In 1992, what was then the first economic analysis of the South Asian communities in the UK, was published by me, drawing on newly released ethnicity data from the 1991 United Kingdom Census.
At the time, even the term “South Asian” was unfamiliar in policy circles. When I proposed commissioning research through the South London Training and Enterprise Council (SOLOTEC), board members had scarcely encountered the phrase. After checking with government departments, they came to see why it mattered: it described people from seven countries of South Asia who were by then deeply embedded in Britain’s social and economic life.
A preliminary back-of-the-envelope calculation suggested that the economic added value of these communities nationally could be around £5 billion — a significant figure in early 1990s Britain. More strikingly, around 90% of the South Asian population was concentrated within what we termed the M1/M40 corridor. We called it the “Five Billion Pound Corridor.”
One Bangladeshi businessman I knew — a manufacturer of traditional sweets — read the draft report and based his expansion strategy on those demographic and economic insights. He opened new centres along that corridor. Data informed enterprise; enterprise generated growth. That, in miniature, was the story of diaspora economics.
Thirty-four years later, it is worth asking: what has changed? And what does today’s migration debate overlook?
The Maturation of a Community
Aston India Centre’s just-published research confirms what lived experience has already demonstrated: the Indian diaspora in the UK is now one of the most economically successful communities in the country.
British Indians are disproportionately represented in:
- Medicine and healthcare
- Technology and digital sectors
- Entrepreneurship and SMEs
- Finance and professional services
Median household incomes exceed national averages. Educational attainment is high. Diaspora networks support trade and investment between the UK and India. Leadership positions in major British companies now regularly include individuals of Indian origin.
In short, what in 1992 required explanation now requires no defence. The economic contribution of South Asian communities is embedded in the national story.
This progress did not happen overnight. It followed decades of:
- Family sacrifice
- Educational aspiration
- Small business formation
- Intergenerational mobility
The £5bn corridor was not just a statistic. It was an early signal of long-term structural integration.
Today, however, the national debate about migration sounds very different.
Migration and the Politics of Anxiety
Public attention is frequently drawn to small-boat crossings across the Channel, amplified by political figures such as Nigel Farage, who frame migration primarily as a matter of border control and national sovereignty.
But most migrants arrive through legal routes: work visas, student visas, family reunification.
Refugees form a relatively small proportion of overall net migration. Moreover, research from the Migration Observatory consistently shows that, over time, migrants tend to make positive fiscal contributions to the British economy.
The Office for Budget Responsibility has noted that higher net migration tends to increase GDP and improve the fiscal outlook in the medium term, particularly in an ageing society where the ratio of workers to retirees is shrinking.
In other words, migration often mitigates — rather than causes — fiscal strain.
The deeper question is whether Britain is building an economy capable of:
- Generating productivity growth
- Investing in infrastructure
- Developing skills at scale
- Encouraging entrepreneurship
- Spreading opportunity beyond London
When growth stalls, migration becomes a convenient scapegoat. When growth succeeds, migration integrates.
History bears this out. The South Asian communities of the 1960s and 70s were once described as burdens. By the 1990s they were measurable contributors. By the 2020s they are central participants in Britain’s professional, political and corporate life.
Economic integration follows opportunity.
This does not mean migration carries no pressures. Rapid population change can strain housing supply, school places, GP access, and local authority capacity — especially when planning and infrastructure investment lag behind.
But it is important to distinguish between:
- A failure of infrastructure planning, and
- A failure of economic productivity, versus
- the presence of migrants themselves
The three are not synonymous, and the real challenges we face aren’t going to be solved by banning further migration or even by getting rid of everyone who migrated here in the last 100 years. These are non-solutions peddled because clever people want to manipulate us into avoiding having to think about issues to which they have no solutions. But there are real solutions, and they can make life better for us all. Before we look at the solutions, let us face what our country’s challenges really are.
The Real Challenges
The fact is that we in the United Kingdom face deep structural issues:
- Stagnant productivity growth
- Regional inequality
- An ageing population
- Housing undersupply
- Skills mismatches
- Long-term NHS funding pressures
- A geo-political context of deglobalisation with all the volatility that is creating
- The arrival of AI and its threats to jobs, though also the opportunity that represents for thinking and working once again towards building a better world.
A Question of National Strategy
All that raises the question: do our political parties have a coherent plan to enable the UK to thrive?
Across the spectrum there is tacit acknowledgement that:
- Universities depend on international students.
- Health and social care depend on overseas staff.
- Technology and science sectors require global talent.
Yet the political rhetoric often focuses almost exclusively on headline reductions in net migration rather than on the strategic design needed for everyone here to get out of the mess we are in, so as to thrive properly.
Yes, economic reality does require managed migration. And yes, electoral politics does demands visible control. What is missing is an integrated framework that links:
- Industrial strategy
- Skills development
- Housing supply
- Infrastructure investment
- Regional regeneration
- And managed, skills-aligned migration
Without that kind of national plan, the obsession about migration can be read as a proxy for deeper frustrations about economic insecurity, but is in fact simply a distraction, a sleight of hand.
Perspective Across a Lifetime
So let me, looking back over recent history, raise the question: has leadership, data, and insight not changed pessimism into optimism? Can it not do so today?
In terms of half of my own lifetime, we have gone from , “South Asian” being barely a recognised policy category in 1992, to the community’s contribution being acknowledged in government white papers and academic research. What was once peripheral is now mainstream.
The broader refugee and immigrant debate should be seen in its proper context:
- Refugees are a small share of overall migration.
- All kinds of migrants, taken together, are a minority of the total population.
- Long-term economic outcomes depend more on productivity, innovation and investment than on marginal changes in migration numbers.
If Britain “does well,” migration tends to become an asset. If Britain stagnates, migration becomes a lightning rod.
The real choice facing the country is not between openness and closure. It is between strategic renewal and reactive politics.
Thirty-four years ago, my modest report suggested that a demographic presence could be reframed as economic strength. That insight remains relevant.
The question today is whether we have the courage, the leadership, and the policy imagination, to build a Britain in which the migration story, rather than being misused to fan fear, continues to contribute to enterprise and growth.
