ABSTRACT
Our aim in this chapter is to provide a detailed analysis of how the Pakistani
community living in Bradford made sense of their citizenship and identity in the
aftermath of the worst urban riots in Britain since the 1980s. Using our interview
data, we discuss how Pakistani people living in Bradford sustain different identity
claims in relation to citizenship, ethnicity and national belonging. In particular, we
want to examine how ‘citizenship’ is used as an aspect of British Pakistani identity,
using the idea of generations as a unit of analysis. This is an issue that arose during
the research process. What repeatedly struck us whilst interviewing was the ways in
which second-generation British Pakistanis drew upon popular ideas of citizenship
and rights to assert their identities and sense of belonging. Furthermore, these identity
claims seemed quite different from ideas of national belonging.
