“ARAB” instantly conjures up mirages of the lampooned petrol-dollar baron, glittering seven-star hotels and heavily perfumed oppressed women for some.

So it’s no wonder that many Middle Eastern and north African youngsters, British-born or raised, find the path to belonging fraught with confusion and conflicting pressures.

Most of them are compelled to take on characteristics of what they believe it means to be Arab to survive growing up in London, says author and anthropologist Ramy Aly in his compelling collection of interviews and detailed studies.

Arabness, he contends, is a “performance” of coded acts such as frequenting shisha cafes, keeping up a “respectable reputation” — certainly truer for women — and listening to Arabic pop music. Of course these often have to be acted out within the parameters of adequacy, lest one “falls out of character” and gets mistaken for being “too English” or “passing for” someone of other ethnic groups.

Yet tensions can arise from a myriad of differences held by countries grouped together to make one big “Arab League.” Big-spending Gulf Arabs have been welcome as tourists in London for decades but so have the political activists, students and economic migrants from poorer countries like Iraq, Egypt, Palestine and Morocco.

Lumping them all in one group can be a mistake, Aly finds, but some Arabs even adopt the Gulf character, as when partying in VIP sections of West End clubs, to give off the impression of wealth and status when it suits.

It’s a common sight that I didn’t give much thought to until learning of its wider significance because, as a born-and-bred Londoner whose family were farmers in rural Morocco, I have few similarities with Gulf Arabs.

As a young working-class woman tells Aly, the main reason is glaring socio-economic disparity. She found that “fellow” Arabs at university were too “different” — meaning rich — for her to understand.

Hundreds of thousands of the younger ones navigate the British and Arab spheres of cultural identity at any one time, while having to grapple with religion, others’ expectations and their own consequential anxieties. This book confirms that I certainly haven’t been alone in this struggle.

Review by Lamiat Sabin