Curating new ethnicities in a digital era: Women and media work in the British South Asian diaspora

Abstract

This article analyses the unfolding impact of social media platforms on the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender in the UK. Revisiting Stuart Hall's foundational work on ‘new ethnicities’ and building on recent critiques of anti-racist struggles premised on mainstream media visibility and recognition, we explore how British South Asian women are navigating opportunities opened up by the digitalization of media industries. First, we examine how an interlocking set of shifts involving social media, techniques of self-making, and media industry logics has sparked the curation of ethnicities that challenge dominant ideas of Britishness and cultural citizenship. We then show that their success hinges on performing two forms of labour: crafting brand-ready representations that satisfy the media industries’ diversity mandates and, at the same time, subsuming their religious and ethnic identities into a picture of entrepreneurial womanhood that resonates with the logics of popular feminism.