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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   691 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 29, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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The Guardian: The garbagemen of Birmingham, center of England's third-largest urban area, have been on strike for almost an entire year—since March 2025. The contractors hired to replace them joined the strike in December.

The three Birminhgam residents photographed and interviewed have Arabic/Indian(?) names and are clearly not ethnically British, while the garbage man photographed and interviewed is clearly ethnically British.

"Are you sure this will help us sell more burgers?"

The names aren't "Indian". Islamic names tend to be quite similar across MENA, but I'm confident that the people named aren't, especially the ones for whom we've got pictures. Even going off priors, Indians in the UK don't work those kind of jobs.

I suppose you're trying to tell me they're Pakistani which is theoretically interesting but does not change the thrust of my post. Is there some catch-all term I can use to avoid these tedious corrections from Indian/Bengali/Pakistani/etc people? I suppose "South Asian?". Or "subcontinental," though that sounds like it might offend people. What's the preferred term to refer to this collection of peoples? If there isn't one, I'm probably just going to have to continue saying "Indian."

Both South Asian or Subcontinental work, since Bangladeshis are at least technically more likely to be in the reference class.

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