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This is a legacy of the majority of British-Indians pre-2010 being relatively highly educated, often very highly educated, and generally well acclimatised. There were teething issues of course- black and white skinheads would team up to do a bit of 'paki bashing' that usually targeted brown people indiscriminately.
But 1 in 6 British Indians were of East African extraction (read, middleman minority) as late as 2001, with the remainder being largely merchant-class Gujaratis. Essentially the same stereotype and class of people as Indians in America.
These positive feelings will soon fade with the latest Boriswave. Vast numbers of single men working as deliveroo drivers do not a model minority make. Anecdotally, my 2nd Gen British-Indian friends used to mock and make fun of "freshies" (fresh off the boat people) for being crude, uneducated etc. when in reality most of them were visiting accountants from Bombay. Those mocking comments have largely stopped as I think they see that the the new wave of Indian migrants do fit all the stereotypes. An interesting dynamic to say the least. I don't see the positive attitude lasting, and I think sooner rather than later the 2nd and 3rd gen British Indians will get over their semi-ethnic solidarity and realise that these new arrivals are giving them a bad name, and advocate for their removal. Braverman/Patel gave this rhetoric at least, although their actions are questionable. Due to these largely being single men with unstable employment, they should be easy to remove with a bit of willpower. Not the same dynamic as established families and communities.
How imbalanced are the demographics of recent Indian immigrants to the UK? The statistics are presumably available.
I actually think these statistics are relatively difficult to get access to- the 2021 Census a) missed the large numbers of people who arrived 2021-2024 and b) almost certainly vastly undercounted. Roughly 3 million people have arrived in the country Jan 2021-Dec 2023 according to migration observatory, and most of these arrivals won't feature in the Census data, plus whatever the 2024 numbers are. The census estimated 1.9m Indians living in the UK in 2021. Between 2021-2023, the official preliminary numbers estimated 670,000 Indian nationals arrived on long term visas. Adding in people overstaying short term visas, plus the 2024 numbers, and 1 million total Indian arrivals since the Census took place looks reasonable. My 95% confidence interval for Indians in the UK would be 2.75m-3.5m, as I have no idea what the potential undercount might be. This doesn't include Sri Lankans, Nepalese, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis but does include 2nd and 3rd gens ticking the Indian ethnicity box.
Going just off the primary language census data (with the caveats noted above), Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil speakers have seen the largest proportional increases since 2011. So mostly South Indians/Dravidians. The established languages have all either plateaued (Punjabi, Urdu) or fallen (Bengali, Gujarati) which probably reflects the maturation of these groups as their 2nd gen offspring use English as a main language. Of course Bengali, Urdu and Punjabi speakers are probably mostly of Bangladeshi or Pakistani origin.
I repeat that, anecdotally, very recent Indian migration in particular seems to heavily skew towards men. This might be a feature of where I live rather than for the whole of the UK. I can't find any stats to back this up, especially as trying to make estimates that don't factor in the 1m post-census arrivals would be redundant.
Whereabouts do you live? You’re probably correct but I wonder if it’s balanced out by large numbers of female NHS etc workers now that Filipinos and Poles are being joined by both Nigerians and Indians in larger numbers.
Quite possible, I live in one of the nice but not elite areas of zone 2. Demographically speaking it is probably similar to the other nicer parts of inner London, low in white British but relatively high in general white population via Americans/Europeans, more (2nd gen/upper class) Indians and Chinese than Pakistanis/Bangladeshis etc. My exposure to the recent arrivals then are mostly through service job interactions and the swathes of food delivery couriers, and the tube. I have practically 0 interaction with the NHS, so this could be correct. Nigerians I think are almost certainly more balanced demographically. Given the huge changes in HMO licensing and rental patterns, I don't think that these new mostly male Indian arrivals have wives or girlfriends at home, but rather live 8 to a flat with other single 20-something men. A lot of the time the landlords for these properties are themselves upper class and/or 2nd gen Indians who extract/exploit the maximum they can from these new tenants.
Take the recent scandal from Jas Athwal, the labour MP recently as a slum landlord in East London. Anecdotally, a property I used to rent a long time ago I saw has been converted from a 3 bed to a 5 bed (by turning everyone room except the kitchen and bathroom into bedrooms). The landlady is (unsurprisingly) a 2nd gen East African Gujarati who rotates between London/Dubai/Kenya. This is quite a common pattern that I have seen from parents of friends and colleagues.
Edit: of course the other possibility is that a similar but gender reversed situation is taking place with Indian women, where they live in large HMOs and all work in the NHS, in some kind of parallel world. But I don't think is happening, at least not on the same scale as the men.
Are we talking like Islington / Maida Vale / Clapham tier, here?
Yeah, it’s interesting, natives are highly concentrated in the outer suburbs, the richest are strongly concentrated in Chelsea / Fulham / the immediate vicinity of The Surprise, with another large group slightly north around Holland Park / Notting Hill, and to some extent in Hampstead and leafier parts of North London (along with Jews and Indians).
Here in Mayfair there are almost no natives, it is predominantly Arabs, some Russians, Africans and Chinese (although the latter prefer Nine Elms / Battersea Power Station / South Bank Apartment buildings), and moderately large contingents of wealthy Americans, Italians and French (although in general French and Scandinavians prefer Marylebone), mostly young (men) who work in hedge funds or PE nearby. Marylebone also seems to have a lot of rich Aussies along with many Americans and a few Brits here and there, mostly older.
Yeah somewhere in-between one of the first and second groups of places you mentioned. I've just checked the data and it's actually around the 70th percentile for income for inner London, 90th percentile for London as a whole.
Different parts of London can be a bubble of course but I feel relatively confident talking about the demographics of the arrivals- I suspect many of them are living in zones 2-5 in North West as I see them on the tube and around baker street.
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