'Young Asian men' are facing the same problem as other men: a crisis of masculinity

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'Young Asian men' are facing the same problem as other men: a crisis of masculinity
HUSSEIN KESVANI
15 AUGUST 2018


Mehreen Baig interviews a young British Asian in her documentary 'Lost Boys' CREDIT: BBC

A new BBC documentary about British Pakistani men misses the bigger picture

Around this time last year, I went to Bradford to spend time with youth workers aiming to stop the city’s young men from getting involved in drug-related crime, as part of my upcoming book about British Muslim identity. The city has one of the biggest rates of drug-related crime in the UK, and, according to West Yorkshire police, Bradford’s residents fear it more than any other community in the county.

What surprised me was that in my interviews with the youth workers – all of whom were young, British Pakistani men born and bred in Bradford – the same subject was brought up. “It’s nothing to do with race, or religion or any of that stuff you hear in the media,” one told me. To him, the challenges that faced young men in Bradford could be seen in other, poorer areas of the country with a high percentage of young people: “It’s a crisis of masculinity.”

The young guys around here want to have careers, they want to have family, they want to give back to their community. But they don’t feel like they have the opportunities to do that
- Bradford youth worker

“The young guys around here,” he told me, “want to have careers, they want to have family, they want to give back to their community. But they don’t feel like they have the opportunities to do that.” To the youth worker, it was an issue that affected young men not just in Bradford but across the UK.

“Young guys still want to look after their families and provide, but they see quick, easy money as a solution because they don’t see other avenues offering them anything.”

I hoped that this subject would be explored in more detail the documentary Lost Boys? What’s Gone Wrong With Asian Men, which aired on BBC 2 earlier this week. In the documentary, host Mehreen Baig, a former secondary school teacher, visited Bradford to find out whether British Asian boys were being held back not just economically but also socially and in terms of their own personal development.

She met young men who spend their free time showing off custom-built cars in supermarket car parks funded by savings made through living at home, or directly through their parents. Others told Baig how growing up in gender-segregated environments had made it difficult to feel comfortable in mixed environments such as universities and professional work environments.


Mehreen Baig with Gohar Ayub and his family

The findings led Baig to wonder whether the problems faced by young Pakistani men were the result of “traditional Pakistani Mirpuri culture” being reproduced in the UK, or whether it was to do more broadly with “spoiled Asian men”, cared for by their mothers up to the day they eventually get married. It was a shame, then, that the crisis of masculinity was only touched upon on superficially.

Toward the end of the documentary the question of masculinity was instead replaced with a cultural argument, that compared the levels of “integration” in the poor Pakistani communities in Bradford to the upper middle-class Ugandan-Indian communities of Leicester, a group whose economic success and entrepreneurial instincts is often used to separate “good” and “bad” immigrants.

By the end, few answers as to the root causes behind the phenomenon of aimless young men in Bradford, other than reductive tropes about communities “choosing” to be unsuccessful by retaining their traditions. As many viewers pointed out on social media, that is a simplistic narrative which ignores the duty of national and local institutions to promote inclusion on fair terms.

Praise should be given to the show for portraying one of the few occasions where experiences of south Asian men was portrayed on mainstream television in a context that didn’t involve terrorism, extremism or sexual impropriety. Furthermore, at a time when images of the “working class” tend to be fixated on white communities living in post-industrial towns, it was an important way of showing that the working class experience is a diverse one, and that de-industrialization of entire towns and cities affects everyone, particularly young men.

But the real problem with Lost Boys has less to do with perpetuating ethnic stereotypes or seeking easy answers than its portrayal of a fairly universal experience for young British men as one specific and unique to working class south Asians.

In truth, the challenges and experiences of young South Asian men in Bradford aren't that different from those experienced by young men of all ethnicities across the country. That includes having less access to long-term employment and careers. More than half of British university graduates are in non-graduate roles, often on short term contracts.

Young people have even less access to housing: according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, less than half of Britons aged 25-34 own a home compared to a decade ago, something that inevitably restricts the ability to get married or raise a family.

Even when it comes to education, an increasing number of young people, regardless of their race or religion, are becoming reluctant to go to university or pursue higher education for fear that the costs will only result in racking up debt. Indeed, a record number of young people, including 23 per cent of all young British men, find themselves in debt today.

Facing all this, is it any wonder that young men of all cultures might feel that the adulthood they feel they were promised is being denied to them? Is it surprising that they might find it difficult to live up to their own expectations?

While some South Asian men right resolve these problems in different ways from their white working class counterparts – for example, choosing to save money by living with their family – this doesn’t mean that the challenges poor South Asian men face make them extraordinarily left behind, nor does it necessarily indicate a crisis that applies exclusively to Pakistani men.

Instead, it suggests that “what’s gone wrong with young Asian men” is much the same thing that has gone wrong with young men in general. The crisis of masculinity that leaves young south Asian men being in limbo is more indicative of a national failure when it comes to providing the necessary resources and support for them.

It is the same crisis which draws young white men to far-Right extremism and to sexist movements which offer to help them rediscover a lost masculinity. It is the same crisis which draws some young black and Arab men to organisations such as Isil, which promise to make them true adults through violence. It may express itself in different ways in different cultures, but its roots are the same: a feeling that being a “real man” requires independence, freedom and achievement which society cannot reliably provide.

The BBC's documentary might have wanted to show the south Asian experience as an outlier, or Bradford as a forgotten outpost of Pakistan. Nut the experiences felt by its young men are all too familiar for anyone who’s wondered why extremist groups can be so appealing to young British men, regardless of their race, religion or class.

Ultimately, it shows that the “Lost Boys” are a truly British phenomenon. They are something our politicians should be far more concerned about.

Hussein Kesvani is Europe Editor at the alternative men's magazine Mel

[GreentheViper]

I'm not suprised tbh.