Hierarchical Assemblages of Citizenship and Belonging: The Pedestrian Speech Acts of British Gujarati Indian Walkers

Abstract

The 2018 Windrush generation controversy, made public state-induced hostilities towards African Caribbean citizens of the nation. However, this is not a new phenomenon. The state’s de-humanising treatment of racial and ethnic minority migrant settlers has a much longer history. I make visible this history by exploring the informal walking pastimes of five, married, British Gujarati Indian couples, many of whom, like other South Asian migrants, arrived in England during the 1960s and 1970s. Using the notion of pedestrian speech acts, I explore the relationship between race, urban multiculture, citizenship and belonging. The findings signal how public and state discourses are mobilised by these walkers to repeatedly invoke their citizenship, mainly by ‘Othering’ Eastern European communities, as well as in terms of what I have called hierarchical assemblages of citizenship and belonging, elucidating the dynamic complexities of racial, ethnic, religious, caste, class, gender, and generational unities and tensions.