Azad Kashmiri diaspora

The Azad Kashmiri diaspora is the people who migrated out of Azad Kashmir to other areas and countries as well as their descendants.

Pakistan

Many Azad Kashmiris have moved to Pakistan, chiefly to Punjab, Sindh (particularly Karachi) and Islamabad Capital Territory.[1][2][3]

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom is home to one of the largest Mirpuri diasporic populations. Towards the end of the 19th century, Mirpuris started taking jobs as stokers on ships of the British Merchant Navy and acquired an understanding of global employment opportunities. When Britain faced labour shortages after World War II, the Mirpuri seamen settled down to work in Britain, starting a process of chain migration.[4]

A second impetus to immigration came with the construction of the Mangla Dam in the Mirpur district, in the 1960s. The dam submerged Mirpur's most fertile land as well as the city of Mirpur and hundreds of villages. The displaced people used their connections with the Mirpuris in Britain to find employment and emigrate.[5] The Pakistani government also helped the immigration of 5,000 people.[6]

Before the 1990s, most British Mirpuris called themselves "Mirpuris" or "Pakistanis". Scholar Alexander Evans states that the Mirpuri category "was looked down on by other Pakistanis – Mirpuris were racially stereotyped as uneducated hill-people with little culture." In the 1990s, activists belonging to the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front launched a Kashmir National Identity Campaign and successfully lobbied the British Parliament to get their "Kashmiri" ethnicity officially recognised. The Valley Kashmiris in Britain maintain that they are "Kashmiris" and that the Mirpuris are "nouveaux Kashmiris".[7]

See also

References
  1. P. Akhtar (9 October 2013). British Muslim Politics: Examining Pakistani Biraderi Networks. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 32–. ISBN 978-1-137-27516-5.
  2. Rehman, Zia Ur (21 July 2016). "Kashmiris in Sindh to vote for two AJK seats today". The News. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
  3. Population Census Organization, Govt. of Pakistan. "MIGRANT POPULATION BY PLACE OF BIRTH" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 November 2010.
  4. Ballard, Roger (2 March 1991). "Kashmir Crisis: View from Mirpur" (PDF). Economic and Political Weekly. 26 (9/10): 513–517. JSTOR 4397403. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  5. Ballard, Roger (2003), "The South Asian presence in Britain and its transnational connections" (PDF), Culture and economy in the Indian diaspora, pp. 197–222
  6. Kinship and continuity: Pakistani families in Britain. Routledge. 2000. p. 30. ISBN 978-90-5823-076-8. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  7. Evans, Alexander (2005). "Kashmir: a tale of two valleys". Asian Affairs. 36 (1): 35–47. doi:10.1080/03068370500038989.
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