The Central concentration
Figure 4 shows the pattern of concentration of Asians in the study area. Asians are concentrated in the central wards of the largest local authority in the study area, the City of Birmingham. A belt of ward with location quotients of 3 or more extends to the north east, north, east and south east of the city centre. This belt is made up of the 9 wards. Asians thus make up between 42 and 66% of the population of these wards. These are all inner city suburbs of dense terraced neighbourhoods built in the late 19th and early 20th Century, which provided cheap housing for immigrant workers from the Indian sub-continent, who came to work in Birmingham’s engineering factories. Community institutions have been established in these wards: new mosques stand out in the contemporary city landscape. Of course, by 2001 a large proportion of the Asian community will have been born in the United Kingdom. This central concentration is beginning to have political consequences: although Asians have been traditional Labour supporters, they are now launching their own political organizations. Small Heath ward is represented in the City of Birmingham Council by the People’s Justice Party, which supports Asian causes, such as independence for Kashmir (The Economist May 15th 2004, p.32, article entitled “Local elections: Battle of Birmingham).
The middle suburbs
However, substantial Asian communities now live in suburbs further out from the central core to the west and south of the city centre (5 wards). These suburbs contain larger terraced houses, semi-detached and some detached housing, which are attractive to Asian households rising up the social scale.
The outer suburbs
Although these neighbourhoods have location quotients below 1, they nevertheless house small but significant Asian minorities. In Sihill ward in Solihull (the large and prosperous town to the south east of the City of Birmingham) Asians make up 5% of the population; Selly Oak ward south west of the City centre houses an 8% Asian population, many of whom are engaged in serving the large student population of the University of Birmingham with rented accommodation and take away food. This is the suburb where the quintessential Asian dish, the Balti, may have been invented!
The commuting villages and rural fringe
Although Asian representation in these outer wards is low (LQs below 0.1), there are no wards without a number of Asian households present.
This map provides only the start of the story. It would be vital in further study to study the spatial distributions of the individual groups that make up the “Asian” collective group. The distributions of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Other Asians are likely to be rather different. The 2001 Census provides the opportunity to look at groups by religion, country of birth and socioeconomic attributes in combination.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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