The Racialised ‘Second Existence’ of Class: Class Identification and (De-/Re-)construction across the British South Asian Middle Classes

Abstract

This article maps typologies of class identity for the UK-born South Asian middle classes. Using thematic analysis of interviews with 20 British South Asian professionals, it identifies culturally and socially situated forms of class (dis-)identification. It finds that ‘middle-class’ identity is not uncritically adopted or internalised by socially mobile British South Asians who, on the bases of objective socioeconomic markers, may be classified as such. Beyond existing research which has long established the dual material and symbolic nature of class, and the corresponding ‘fuzziness’ of class subjectivity, for the population of interest this can be attributed in large part to: (i) the rapid upward intergenerational social mobility of South Asian groups which is seen to defy British-specific forms of stratification and class reproduction and (ii) the racialisation of class where the symbolic power and subjective salience of middle-classness is mediated through Whiteness. In establishing this, this article argues for further theoretical and analytical reflection on the racialisation of class taking into account the ethnoracial specificities of culturally diverse ethnic minority populations.