At family-run grocery store Popat Mithai & Farsan, owner Vijaya Popat and her all-female team are often so busy serving customers in multiple languages that there is little time to sit down, let alone chat with a curious journalist.
Ms Popat started the business in Leicester in 2011 to sell Indian sweets and savory foods and it has grown from two to 15 employees today. And in 2018 an online operation was launched.
Serving the South Asian diaspora in the East Midlands city and beyond, sales soared during the coronavirus pandemic as customers searched for more comfort food – the flavors they or their ancestors brought from places like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka brought to Britain.
Ms Popat’s son Shyam was suggested to speak to the BBC. “My mother is widely known in the community as the person who runs the business,” he says.
“And they all want to speak to her specifically, to see if she can procure certain things.”
He adds that it’s not just first-generation immigrants or those who have recently moved to the UK that make up the core customer base. Instead, it’s also the second generation who may be shopping for groceries for their families, and increasingly online.
“The site has been an absolute lifesaver during lockdown and now that we are out of lockdown it has become a thriving branch of the business in its own right,” says Shyam Popat. “Online sales now account for about a quarter to a third of the company’s total sales.”
In addition to importing products from South Asia, the shop also buys from Kenya.
The boost that the world’s diasporas are bringing to trade between countries is difficult to quantify, but governments are increasingly aware of the economic importance of migrants and their descendants.
Kenya announced in September that it would set up a new ministry for Kenyans living abroad, and US President Joe Biden has announced that he will announce at next month’s US-Africa leadership summit in Washington that he will “consolidate relations to strengthen the diaspora”.
But how big are the diasporas of the world? According to the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) World Migration Report 2022, 281 million people currently live in a country other than the one in which they were born.
This number corresponds to 3.6% of the world population or one in 30 people. And it doesn’t include children these people have who were born in their new country, nor the descendants of former migrants.
For this reason, the IOM defines the terms “migrants” and “diasporas” (from the Greek “to scatter”) separately. The latter also include descendants of former migrants “whose identity and sense of belonging, either real or symbolic, have been shaped by their migration experience and background”.
This equates to billions of people, but an exact number is very difficult to quantify as it is determined by a person’s cultural identity. Even the IOM said back in 2020 that “no attempts are currently being made to measure the global diaspora population per se”.
More from the BBC series looking at trade from an international perspective.
What is certain is that the entrepreneurial drive within the migrant population has long been recognized. A 2010 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found that immigrant entrepreneurs were better educated than their native counterparts and more likely to start a new business.
And often these firms are involved in importing food, clothing or other goods from a migrant’s former country, like Indian-born Vijaya Popat and her thriving Leicester shop. The deal and other similar deals contributed to India’s exports to Britain totaling $10.4 billion last year.
Paris-based Olivier Habiyambere is helping to boost Kenyan exports to Europe. He is the founder of the Kenyan Diaspora Market website, which imports food and clothing in bulk from the African country and then sells it to customers across the European continent.
Mr. Habiyambere, who grew up in Kenya, got the idea for the company when he moved to Paris to study and met others from Kenya and East Africa.
“Everyone wanted Kenyan products, but the problem was getting the products from Kenya here,” he says. “People could collect the produce if they went to Kenya, but it’s not like they could do that every year.”
So he launched the business in April 2022 to offer Kenyans in Europe an easier way to buy products from home. Mr. Habiyambere adds that the business has grown steadily, helped by Kenyan communities spreading the word via WhatsApp groups.
While the Kenyan diaspora market focuses on Kenyan migrants, Glasgow-based website Agora Greek Delicacies now has more non-Greek customers than those from the UK’s Greek communities.
It was founded a decade ago by husband and wife team Christina Lyropoulou and Michael Sofianos, who had studied in the UK. They now employ 14 people and supply imported Greek food and beverages to restaurants, cafes, individuals and other businesses.
“We’ve started to expand to British audiences – those who are traveling to Greece or have Greek friends,” says Ms. Lyropoulou. “And our online shop saw sales increase by around 1000% in the first few months of the lockdown.”
Prof Pragya Agarwal, a behavioral and data scientist at the University of Loughborough, regularly buys products from her native India for herself and her family in the UK.
“For me personally, it’s about maintaining the connection to the motherland, to the fatherland – whatever you want to call it,” she says.
She laughs as she describes her love for Indian mangoes and admits she regularly orders online from a certain store to get her mango fix, especially during the pandemic.
“Growing up in India, I ate it every summer – every day after every meal.”
Maria Elo is Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark and has published a number of books and articles on diaspora and trade.
She says it’s important to be aware of the framework that comes up when talking about the diaspora, where migrants are often described in one of two ways.
One narrative is that migration and diaspora are problematic. Prof. Elo describes this as a “deficit view” with a negative connotation. But she adds that there is also a positive narrative that includes “great promise for business and the economy.”
She adds that research shows diaspora entrepreneurs are agile and encourage crossover products. “We all eat pizza today, although we’re not all Italian and that’s something that crossed paths a long time ago.”
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