British Sri Lankans
| பிரித்தானிய இலங்கையர் (Tamil) බ්රිතාන්ය ශ්රී ලාංකිකයන් (Sinhalese) |
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|---|---|
| Total population | |
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Sri Lankan residents ~200,000 (2011) Sri Lankan-born residents 67,938 (2001 Census) 106,000 (2009 ONS estimate) Other population estimates 110,000 (2002 Berghof Research Center estimate) 150,000 (2007 Tamil Information Centre estimate) |
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| Regions with significant populations | |
| Languages | |
| English, Tamil, Sinhala | |
| Religion | |
| Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Sri Lankan |
Sri Lankans in the United Kingdom or Sri Lankan Brits (Sinhalese: බ්රිතාන්ය ශ්රී ලාංකිකයන් Britanya Shri Lankikayan Tamil: பிரித்தானிய இலங்கையர்) refers to people of Sri Lankan heritage living in Britain. Ethnically, they may include Sri Lankan Tamils, Sinhalese people, Burghers, and Sri Lankan Moors. Migration from Sri Lanka to the UK has been a result of historic links between the two countries and the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Sri Lankans have been migrating to Britain for several centuries, up from the time of British ruled Ceylon.
The UK was the first country with established immigration from Sri Lanka and took in many of the early Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan immigrants can be divided into three types of immigrants that have come to the UK.
The first type came from the 1950s to the 1980s the Sri Lankan diaspora consisted of a very settled group of people who followed a migration model of a single journey with a settled home at the end of it. Many of these people who came are well-educated and very well off economically and have become established in British society. During the 1960s, understaffing in the UK’s National Health Service opened up the opportunity for many Sri Lankans to become doctors and consultants; others managed to secure other white-collar jobs.
The second type of Sri Lankan immigrants consists of mostly young men who are less educated and often traumatized by their experiences from the war zones and remain on the fringes of British society. These immigrants would have left Sri Lanka in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The third type is a smaller but growing one, which is mainly the young people living in the second or third generation in Great Britain, who are comparatively well-educated and have experienced today’s democratic pluralism and a more middle-class British society.
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Wikipedia