Asian" and that the latter should not be used where there is a risk of it conflating South Asians with people from elsewhere in Asia.

Census

The Office for National Statistics uses the term "Asian / Asian British" to categorise British Indians, British Pakistanis, British Bangladeshis, British Chinese people and people of any other Asian ancestry.

Definitions and naming conventions for the category have evolved in the history of UK censuses. The 1991 United Kingdom census was the first to include a question on ethnicity (apart from in Northern Ireland, where the question was not asked until 2001). The question had tick-boxes for "Indian", "Pakistani" and "Bangladeshi". There was also a tick box, as well as a general "Any other ethnic group (please describe)" option for those not wishing to identify with any of the pre-set tick boxes. For the 2001 census, in England and Wales, "Indian", "Pakistani" and "Bangladeshi" and "Any other Asian background (please write in)" options were grouped under an "Asian or Asian British" heading, with appearing under a separate heading. In Scotland, all of these tick-boxes were grouped together under an "Asian, Asian Scottish or Asian British" heading, and in Northern Ireland no broad headings were used, just tick-boxes for each of the Asian groups.

The 2011 census questionnaire was more consistent with regard to the grouping of Asian ethnicities, such that Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese and any other Asian background options appeared under a broad "Asian/Asian British" ("Asian, Asian Scottish or Asian British" in Scotland) heading in all parts of the UK. Shown in order, as listed on the 2011 Census form, the five categories of Asian British are:
* Asian / Asian British: Indian, a reference to the South Asian nation of India and British Indians.
* Asian / Asian British: Pakistani, a reference to the South Asian nation of Pakistan and British Pakistanis.
* Asian / Asian British: Bangladeshi, a reference to the South Asian nation of Bangladesh and British Bangladeshis.
* Asian / Asian British: Chinese, a reference to the East Asian nation of China and British Chinese people.
* Asian / Asian British: Other Asian, a broad description suitable for specifying self-identified ethnic descent from South Asian nations without an exclusive category (e.g. Sri Lanka and British Sri Lankans), the same application for other East Asian nations (e.g. Japan and British Japanese) and British people of Central Asian and Southeast Asian heritage.

Subgroups

There are several regional subgroupings of Asian British people, and Asians living in the United Kingdom generally. As approximately defined concepts, sometimes due to varying geographical regionalisation of the Asian continent, the subgroups are often utilized in broad ethnic or cultural classification. Despite wider use, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) does not provide geographic distinctions within the census, meaning all people born in Asia (regardless of region), or with Asian ancestry, are provided designation as "Asian / Asian British". The ONS did, however, acknowledge East, South, Southeast and West Asian individuals in its final recommendations report for the 2011 United Kingdom census.

Census results show that Asian Britons with descent from across all of Asia are represented in the UK. For example, births in the Philippines and Thailand in Southeast Asia, or Iran and Iraq in West Asia, are among the highest in the Other Asian subcategory of "Asian / Asian British". Outside of the census, organisation and bodies have made explicit use of such geographic classifications. These have included the British Heart Foundation, the Greater London Authority, and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. In alphabetical order, some of these subgroups are:
* British East Asians, including British Chinese, British Hongkongers, British Japanese, British Koreans and British Mongolians
* British South Asians, including British Afghans, British Bangladeshis, British Bhutanese, British Indians, British Nepalese, British Pakistanis and British Sri Lankans
* British Southeast Asian, including British Burmese, British Filipinos, British Indonesians, British Malaysians, British Singaporeans, British Thais and British Vietnamese
*British West Asian, including British Armenians, British Azerbaijanis, British Iranians, British Iraqis, British Israelis, British Kurds, British Lebanese, British Syrians, British Turks and British Yemenis

Various terms

Terms to describe British people with Asian heritage are varied and are subject to gradual change created by study in academia, reporting in journalistic works, coverage in other media forms, as well as concepts of self-identity and personhood. Some of the terms used to describe residents and citizens of the United Kingdom with ancestry from Asia are, in alphabetical order, as follows:

Asian Briton

The term Asian Briton has been consistently used to refer to someone who is a British citizen or resident with ancestry from across the continent of Asia. In 2005, social science researcher Praful Bidwai used Asian Briton as an example of a "mixed" identity. In 2011, multiple scholars, such as Timothy Garton Ash and Sonja Licht, used the term as an example of a hyphenated or dual identity within Europe.

Use of "Asian Briton" has appeared as both an illustrative term in media and for purposes of self-identity. For example, in 2005, politician Shailesh Vara was described as an Ugandan Asian Briton. Television presenter Sonia Deol and journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown have identified themselves as Asian Britons. In 1999, Alibhai-Brown published an Institute for Public Policy Research report, advising various departments of the Government of the United Kingdom to use the term Asian Briton. Research project Minorities at Risk described this as an effort "to link ethnic groups to their heritage, and to make greater recognition of the sacrifices made by members of ethnic groups during World War II".

British Asian

British Asian is a widely used term to describe British persons of Asian descent with either citizenship or residency in the UK. Although not following the UK's census formatting, there are numerous examples of the term gaining cultural traction in the country.

Founded by Charles, Prince of Wales in 2007, the British Asian Trust follows the naming convention resultant from the popularity of the term, and projects an association to the category of British Asian people. After the appointment of Katy Perry as an ambassador of the Trust in 2020, ''The Guardian'' questioned the merit of whether the American singer was a person "who inhabits the values of the British Asian community", reporting that Perry was "neither British nor Asian".

The term has also received some criticism. BBC Asian Network commissioned an opinion poll that found that the majority of Asians in the UK disliked the term due to its inferred generalisation. Academic Roxy harris has critiqued the term of "British Asian" as essentialising and hierarchising the values, or order of priority, of "British" and "Asian". The portmanteau ''Brasian'' has also been proposed as an alternative form of the term. In the course of the 2010s, usage of British Asian broadened in British media usage and in self-identification by British citizens or residents, to increasingly also include British people of heritage other than South Asia, such as East Asia and West Asia. In the 2011 census, the two categories Chinese and Other Asian were listed explicitly under the broad heading and within the grouping of "Asian/Asian British".

Demographics

Population

2021 census

According to the 2021 United Kingdom census, those identifying as Asian British in England and Wales enumerated 5,515,420, or 9.3% of the population In Northern Ireland, 30,667, or 1.6% of the population, identified as Asian or British Asian. The census in Scotland was delayed for a year and took place in 2022, the equivalent figure was 212,022, representing 3.9% of the population. The ten local authorities with the largest proportion of people who identified as Asian were: Redbridge (47.33%), Slough (46.75%), Harrow (45.23%), Tower Hamlets (44.43%), Leicester (43.40%), Newham (42.21%), Luton (36.99%), Hounslow (36.73%), Blackburn with Darwen (35.66%) and Hillingdon (33.32%). In Scotland, the highest proportion was in Glasgow at 11.08%; in Wales, the highest concentration was in Cardiff at 9.66%; and in Northern Ireland, the highest concentration was in Belfast at 3.74%.

Due to a growing sense of affiliation with Britain, many third generation South Asians chose to not mark "Asian or British Asian" and instead marked "British Asian" in the "Other Asian" write in section.

2011 census

The 2011 United Kingdom census recorded 1,451,862 residents of Indian, 1,174,983 of Pakistani, 451,529 of Bangladeshi, 433,150 of Chinese, and 861,815 of "Other Asian" ethnicity, making a total Asian British population of 4,373,339 (6.9 per cent of the total population), excluding people of mixed ethnicity.

The 2011 population represented a 1,794,513 increase on the 2001 United Kingdom census figures. All five of the subcategories (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and Other Asian) rose in their own right, representing both outright population growth, as well as increased demographic share of the UK's total population from 4.4% to 6.9%.

Birthplace

In terms of birthplace, the first four categories of "Asian / Asian British" people are vastly represented by births in the United Kingdom and the corresponding national-based category (E.g. China and "Asian / Asian British: Chinese"). The following birthplace figures cover the region of England and Wales, which constitute 94.7 percent of the UK's Asian British statistics:

* For the British Indian category, 606,298 (42.9 percent) were born in the United Kingdom, and 579,521 (41 percent) were born in India, accounting for 83.9 percent of the group.
* In the British Pakistani category, 631,171 (56.1 percent) were born in the UK, and 443,414 (39.4 percent) were born in Pakistan, accounting for 95.5 percent of the group.
* For the British Bangladeshi category, 232,089 (51.9 percent) were born in the UK, and 202,626 (45.3 percent) were born in Bangladesh, accounting for 97.1 percent of the group.
* In the British Chinese category, 93,164 (23.7 percent) were born in the UK, and 209,104 (53.2 percent) were born in China and its special administrative regions, accounting for 76.9 percent of the group. The break down of which was 139,723 in China (35.5 percent), 67,761 in Hong Kong (17.2 percent) and 1,620 in Macao (0.4 percent).
*In the Other Asian category, 207,319 (24.8 percent) were born in the UK, and then with significant births in many diverse nations, mainly in Asia. For example, in the 2011 census, countries of birth with significant representation (over 10,000 births) were recorded across different regions of Asia. In alphabetical order, these included two nations in East Asia (Japan and South Korea), four in South Asia (India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), four in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam), and two nations in West Asia (Iran and Iraq).

In 2001, the ONS designated the "Main countries of birth of Other Asian group" (the 10 places of birth with highest recorded figures), which, in descending order of population, were: United Kingdom, Sri Lanka, Iran, India, Iraq, Mauritius, Pakistan, Kenya, Nepal and Yemen. As updated a decade later by the Office for National Statistics, the 2011 United Kingdom census recorded the following population figures for the "Asian / Asian British: Other" group by birthplace:

ONS = Office for National Statistics, coding index.

Employment

The unemployment rate among Indian men was only slightly higher than that for White British or White Irish men, 7 per cent compared with 5 per cent for the other two groups. On the other hand, Pakistanis have higher unemployment rates of 13–14%, and Bangladeshis have one of the highest rates, around 23%. Some surveys also revealed the Indian unemployment rate to be 6–7% Persons of Indian or mixed Indian origin are more likely than White British to have university degrees, whereas Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are less likely. With the exception of Bangladeshi women, every other group of South Asians, have higher attendance at university than the national average. GCSE pass rates have been rising for all South Asians.

In the UK South Asian population has higher rates of unemployment compared to the White-British population, and number of 16 to 64 year old's who were employed, by ethnicity showed Indians overall had the same ratio in employment as White-British at 76%. However those from Pakistani, Bangladeshi backgrounds have far lower rates in employment at 57%. The gap between men and women was biggest in the combined Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic group, where 75% of men and 39% of women were employed compared to 80% of men and 73% of women amongst White-British.

, citizens of India and the Philippines are the largest foreign-national groups of National Health Service workers.

Ethnoregion

South Asian ethnic groups mostly originate from a few select places in South Asia, these are known as place of origins. East Asian ethnic groups are particularly represented by the Han Chinese in the United Kingdom. British Indians tend to originate mainly from the two Indian States, Punjab and Gujarat. Evidence from Bradford and Birmingham have shown, Pakistanis originate largely from the Mirpur District in Azad Kashmir. The second largest ethnic group of British Pakistanis are the Punjabi people, largely from Attock District of Punjab followed by Pashtuns and other ethnic groups from the districts of Nowshera, Peshawar and Ghazi in province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In the London Borough of Waltham Forest there are substantial numbers of Pakistani people originating from Jhelum, Punjab. Studies have shown 95 per cent of British Bangladeshis originate from the Sylhet Division, located in the Northeastern part of Bangladesh. British Chinese people originate primarily from former British colonies, such as Hong Kong, but also from areas of Southeast Asia, where they were already diasporic populations.

There have been three waves of migration of Hindus in the United Kingdom. The first wave was before India's independence in 1947. In the early 1950s the Conservative Health Minister, Enoch Powell recruited a large number of doctors from the Indian subcontinent. The second wave occurred in the 1970s mainly from East Africa. The later communities included those from Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius and Fiji. The last wave of migration began in the 1990s and included Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka and professionals including doctors and software engineers from India.

Language

Chinese Britons speak the Mandarin, Cantonese, Min, and Hakka languages. The language spoken by Indians are Punjabi, Gujarati, Kutchi, Hindustani (Hindi–Urdu), Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. People from Pakistan speak Urdu, Punjabi, Mirpuri, Hindko (dialects of Punjabi), Sindhi, Kashmiri, Pashto and Saraiki. Gujaratis who emigrated from India and East Africa speak Gujarati, Hindi, and Kutchi (a dialect of Sindhi), while a sizeable number of Gujarati Muslims speak Urdu for religious and cultural reasons. Bangladeshis mainly speak Sylheti Bengali and other dialects of Bengali. People from Sri Lanka speak Tamil and Sinhala. Speakers of different dialects mainly refer to their dialects as the main language, for example Sylheti Bengali speakers refer to the Sylheti dialect as just "Bengali" and Mirpuri speakers sometimes say they speak Punjabi. The reason for this is that for any given ethnic community, their region-specific dialect is the normative form of the language used.

Religion

Asian Britons have significant numbers of adherents to various major religions. Based on 2011 census figures for England and Wales (94.7 percent of UK statistics), Muslims account for 43% of the group, while Hindus make up over 18%, and Christians almost 11%. Sikhs constitute nearly 9% of British Asians, and 3.5% are Buddhists.DC2201EW - Ethnic group and religion (Excel sheet 21Kb)
ONS. 15 September 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2016.

British Chinese are mainly irreligious, with 55% of the population subscribing to no religion, 19% Christians and 12% Buddhists. British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis tend to be religiously homogeneous, with Muslims accounting for 92% of each group while their counterparts of Indian and Sri Lankan origin are more religiously diverse, with 55% Hindus, 29% Sikhs, and 15% Muslims. British Gujaratis are predominantly Hindu, belonging to various caste organizations, with large minorities of Muslims, Jains, and smaller numbers of Christians and Zoroastrians. Notable religious buildings are the East London Mosque, London Central Mosque, Birmingham Central Mosque, Baitul Futuh Mosque, BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir London, Bradford Lakshmi Narayan Hindu Temple, Shikharbandi Jain Derasar in Potters Bar

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