Carros para trasporte de sectores y Soporte de sectores para puesto en CF

Of the approximately 148 identified migrants living in the Sheffield area with Muslim names or names originating in South Asia, the GRO records indicate that sixty-one individuals married in the area while there were also eighteen unmarried couples with or without children. There were also a number of couples who married elsewhere and moved to Sheffield. These figures also strongly suggest that, unless South Asian migrants were particularly successful in obtaining marriage partners in the Sheffield area, there were many sojourners who do not appear in the GRO records.608 _However, if we confine our attentions to the GRO records of marriages, this study, in an attempt to situate the Sheffield experience within the national context of marriages between

606 _{Collins, Coloured Minorities in Britain, 169.} 607 _{Bald, Bengali Harlem, 9.}

608 _{At the time of writing, about half the migrants and settlers have been identified by GRO} marriage records. This study excludes Indian students at the University of Sheffield unless they married or had children in the Sheffield area.

natives of Britain and Muslim-named newcomers, has revealed about three thousand native–newcomer marriages in England, Wales and Scotland during the period from 1916 to 1947 (Figure 4.4). While, there are no definitive figures for Britain’s South Asian population during the period (contemporary observers estimated the total for various dates within the period at about seven thousand), the 2901 marriages located in this study suggest that this may have been something of an underestimate.609 _The figures also indicate that migration and settlement of Muslims in Britain, a majority of whom were likely to have been of South Asian origin, was well under way before 1948, the ‘green light’ of the British Nationality Act and the era of mass migration.

It is not possible to determine the occupation (and thus infer the social class) of the grooms from the marriage data so far collected. This would be a priority task for further research into other settlements using this study’s methodology. Nevertheless, the distribution of marriages located by this study confirms existing historiography in the sense that the greatest concentrations lay within the ports of Cardiff, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, London and South Shields. Of significance is the number of ports which hosted immigration and do not currently lay within the historiography, such as the entire area surrounding the rivers Tyne and Wear in North East England. Additionally, the smaller coal ports around Cardiff on the South Wales coast are worthy of much further investigation, as are the coal, iron and steel towns of the Welsh valleys. International working-class immigration has made a significant contribution to the population of South Wales, well beyond the confines of the often cited Bute Town area of Cardiff, more commonly known as Tiger Bay.610

In addition to the newly identified settlement site of Edinburgh, a city with both active docks at Leith and a prestigious international university during the period, notable settlement sites include the ports of Dundee and the inland industrial towns of Scotland’s central belt. Marriage and settlement can also be seen in the north of Scotland including Aberdeen and Inverness. While the occupation of these individuals it is not yet certain, they have the potential to provide documentary evidence for the claims contained within the oral testimony collected by Bashir Maan. From these figures, however, it looks likely that Maan underestimated the frequency of marriage between South Asians and Scots natives.

In England significant clusters of marriages occur in all the coastal ports of the north-east, including Tynemouth, Newcastle and Sunderland and, along with Edinburgh, demonstrate that South Shields is not a migration outlier on the map of Britain’s north-east coast. The port of Hull appears as a significant site of settlement and marriage, as is confirmed by data from the 1939 Register. The clusters of native– newcomer marriages within the inland towns and cities of England also demonstrate that, even within this early period, although Sheffield was one of the largest sites of immigration and settlement, it was not alone in hosting non-white newcomers. Indeed, through the GRO data Birmingham presents itself as a major site of early

609 _{Visram, AsiansinBritain, 224.}

610 _{The classic study of the district, and the source used by many British immigration} histories, is Kenneth Little’s, NegroesinBritain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society

inland migration, as does Manchester, although the latter’s figures will be skewed by the presence of Muslim seafarers arriving at Salford docks via the deep water Manchester Ship Canal. Nottingham presents itself as a nascent site of inland immigration and settlement in this data, as does Coventry, although the great post- war centres of ‘New Commonwealth’ immigration, such as Bradford and Leicester, had yet to establish themselves.

4.8 Conclusion

This section has argued that native wives and other elements of the men’s heterogeneous social networks played a crucial role in the successful sojourning, settlement and acculturation of South Asian men arriving in Britain in search of work. We have also examined the elements of the cultural and political context into which the newcomers arrived. Within this we have looked at two key strands: the anxious and sometimes authoritarian response of many elements of Britain’s cultural and political elites to the perceived ‘racial’ threat to the nation posed by so-called miscegenation; and the possible impact of mass-cultural influences such as the trend for Orientalist romances in popular fiction and cinema. We have also explored the ways in which husbands and wives co-operated as business partners, with wives acting as advocates for, and advisors to, their husbands in official matters as well as those of everyday life. We have also examined the flexible and syncretic responses to difference on both sides of what is often assumed to be a deep cultural divide between two groups of people – one South Asian, one working-class – both holding inward- looking and conservative attitudes to life, culture, tradition and change. The evidence presented here, demonstrates that this analysis is far from the reality of the situation during much of the period. The following section will, in concluding this thesis, develop on a number of these cultural strands to explain why the picture presented here is such a contrast to that of much of our current, conflict-based, historiography.

Section 5