Punjabi Migration to the Black Country: A Photographic Journey through History, Cultures and Digital Technology

Abstract

Indian migrant workers have been present in the United Kingdom’s county of the West Midlands since the 1930s. Initially, they were mostly men. However, by the 1960s, many of them had married Indian women, which meant that, over time, more families migrated to the region. They found work in the manufacturing, textile and service sectors across an area known as the Black Country, consisting of the Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. While they worked hard to make a living, not everyone was pleased with their arrival. The Indian migrants gradually became subject to racial abuse and discrimination, largely fueled by the two infamous politicians, Enoch Powell, who was MP for the city of Wolverhampton at the time, and Pete Griffiths, who was the MP of Smethwick. Despite this opposition, many local people of the Black Country welcomed the migrants and, soon enough, Desi Pubs, Indian shops, local music and the vibrant local multiculturalism altogether has turned into a source of pride for the people living across the region. As of 2021, 15% (approximately 40,000 people) of the residents of the city of Wolverhampton – the Black Country’s beating heart – are part of the Punjabi community, making it the largest Punjabi community in the United Kingdom outside of London. In 2016, members of Black Country Visual Arts, a local communityled cultural organization of which I am the director, established a digitallybased photography archive with a view to increasing the visibility of UKbased Punjabi migrants in British society. We named it the Apna Heritage Archive because, in the Punjabi language, “Apna”means “ours”. Indeed, we designed the Apna Heritage Archive to preserve private photographs that, nevertheless, can reflect and respond to the broader history of the Punjabi community in the city of Wolverhampton. In order to create it, we set up events and workshops in a range of places in which especially