Being a Freshie Is (Not) Cool: Stigma, Capital and Disgust in British Pakistani Stereotypes of New Subcontinental Migrants
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Charsley, K. A. H., & Bolognani, M. (2017). Being a Freshie is (not) Cool: stigma, capital and disgust in British Pakistani stereotypes of new subcontinental migrants. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(1), 43-62. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1145713 Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record License (if available): CC BY Link to published version (if available): 10.1080/01419870.2016.1145713 Link to publication record in Explore Bristol Research PDF-document This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via Taylor & Francis at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2016.1145713. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. University of Bristol - Explore Bristol Research General rights This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/red/research-policy/pure/user-guides/ebr-terms/ Ethnic and Racial Studies ISSN: 0141-9870 (Print) 1466-4356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rers20 Being a freshie is (not) cool: stigma, capital and disgust in British Pakistani stereotypes of new subcontinental migrants Katharine Charsley & Marta Bolognani To cite this article: Katharine Charsley & Marta Bolognani (2017) Being a freshie is (not) cool: stigma, capital and disgust in British Pakistani stereotypes of new subcontinental migrants, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40:1, 43-62, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2016.1145713 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1145713 © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 03 Mar 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1012 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rers20 Download by: [University of Bristol] Date: 22 March 2017, At: 06:26 ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES, 2016 VOL. 40, NO. 1, 43–62 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1145713 Being a freshie is (not) cool: stigma, capital and disgust in British Pakistani stereotypes of new subcontinental migrants Katharine Charsley and Marta Bolognani School for Social, Political and International Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK ABSTRACT Intra-ethnic discrimination, in the form of stereotyping of recent migrants by settled ethnic minorities, has been interpreted as internalized racism, displacing stigma and negotiation of local hierarchies of belonging. Stereotypes of ‘Fresh off the Boat’ migrants construct cultural boundaries and assertions of belonging, offering clues to processes of identity-making where ethnicity is complicated by ongoing migration. In British Pakistani portrayals of ‘freshies’, this assertion of difference coexists with familial ties and a high incidence of transnational marriage. Analysis of the figure of the ‘freshie’ in internet comedy videos, combined with qualitative research material, provides insight into dynamics of cultural and social capital, immigration and sexuality through manifestations of difference, similarity and disgust. Together these not only reveal the weakness of recent migrants’ positions in structures of socio-economic and symbolic power, but the blurring of social categories, and the continuing importance of transnational kinship in negotiations of identity amongst British Pakistanis. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 18 May 2015; Accepted 11 January 2016 KEYWORDS British Pakistani; identity; boundary-making; intra-ethnic discrimination; migration; transnational marriage Being a freshie’s cool (Mawaan Rizwan 20121) CHORUS: All my life I’ve been a Freshie My Mum and Dad are Freshie too Join my gang of Freshies It’s time to know – being a Freshie is cool Fresh off the boat with a student visa Work in a chicken shop on Green Lane CONTACT Katharine Charsley [email protected] © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 44 K. CHARSLEY AND M. BOLOGNANI Came to the country in a silk kurta Exchanged that in for a chav’s gold chain In my car, a gold and red tissue box Perving on young girls on the bus They all run away Why they run away? Import, export, socks with flip flops Hairy arms, hairy brow, curry house, sweet shop Yes I am a bad man, rasta man, blood clot Rollin’ in my Honda blasting Indian hip hop – yaar CHORUS Giving wrong change in my corner shop Charming the white girls with my swagger on lock Side parting with the greasy top Olive oil in my hair and popping them spots Playing Jay Sean on my speaker phone Keeping plastic on my remote control Walking round town taking tourist photos To show my village children London life back at home. Cleaning my ears with my set of car keys Picking my nose while I’m walking down the street Wearing fake Armani And yes I voted BNP – No way! CHORUS Being a Freshie is Cool (repeat to end) Mawaan Rizwan’s YouTube comedy music video ‘Being a Freshie’s Cool’ pokes fun at the figure of the ‘freshie’: a (usually male) recent migrant from Pakistan. A distinctively British Asian take on an earlier YouTube sensation, ‘Being a Dickhead is Cool,2 the clip has had over 660,000 views on its main upload site alone. Rizwan, a Pakistan-born British director, actor and children’sTV regular with a popular YouTube comedy channel, is not the only young British Asian comedian to parody the ‘freshie’. Amongst the more polished of the numerous online skits, Humza Arshad, who found fame through his YouTube Channel (over 60 million views) and was recruited by police to help combat extremism in schools, also features a ‘freshie’ character in his ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 45 ‘Diary of a Badman’ series.3 Having noted increasing use of this derogatory term to refer to Pakistani immigrants in the course of our longstanding ethno- graphic research, we were introduced to this genre of online parodies by Charsley’s research participants. In this article, we take advantage of the elab- oration of the ‘freshie’ stereotype in these representations, supplemented with material from our recent research, to offer an analysis of this manifes- tation of intra-ethnic boundary-making. Examination of the content of the ‘freshie’ stereotype underscores the importance of the particularity of migration contexts in interpreting specific cases of this widespread phenomenon. Intra-ethnic discrimination, in the form of stereotyping by settled ethnic minorities of recent migrants from their (ancestral) homelands, is not unique to British Pakistanis. ‘Fresh off the Boat’, contracted to freshie or FOB, is a term found in a wide range of migration contexts. Interpretations have centred on internalized racism, displacing of stigma and attempts to negotiate local hierarchies of belonging. From a transnational perspective, such stereotypes can also be seen as responding to the continuities and ambivalences of cross-border social fields. Whilst these perspectives are valuable in explaining the fact of intra-ethnic boundary-making, stereotyp- ing and discrimination, in this article we also demonstrate the utility of attention to the form (content and meaning) of such stereotypes. Bringing together perspectives on transnationalism, ethnic identities and boundary- making, with insights from the literature on class, capital and revulsion (Bourdieu 1986; Skeggs 2005; Tyler 2013), we demonstrate how close atten- tion to portrayals of freshies allows an analytical unfolding of dynamics of cultural and social capital, immigration and sexuality through manifestations of difference, similarity and disgust. Together these not only reveal the weakness of recent migrants’ position in structures of socio-economic and symbolic power, but the blurring of social categories, and the continuing importance of transnational kinship in negotiations of identity amongst British Pakistanis. The figure of the freshie reveals the complexity of identity work in a context where ethnicity is complicated by ongoing migration and transnationalism. In this blurred terrain, the freshie figure represents an attempt at clarifying cultural boundaries and asserting belonging. The distancing by British Pakis- tanis from their subcontinental counterparts is lent a particular tension by the close familial ties which still exist between Britain and Pakistan, and by ongoing practices of transnational marriage which mean that ‘freshies’ may also, at least in theory, be potential marriage partners – indeed, those ident- ified as looking or behaving like recent migrants may also be referred to as mangetar (or mangy) – a term meaning fiancé or, here, marriage migrant. Stereotypical characterizations designed to elicit disgust may form part of ‘othering’ discourses in a variety of contexts (e.g. Tyler 2013), but here the 46 K. CHARSLEY AND M. BOLOGNANI prominence of sexual failure or deviance, and disgusting bodily practices must also be read both as a response to the meeting of already unstable cat- egories (British/Pakistani) in marital unions and as part of young British Pakis- tanis’ negotiations of desirable marriage practices. Whilst other scholars have noted the use of the