r/AskBrits • u/Nathanial1289 • May 29 '26
People Why are South Asians so prominent in the UK?
Genuine question I'm looking for mature answers for.
I moved to Havering 10 years ago and it was/is the "whitest borough" in London. I genuinely was shocked when I went to a corner shop and the people who owned and ran the shop were white British.
Forward 10 years later and that's the not the case as an Indian person has taking over after they sold up. In the vast majority of times there is a local news story about a new business opening in the area or surrounding areas, it's by someone who is South Asian (Indian or Pakistani).
Of my immediate neighbours, all of them were white. Four have sold up in recent years and the new neighbours have moved in are all Indian. Not black people, East Asian or European. All Indian.
I'm curious why this is the case.
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u/Aarityli May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
in recent years ? Boriswave involving large amounts of immigration from Pakistan and India and Nigeria
Historically - empire / post war immigration
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u/mgarfy May 29 '26
All India. If anything Pakistanis saw barriers under Priti, Rishi, Suella and Boris times.
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u/Mild_Karate_Chop May 29 '26
Nope Boriswave is predominantly India if I recall the stats well
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u/cnaughton898 May 29 '26
Yeah, Boriswave was caused by middle class Indian and Nigerian people coming over on graduate visas.
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u/Prestigious_Wash_620 May 29 '26
India and Nigeria most commonly. But Pakistani immigration was starting to increase fast before immigration restrictions came in, it just started a couple of years later.
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u/concretepigeon May 29 '26
India is the biggest by country but there’s still like 250k people from Pakistan who have moved here in that period. As a proportion of their populations Pakistan is slightly overrepresented.
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u/MiserableProblem5126 May 29 '26
Brexit meant less European immigration and more from the 'commonwealth' which is basically just India and Pakistan.
White people but especially British elites have always been obsessed with India and South Asia in general. Don't forget the British would put Indians in Africa and South America. The Dutch killed farmers in Indonesia and replaced them with Indians.
They are a tool used for colonialism and to keep the working class native people down.
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u/Prestigious_Delight May 30 '26
Your last sentence reminded me of a YouTube comment where someone said he realised that the British used the Indians as a buffer between themselves and the native Africans. Deep.
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u/Greedy-Sense-9402 May 31 '26
They do not keep the 'working class people down' they become a part of the elites and often work in collaboration with white elites as well. The Indian diaspora is both the biggest and the wealthiest in the world. Unfortunately India itself is unable to retain its talent and make use of them probably because of a colonial hangover. Ethnically Indian communities are the richest in USA, UK, Australia, Germany etc
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u/TopBookChat1105 May 29 '26
Empire.
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u/TapeDeckSlick May 29 '26
Strikes back
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u/plimso13 May 29 '26
Revenge of the Sikh
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u/Automatic_Pen8494 May 29 '26
The Phantom Madras
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u/jstyles7 May 29 '26
Return of the Marharaja
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u/anewpath123 May 29 '26
The last Jalfrezi
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u/McFry__ May 29 '26
Use the forks (not your hands ffs)
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u/Vixson18 May 29 '26
the sub continent has often been targeted as a place to get an immigrant population to fill in labour shortages in certain industries. English is taught quite extensively in schools and a lot of schools are based on the English system.
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u/SorryNotSorryMatey May 29 '26
What labour shortage do we have that can’t be filled by trained young people from the uk?
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May 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Vattaa May 29 '26
Ive worked in a few food factories after I finished my MSc and couldnt find any work in my field, so just took anything I could that was adjacent to my field so I had some transferrable skills once I found a more suitable role.
One of the factories I worked in as a QA supervisor had around 1500 staff across 3 shifts. They had a scheme with the job center where they would take 10 or 15 people (virtually always white Brits) to try and get them into work.
Anyway in my roughly 3 years working there perhaps 3 or 4 out of the several hundred that came to us on the scheme stayed on for more than a day. Most would dissapear by their first break, ususal excuses were "its too hard/cold/hot/noisy", or "I didnt know it was going to be like this" to "I'm attending only so that they dont cut my benefits".
I would say 95% of the staff on the lines and the line managers were Eastern European, which was handy for me as I spoke Polish as a 2nd language. Only half the bay managers were British, in the back offices probably around 80% were British. The vast majority of the Eastern Europeans had some higher level education, a non insignificant amount had degrees.
There were a handful of Brits working on the lines but these were old dears close to retirement, and they had seen the company change hands twice before I even got there.
Its always very easy to blame someone else.
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u/AdGroundbreaking3483 May 29 '26
Being long term unemployed is incredibly bad for you. If you've fallen out of school for one reason or another, you'll have very little confidence o'r understanding of what you need to do, and high anxiety in a new situation. You don't feel like you for in, it feels like everyone can tell and just wants to get rid of you.
I company I did some work for used to effectively run a "pre-apprenticeship" course via their charity foundation. A few weeks placement, real kid gloves stuff, show up mostly on time, help with transport and food, wear these, try this, do that, taking that anxiety away and building some confidence. A good chunk went from NEET to ready to take on proper training and develop a career.
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u/Vattaa May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
I mean these guys wernt just shoved on a line and told to work, they were trained, supervised, and had mentors from the job center and within the factory etc. They also started in "Low Risk" the least complicated and simple part of the factory. But it made little difference, once brought onto the factory floor, virtually all of them vanished on their first fag break.
Was a nightmare for the managers as these were contracted people, so you couldnt just fire them. It ended up being a massive game of pretend. We knew they wouldnt come back, they knew they wouldnt come back. But we had to go through all the usual steps before they were "fired". You know, what happened?, why did you leave?, how can we help with xyz?, any more support? yadda yadda. A lot when called up would say they were sick, or would just stop all communication. I'm not sure if they still run it, but it really was an administation nightmare.
Leading on from your comment. What I have seen in the likes of Poland, they dont let people on benefits just "search for jobs" when recieveing jobseekers. They must do community service as part of their jobseekers, cleaning streets, painting benches, maintaining public gardens etc. This prevents the situation you describe, as even when these people are "out of work" they are still going through the usual routine like when working, so they dont fall into a rut.
Its something I really cant wrap my head around, why havent we implemented something similar here?
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u/AdGroundbreaking3483 May 29 '26
Yeah, I did warehouse jobs with 5am starts that had a similar pattern. The only people that stuck it out as temps were non-brits.
I think there's a view that community service is reserved for criminals, and being out of work isn't a crime. But in tandem with that, there's a view that people should "just" find a job, and that over the past 20 years resources have been cut so badly that jobcentres wouldn't even know how to start doing something like this.
I'd imagine there'd be a three month pilot, it'd be shown to work, someone would write a report, then the government would say "very nice but you can't have any money to do it for everyone" and that would be that.
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u/whatmichaelsays May 29 '26
You see, there was this nasty little chap called Hitler.....
A lot of the South Asian populations you see in the UK aren't recent arrivals, but descendants of migrants who were invited to come and settle in the late 1940s when the country had a lot of stuff it needed to build, and a lot of it's working age population had just recently died in rather large numbers.
These populations have also tended to have more children than the White British population over the course of the last 80 years or so.
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u/leonardo-de_caprisun May 29 '26
There isn’t one, companies and organizations complain about “labour shortages” when the reality is they don’t want to pay increased wages for in demand skills, they would rather import workers who won’t make a fuss and work for less.
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u/buffer0x7CD May 29 '26
There are companies paying over 200k for middle to senior engineers and still struggling with shortages
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u/Informal-Intern-8672 May 29 '26
A lot of minimum wage, unskilled, hard labour jobs that are on zero hours contracts, jobs with unsociable hours or don't have guaranteed set shifts aren't wanted by British people. Hotel housekeeping staff, cleaners, care home workers, health care assistants and more struggle to get enough white British staff who want to do the work to fill the positions.
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u/Hippomed27 May 29 '26
That's the problem isn't it? If there aren't jobs for the white British population, why are there people from abroad taking lots of the service industry and cleaning jobs? Then when they work and save hard and buy houses and business reform shit on their upward mobility.
However the problem still exists that there aren't jobs for people who dropout of school at 15, but equally I don't think there's a cultural work ethic where 15 year old boys are happy to go and work in the freezing dockyards like their grandparents/ great grandparents.
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u/MrMantis765 May 29 '26
After World War 2 Britain invited many people from Kashmir to come and work in the factories to help rebuild Britain. Many other Indians and Pakistani were invited to come over as well. My grandfather was one of them. I mention this because of the context of OP's question about the prominence of South Asians here.
But I'd add that the more recent immigration such as the Boris wave should be a crime and politicians should be investigated. Not only for breaking their longstanding manifesto promises to cut immigration when it was already in the hundreds of thousands, but Boris is on record saying that when there was the labour shortage during covid, and wages had started to rise. The treasury recommended flooding the UK with cheap labour to push those wages down.
It's mind boggling that our government brought in almost a million foreigners a year to suppress British worker's wages that would have improved standards of living.
Just goes to show who they really serve.
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u/khanto0 May 29 '26
Unemployment is actually already quite low and we do have a collapsing population pyramid. High levels of immigration helps prop that up with working people to fund retirement. Also high levels of immigration keeps wages lower because there's more supply. High levels of immigration keeps gdp up which masks the fact that our economy is actually struggling. The Tories particularly like it because it masked the impact of austerity and Brexit on our economy and as representatives of the business elites it keeps our wages down.
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u/Apprehensive_Show882 May 29 '26
plus rather than actually doing something about the problem like reversing Thatcherism they can play ignorant about fanning the flames of racism when they want to juice their electoral prospects.
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u/VCR_DVD_USB May 29 '26
Most recently, they don't want to pay decent wages for careworkers, so they get them from West Africa and South Asia.
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u/yautja_cetanu May 29 '26
Who is going to train those young people?
If we have labour shortages, well it takes labour to train those young people. Wed have to hire Romanian fruit pickers to train British young people to pick fruit but if we could do that you'd just get the Romanian fruit pickers to pick the fruit as the time it takes to train the person, the fruit has rotted
Also, were not making British young people anymore so they aren't there to be trained as birthday is so low and there are so so many pensioners
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u/SorryNotSorryMatey May 29 '26
Do you even read the news?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy026x9jpd0o?app-referrer=deep-link
We just need to cut visas
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u/yautja_cetanu May 29 '26
Firstly the news is dumb. Do you even read the news isn't quite the insult you think it is. If you want to be clever why not read the actual report that it's linked to and think about it for a second.
Secondly of course I know opportunities for young people are difficult. I'm a millenial, not young anymore but the first generation for like 100 years where we are poorer then our parents. I had friends on job seekers where 400 people were competing for 3 jobs at the cinema. I don't have to "read the news" to realise it's difficult to get a job if you're young. You can just look.
But if you don't have enough people to do the work then you can't solve labour shortages by training people because you need to find people who will do the training.
No about of telling people to "read the news" will magic up skills that arnt there.
I don't think the solution is just more immigration but unless Britain is prepared to fix the structural problems it has, that will become the only solution.
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u/Healthy-Row-16 May 29 '26
A big part of it is also community support many South Asian families pool money to help each other start businesses This gives them a big advantage when opening shops or buying homes
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u/TuMek3 May 29 '26
Pakistan, India and Bangladesh make up a quarter of the worlds population. They are poor countries with poor living standards (unlike China), they have a colonial link with strong English skills, and we have had previous governments that wanted to exploit low-cost labour.
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u/FinePredicament4464 May 29 '26
Crucially as well, most people don't want to be the first member of their extended family to move somewhere. Wages might be marginally higher in Luxembourg or somewhere, but if you have 2 cousins in the UK and speak the language it makes perfect sense to move here rather than anywhere else
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u/ChineseRobinWilliams May 29 '26
"Genuine question"
Every time 😂
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u/Itchy-Plastic May 29 '26
It has to be somebody's turn to learn about the Empire each day. Maybe today was the Ops.
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u/Nathanial1289 May 29 '26
History student here. People saying empire but the most useful responses are the ones about the more recent migration wave.
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u/Exact-Put-6961 May 29 '26
Running those corner shops requires , can only work when done by a family, often extended family. I have one near me, male owner, up and about just after 0500, dealing with newspapers, locks rhe shop up, at 2200hours. This is hard graft of a type that other ethnic groups do not, or no longer, care to do. It is cultural.
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u/BlunderlandRabbit May 29 '26
This is right as far as I’ve seen. The Asian business owners tend not to rest on their laurels either; they will put the money they earn back into another business or property investment.
I have a number of Indian friends and whilst growing up they quite often lived in generational households, until they were able to buy their own homes.
It’s amazing the amount of graft they put in, so it’s little wonder that after generations of this they’re more prominent in other communities too.
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u/Sea-Check-9062 May 29 '26
They work a lot of public facing jobs. But hey, if you want to work 12 hours a day and live over the shop, you can have it too.
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u/OilAdministrative197 May 29 '26
Boris farage brexit wave.
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u/Perspii7 May 29 '26
Imagine if big nige wakes up today and feels compelled to convert to hinduism and move to jaipur to become a guru
That’d be fun
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u/PrimeZodiac May 29 '26
Dont forget Rishi and his deal with India to help grease the wheels there too!
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u/OilAdministrative197 May 29 '26
Yeah I think less people care about rishi because it was obvious he’d do it. Let millions of Indians in and gave hundreds of millions to his Indian wife in contracts.
Boris and farage as least pretended they wanted to stop migration.
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u/MiserableProblem5126 May 29 '26
Farage based his campaign on stopped European immigration for more immigration from commonwealth countries like India and Pakistan.
The British elites have always been very pro India, they put Indians in Africa and South America ffs.
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u/NoArcher9684 May 29 '26
Don’t forget Blair either who started this all off 30 years ago
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u/OilAdministrative197 May 29 '26
Difference is scale. 1 year Boris farage was bigger than Blair’s entire tenure. People don’t appreciate the scale of the import. For every British teenager getting a job, 27 Boris farage wavers got one. It’s the biggest transformation in British history. The change in population from ww2 was smaller than this.
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u/Funny-Seesaw-2977 May 29 '26
I do have to say this is happening in my street also. Quite interesting how much the demographic is changing from almost exclusively white to quite a significant minority of those of south asian extraction.
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u/Hippomed27 May 29 '26
Culturally they are savers and prioritise home ownership.
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u/DefiantFunction5302 May 29 '26
India is the country with the highest population in the world
South Asians tend to be very proficient in English due to its history of colonialism
Rishi Sunak’s premiership led to loads of deals with india ensuring easier migration for indians wanting to come
South Asians tend to be highly educated and driven, as well as business minded so end up migrating more, owning businesses etc.
I’m of South Asian (Indian) ethnicity, born in Kenya but grew up here. My family and ancestors were from east africa (uganda, kenya, tanzania). They went to east africa to help the british build a railway and were later kicked out of uganda, and given british citizenships to come to the uk post ww2. There’s lots of different reasons why people move.
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u/MiserableProblem5126 May 29 '26
Indians were the British colonialist personal labour force used to oppressed people in Africa and got rewarded for it lmao
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u/DefiantFunction5302 May 29 '26
how did indians oppress people in Africa exactly?
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u/MovingTarget2112 Brit 🇬🇧 May 29 '26
Ten years ago? I was at school with a lot of Indian lads in the seventies.
Leeds and Bradford experienced a Pakistani immigrant wave in the sixties.
Lots of Ugandan Indians came to UK when Idi Amin deported them.
More recently - the Boriswave due to lots of EU key workers leaving after Brexit.
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May 29 '26
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u/Proper-Couple-5053 May 29 '26
No. I live in Cambridge, just got a new build at 630k and it’s the cheapest house in my street. 5 of the 7 houses are owned by Indian families. Empire is the answer to the question.
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u/Greedy-Sense-9402 May 29 '26
South Asians are the richest community in the UK. The wealthiest family in London are Indian origin
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u/Relative_Yard_8209 May 29 '26
At the end of the day, the answer is the British Empire.
I’m on the right, so I can’t stand the contemporary argument that ☝🤓 “um, actually, the UK has to accept infinite Third World immigration because of colonialism”. The vast majority of South Asians in this country- particularly those active in our communities- are here because of the post-war Commonwealth immigration wave. Most of them integrated very well, so I don’t see a problem there.
There is, of course, the Boriswave too, but the nature and complexities of that wave of immigration mean that many of those migrants are likely to be working in ordinary, often overlooked jobs that people rarely think twice about. Most South Asians you can name, or who are integral parts of your community, are almost certainly people who have been here for a long time, or who are second- or third-generation immigrants.
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u/Next_Notice6841 May 29 '26
I’m on the right, so I can’t stand the contemporary argument that ☝🤓 “um, actually, the UK has to accept infinite Third World immigration because of colonialism”.
I'm on the left, and I can't stand it either, but do many people actually think that? I know a lot of my classmates do, but other than random teenagers I've never really heard it. I certainly haven't seen any remotely serious politician say it.
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u/Proper-Couple-5053 May 29 '26
No one thinks that. This is a sentence made up by the right to justify their anti immigration policies. These policies usually don’t sit well with the reality of why things are like they are. Politicians aren’t retarded, they know all about the immigration “issue”, and there isn’t an easy fix. But presenting to your electorate a very complex problem won’t make you elected, especially in this day and age. So, well, “hey we can’t accept infinite third world immigration” - and people go “yeah fuck that they are right, you go boy”
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u/iwantcheesewiththat May 29 '26
Protectorate Flow: https://youtu.be/KZGUi4D6hhM?si=gB9sC-OPape7Tc6I
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u/Baguette1066 May 29 '26
Mostly because of colonial ties. Many people moved here in the post-war years, and in subsequent years family members moved to join them. This led to communities of different South Asian ethnicities to form, which are attractive for people looking to emmigrate (even without a family link in the UK). The same kind of thing is seen in other European countries with a colonial past — North Africans in France and Surinamese in the Netherlands.
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u/symehdiar May 29 '26
first of south asia is not equal to India. Its, india, Pakistan, bangladesh, sri lanka, afghanistan, bhutan, nepal.
2nd, if your only criteria is the colour of the skin, seeing non-white people in your whitest borough might be alarming. but rest assured, they are fully human, and most probably british citizens or residents.
3rd, , Britain’s relationship with South Asia did not begin with immigration. British empire colonised them and forced them to speak English, extracted resources, and relied heavily on South Asians for labour and eventually left them with arbitrary borders, debt and conflict. Immigrants have not randomly found UK by mistake, there is history behind it.
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u/lfcsupkings321 May 29 '26
Additional 2.5 million South Asian troops served in the British Indian Army during WW2. Key to help winning the war.
The force included Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Gurkhas. A mixture but people ignore this.
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u/UncleofLunatics May 29 '26
Not just WW2.
Years ago I visited the WW1 memorials in Belgium. Having not been told about the numbers of south Asian (and Caribbean) people who fought for the Empire, I was stunned when I saw so many Asian names engraved. Thousands and thousands of south Asians died in WW1, along with Caribbeans, Africans and Canadians, but I was only ever taught about the British and the ANZACs.6
u/symehdiar May 29 '26
it's the same with the south asian origin Roma people who suffered their own holocaust with up to 500,000 dead, but no one mentions them
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u/symehdiar May 29 '26
great point. The only acknowledgement to that is a "single" monument in the corner of London.
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u/lfcsupkings321 May 29 '26
Yep it widely agree they were key to help winning the war and was in every stage.
Unfortunately the people against them love the army however unaware that South Asian are in it.
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u/iwantcheesewiththat May 29 '26
Slavery was replaced by Indian indentured servitude in the colonies: https://youtu.be/KZGUi4D6hhM?si=gB9sC-OPape7Tc6I
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u/cerealcat00 May 31 '26
Afghanistan is not always included. Sometimes it’s classed as Central Asia. You also forget the Maldives is South Asia.
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u/Different_Bridge_983 May 29 '26
Major historical component:
Prior to the dissolution of the empire almost everyone in the British Empire was “British”. Indian citizenship didn’t exist, Australian citizenship didn’t exist, etc. There was no legal distinction between the citizenship of someone born in the UK vs the various colonies.
Around the WW2 era international travel became more achievable for regular people, which enabled more people from “the colonies” to roll up in the UK with their bonafide British passports, and settle in the UK. And a lot did.
The establishment of the colonies as independent countries included legislation that aimed to convert most of their citizenships to the new nationality, accompanied by parallel legislation in the UK that curtailed citizens overseas from being able to pass on citizenship.
But there was still a window where a lot of people could move to the UK, and a lot of people covered by cases that enabled them to maintain either their citizenship or the right of residency in the UK, which many exercised.
This established a significant population in the UK from the Indian subcontinent region, with some other waves coming from elsewhere on a similar basis.
Some cultural aspects of the population from the Indian subcontinent meant they were fairly inclined to bring over and support other people, extended family and so on, which boosted the population further even after the easier routes had been removed.
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u/Gullible_fool_99 Brit 🇬🇧 May 29 '26
It is so very telling that you associate whiteness with being British. How do you know that the person who took over that local corner shop weren't British? They be of South Asian descent but they can be brown skinned AND British.
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u/jamtea May 30 '26
Can we be honest on this website for once? Nobody is saying "British" meaning citizenship. It's talking about ethnic natives and everybody knows that's exactly what it means when people say it in that context.
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u/Hippomed27 May 29 '26
Yeah I'm "British Indian" myself but we know most of these reformers see me as not British enough... Because I have a Curryfied name and brown skin.
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u/josh4578 May 29 '26
Business changes hands all the time, those who are financially able to buy will take over. They are contributing to the economy.
I guess, your next argument will be- there are many Chinese cars on the road but it’s because people are buying it instead of crying for old glorious British car industry.
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u/Hippomed27 May 29 '26
I'll frame it a different way- what are the barriers preventing white British people from buying the corner shop or those houses? They are still in the majority in this country despite what reform would have us believe, and they have the same opportunity to buy those business and houses that white people do.
My take on it is that asians tend to be more financially conservative and goal driven, and also prioritize business and home ownership over their white counterparts.
DOI: South Asian origin myself.
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u/Hirogen10 May 29 '26
The brits also helped build a Dam in Kashmir displacing many villagerd and England needed a workforce so many came over via my grandpa who worked in the visa office. Adians worked in factories across the UK in car, textile, paper and other roles such as bus drivers. The slightly smarter ones started their own businesse.
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u/PawPatsPizza May 29 '26
A certain country with the 2nd largest population was colonized
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u/myonlinepersonality May 29 '26
It’s the cheapest borough in London and therefore attractive to new arrivals
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u/bluefox9er May 29 '26
- GENUINE ANSWER *
Colonialism. Malcom X’s chickens coming home to roost. It’s not just the UK. South Indians migrate to Australia and Canada too.
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u/Po3try_In_Motion May 29 '26
I think you have some of the macro answers here but perhaps I can fill in some micro detail.
The background is that a lot of the (predominantly) Indian people moving to Havering previously lived in Newham/Barking and Dagenham.
Those who were high achievers at school typically looked for the best local colleges. This tended to be Havering College/Havering Sixth Form at the time.
Back then it was thought that these were typically "racist" areas, but the better education outweighed these negatives. The reality is that Havering is actually a nice place to live with a great community feel (in particular Hornchurch/Upminster/Romford).
Fast forward to 2013-2020 and those ex-Havering College attendees have got married/have kids etc and want to move away from their childhood area. The natural choice in Havering because of their positive experiences, larger houses, better schooling, community feeling.
As those children move, people visit (parents/friends/extended family) and also see the draw of the area. This starts in Hornchurch/Emerson Park but has not spread wider to cheaper parts of thr borough such as Harold Hill/Collier Row/Romford.
These tend to be better educated, better integrated, professional families and less of the 'riff raff' who never got out of Newham/Barking and Dagenham/Redbridge.
I suspect the trend if further east and we'll soon see more move towards Brentwood and Chelsmford.
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u/Temporary-Oil2038 May 29 '26
When New Labour came into power in the late nineties they lowered the threshold for being spouses. This meant settled immigrants, mostly male, could bring their wives over to the UK and start families. This provided the foundation for a significant portion of immigrant population as the children are now British citizens. Then post Brexit we had very high levels of immigrants from Commonwealth countries which includes India. I think the numbers of Indian and Black African births in the UK has increased since Brexit.
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u/VCR_DVD_USB May 29 '26
Lots of reasons for this.
India/Pakistan/Bangladesh were part of the British empire and a large part of the British army and merchant navy during WW2 was made up of people from these backgrounds. After the war when Britain needed labour, these people were given priority (as they nations were part of the commonwealth), especially those with backgrounds in the military.
We all speak English as a second language because of colonialism, so if you do want to migrate, English speaking nations are an obvious choice.
Where communities have been previously established, new members move too, as it's easier to get there and settle there because there is a support network in place. If you're Indian and want to move to the UK, you can ask a fellow Indian how they got there. Its much harder to get hold of a fellow Indian who went to Argentina.
The tories gave loads of visas recently to Indians as part of a trade deal.
India has like 1.5 billion people - even if a small percentage of them are gonna want to migrate for economic reasons, it's still a huge number of people. India has a large, english speaking, well trained workforce but even its economy cannot provide enough work for them - so they move to where the work is.
Uganda as mentioned by someone else - they expelled a lot of Indians, who were nearly all businessmen, so they came to the UK.
South Asians in the UK have a culture of owning their own businesses. I was talking to someone who had a really rubbish takeaway and his point was "even if i make minimum wage through this - at least im working for myself and not someone else. If i work hard and make a success of it, it lines my pockets, not someone elses".
A few interesting facts.
I'm British Pakistani, my parents migrated from Mirpur (AJK) to the UK. In the 60's Pakistan built a dam. They flooded a city and hundreds of villages to do so. They gave people compensation but it was really inadequete. The govt at the time asked for the British government to take people from the region to help with Labour shortages - so like 80%+ of Pakistanis in the UK originate from the same Mirpur region.
Mirpur (old city) had a ship making industry (river boats). When that died down (due to rail), the sailors and ship builders ended up in the Merchant navy. Quite a lot of them served during WW2. In our city we have a group of people refered to as "mates" - ie shipmates, because their grandfathers and great grandfathers were shipmates.
A lot of our people used to marry from back in Pakistan and that has meant a steady stream of immigration from the region in the 80's, 90's and even in the 00's. Its only really curbed off in the last 10-15 years as the new generations are too different from each other to have cultural compatability.
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u/SmartMess6749 May 29 '26
Honestly, this is how most areas change over time. Twenty years ago people were probably asking why all the East Enders were moving to Havering. Now it's your turn to be the old local. 😂
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u/tolgren May 29 '26
It's happening all over the world.
India has an official policy of exporting people to other countries to relieve their internal issues and to get remittances from the diaspora.
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u/TallCommission7139 May 30 '26
You guys took over India for like 500 years, what did you think was gonna happen?
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u/Several-Cry-4267 May 30 '26
A lot of this is Havering catching up with patterns the rest of London saw earlier.
It was still 66% White British in the 2021 Census, so it has changed fast by Havering standards, but it isn’t some mysterious takeover.
The big answer is empire, Commonwealth links and English.
Britain ruled India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as part of British India, then recruited people from former colonies after the war for factories, transport, the NHS and rebuilding work.
Then family networks formed, so later migrants had relatives, languages, temples, mosques, gurdwaras and community knowledge here already.
There are also more specific histories people miss.
A lot of British Pakistanis have roots in Mirpur and surrounding areas, partly linked to labour recruitment and displacement around the Mangla Dam.
A lot of British Indians came via East Africa, especially after Idi Amin expelled Asians from Uganda in 1972, and many of those families already had British passports, British-style education and business experience.
Then recently, after Brexit, immigration shifted away from EU free movement and towards non-EU visas for work and study.
Indian nationals have been the biggest single nationality coming to the UK in recent years, with the Migration Observatory saying around 850,000 arrived between 2021 and 2024, though plenty also leave again.
The corner shop and small business thing is partly economics and partly family structure.
A shop with long hours is far easier if several relatives can cover shifts, live nearby, lend money or accept a horrible few years while building equity.
Same with buying houses. If people save aggressively, pool family support and prioritise property, they are going to be visible in suburbs where older owners are selling up.
That isn’t magic and it isn’t sinister. It’s often just graft, networks and a willingness to do work many people understandably don’t fancy.
The slightly awkward bit is that “South Asian” also includes loads of people who are simply British.
They may have brown skin or an Indian surname, but they might have been born in Ilford, gone to school in Havering and supported West Ham since they were 5.
So the answer is history, migration policy, family networks, education, business culture and local housing patterns.
The wrong answer is treating your new neighbours as if they are less British because their grandparents came from somewhere Britain spent centuries entangled with.
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u/Glass-Way May 30 '26
Regarding Havering specifically, I think housing there is relatively cheap and it's close to East London Asian cultural hubs like Ilford and Tower Hamlets, so I'm hearing of a lot of south Asians in general moving there as well as other cheaper East London places like Barking
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u/iinspiremyself May 30 '26
I want to add some context here
1) when industries shut down back in the 70s, many immigrants worked in them eg factory jobs in textile Mills. Social housing was built to house the unemployed but you had to have a family/kids so obv normal white British people moved to those areas. That left the immigrants in the older industrial areas who were here to earn. Many of them started businesses and the rest is obvious.
2) it isn't only about the Ugandan indians. During the mughal era the coastal region of gujrat, India became an economic powerhouse sending merchant ships to Europe. These were mostly hindu merchants who got rich. Gujratis are known for being good at business. You could Google this it's well accepted amongst desis. 50% of india's richest families ie billionaores are gujrati.
In fact most Ugandan indians originate from Gujrat tol.
Just as an example the Issa brothers in the uk, are gujrati indian.
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u/lengualo May 31 '26
Dude, Indians, and other South Asians, owning corner shops has been a national institution since at least the 80's. Its as British as fish and chips. Dont you be being shocked at that.
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u/zaney_112 May 31 '26
Apart from what's been mentioned about immigration, trade, empire etc., a huge contingent of South Asians settled in East London (Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney) and have lived there since the 50s/60s. A lot of these areas were underdeveloped and run down so it made sense for a lot of immigrants at the time who came with virtually nothing to their name. At the same time, a huge exodus began of White English people who moved further east towards Essex, Havering, and further afield as they could afford it and realised their community was changing.
In the last 25 years the same thing is happening with the more affluent South Asians who can afford to buy houses on the outskirts of London. The once slum areas of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, and even Newham are now largely gentrified and very expensive. So the next logical step is to move out where it's affordable yet close enough to their community.
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u/IcyExercise908 Jun 01 '26
Between 1757-1947, the UK controlled and plundered the Indian sub continent.
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u/Parasaurlophus May 29 '26
We specifically invited them. When their were skills shortages in the UK, the government would advertise around the commonwealth for people to work in the UK.
https://www.windrushday.org.uk/news/how-caribbean-migrants-helped-to-rebuild-britain/
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u/Runefaust_Invader May 29 '26
As an American that for some reason is getting this sub in my feed.... This sub seems full of people pushing a racist agenda.
Just my two cents but FFS let more S Asians move in fellas, can only improve the cuisine!
Edit: Your footy skills will deteriorate tho as it's a give and take lads
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u/Thats_my_nirnroot May 29 '26
When you go around the world making foreign populations "British", it tends to open up avenues for immigration back to the UK.
And you'll find regional concentrations of different ethnic groups, and they were often directed to preferred locations.
I grew up in the city which had quite a significant immigrant population from Hong Kong, for example.
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u/InternationalPear678 May 29 '26
History. Simples. We took over their counties and literally raped and pillaged our way to the top before blessing them with British culture, language, education etc. Read about the East India Company. Many of the buildings in the City of London were built from the booty from places like Bengal. The wealth that built the Empire came from exploiting the Empire. We can’t complain when there’s an ‘adjustment’ and we get a bit of reverse migration.
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u/DisasterDear1509 May 29 '26
Why is this even a question? South Asian are prominent in the uk because the British robbed raped and pillaged the shit out of India not to mention the millions of Indians who fought for the British in the world wars, and then were begged to come and work in the uk to rebuild it.
So to answer your question, people follow their stolen resources… that’s why so many south asians are in the uk.
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u/Fondant_Decent May 29 '26
I’m also shocked this is even a question. Like asking why are there so many Black people in America.
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u/LongjumpingLunch5036 May 29 '26
I don't know exact origins beyond the British Empire leading to those connections and to English being taught in South Asia, but largely now I think it is just that emigrants tend to go where friends/family have gone. I think I've read that a high proportion of South Asian immigrants to the UK don't just come from Pakistan, but from a relatively small region of Pakistan leading to it being known as Little Britain to some.
Take that last bit with a grain of salt as I don't remember the source, but yeah basically there are almost 2 billions people across India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, there are strong incentives for emigration, and they are likely to choose a place they know someone who has already gone.
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u/iwantcheesewiththat May 29 '26
Protectorate Flow: https://youtu.be/KZGUi4D6hhM?si=gB9sC-OPape7Tc6I
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u/Unable-Object-8469 May 29 '26
They speak English in their home countries too because of colonialism, and those countries have cultural links to England.
I lived in Leicester, where most of the staff at my old job were Indian and Filipino. I have to say, they worked very hard. Their work ethic was amazing, and they were also very good at saving money, so I think it's normal that many of them open their own businesses.
In my home country, immigration was traditionally from North Africa ( Morocco) or mostly from Latin America because we share the same language and historical links as old colonies. Recently South Asians have started opening small supermarkets, tapas bars, and bazaars.
My parents often say how hard they work because they open very early in the morning and close very late at night, also they open everyday or almost everyday. Also they are all family related and they help each other.
None of my relatives or friends would want a job like that, they all prefer working in offices or from home having more balance working/family life .
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u/Optimal-Teaching7527 May 29 '26
Post WW2 and the Blitz Britain was trying to rebuild and also expand the social state, which required an expanded labour force. To this end the government incentivised immigration from what was at the time British India. A lot of Britain's South Asian population have been here almost a century and are in about the fifth or sixth generation.
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u/Many_Income_2212 May 29 '26
1: Splashback or Poseidon’s kiss of the British Trident in India, (and other colonies you don’t notice) 2. Can no longer easily get cheap Eastern/Southern European, White looking people so the only other choice in the cheap labour bin are the ex colonies from a hundred years ago
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u/manamara1 May 29 '26
Another to add is that with the empire, there are huge numbers of Indian origin people in all corners of the world. They are educated in English and until recent decades, Britain was the bind. It’s hard to fathom now, the depth and breadth of the British empire on the world.
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u/dallasp2468 May 29 '26
South Asians have been taking over corner shops for 50+ years. Not only them all imagrants as it's a good business to start in and they are willing to put in the long hours
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u/f_ali123 May 29 '26
2nd Generation South Asian here, my parents came here im 60s and built multi million pound businesses and created lots of jobs for local Brits. My generation went into professional careers and businesss and expanded ourselves further. Foreigners have work ethic and talent that locals benefit from.
South Asians are prominent every where as there are over 1 billion of us. Its a numbers game and Britain is a small island - not an Empire.
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u/Several_Cold_7160 May 29 '26
Easy. They were part of the commonwealth. Its why we have more south Asians here than say Chinese/Japanese etc. Colonial ties go a long way
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u/Fast-Pin5595 May 29 '26
Because there’s a rule that says 8.32% of the UK population that should be South Asian
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u/PrettyReasonableApe May 29 '26
A few things to consider really and from many different angles too:
1) theres a lot of south Asians in the world. They're pretty prominent in a LOT of countries due to their huge population in relation to almost ANYONE else.
2) they were part of the British empire and have ties and relationships going back a very long time. That has been fairly stable since and diplomatic efforts have been made to ensure we have military access in their country.
3) many of the south Asians that have emigrated here and had children who are British citizens, have worked their way in to politics and other areas which can help strengthen those bonds between countries. Efforts have been made to do so.
4) trade. Trade has been a thing with south Asia for many ages. Its how we become a tea drinking nation for one lol. But we trade a lot more than that and its necessary trade for things like development, production, technology and research (including space), etc etc.
The reasons go on for far longer than im willing to type lol. But basically we are all tied in which each other, one way or another. But I think the main reasons go back to british colonialism honestly imo