Uzbek Community in Birmingham

Where they come from

Uzbekistan lies at the heart of Central Asia and was once a crossroads of the Silk Road trade routes. Its cities are famous for their blue-tiled mosques and madrasas. Uzbek is the national language, and Russian is also widely spoken. Uzbeks in Birmingham include students, professionals and families.

The community in numbers

At the 2021 Census, out of a city population of 1,144,919, 65 Birmingham residents described their ethnic group as Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen or Uzbek. The census counts the five Central Asian nationalities together, and Uzbek residents are a small share of that figure.

Working for Birmingham

Uzbek residents study and work in business, engineering, medicine, finance and IT, and many are multilingual. Students at the city's universities build skills and connections that help Uzbekistan's growing economy, while those who settle bring energy and enterprise to their work in Birmingham.

The city's future rests on the same things as its past: skills, enterprise and people willing to put in the hours. Whether in a hospital, a classroom, a lecture theatre, a van full of tools or a shop on a busy high street, Uzbek residents are helping to build that future, and to make Birmingham a stronger, fairer and more welcoming city.

Culture and community life

Plov, a rich dish of rice, meat and carrots cooked in a large pot, is the pride of Uzbek cooking and is shared at every celebration. Navruz, the spring new year, is marked with music and sumalak, a sweet wheat dish, and Uzbek craftsmanship in silk and ceramics is admired worldwide.

The story of the Uzbek community in Birmingham is still being written, by students, workers, parents and pensioners who call the city home. It is a story of hard work, friendship and quiet pride, and Birmingham is richer for it.