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ОглавлениеThe East End Muslim Enclave I: Early Immigrant Experiences
Throughout history, the East End of London has accommodated a large number of immigrants and refugees, all of whom have added a new dimension to the religious and cultural terrain of the area. Today, the Bangladeshi population of the East End stands out quite vibrantly. This seemingly apparent physical segregation has been facilitated over the years by the emergence of distinct religious and cultural practices. In the last several years, the white indigenous population of the East End has begun to voice their concerns regarding the large-scale settlement of Bangladeshis in the East End of London. They claim the Bangladeshi presence has eroded the cultural landscape of the area, which has increased local concerns. A project about the East End conducted by the BBC discovered that a new dialect combining Bangladeshi and Cockney is replacing the traditional Cockney accent (BBC, 22 August 2005).
During my initial encounters in the East End, I began to notice a visible difference between early Bangladeshi immigrants and their children, who were often born and raised in the UK. It seemed clear that the second generation would not necessarily follow the same patterns of social engagement and interaction as their parents’ generation. This is mostly because when the early immigrants first arrived in the UK, the social landscape they encountered was entirely different. As a result, they consciously chose to negotiate the social world they encountered by retaining their ethno-religious customs and identities from their countries of origin. In contrast, the second generation grew up within the closed setting of the East End Muslim community, which means their identity construction naturally developed differently. It was in the context of exploring this divergence in identity development that I realised I needed to start with the experiences ←37 | 38→of the early immigrants because their engagement shaped the future patterns of social development in the area.
Early Narratives of Muslim Experiences in the East End of London
According to Melanie Philips (2006), the evolution of the East End Muslim enclave has been a growing problem, as she asserts it continues to alter the social and physical landscape. Yet, she seemingly ignores that this so-called problem cannot be easily divorced from experiences of early Bangladeshi immigrants. Historically, government policy has viewed so-called enclaves as an ‘inner-city’ problem, and consequently, social clustering is a natural by-product of segregation and the economic condition (Husband et al., 2016). This approach frames the formation of enclaves within the restrictive scope of urban housing. Early immigrants in the East End were denied access to public housing, forcing them to look within the private sector. However, the formation of the East End Muslim community did not exclusively occur due to its inner-city proximity. Early studies conducted in the East End of London during the late 1970s, for example, concluded that ethnic clustering had rapidly increased during the decade (Scanlon et al., 2014). The spike in immigration to the area explained this increase, but this clustering of different ethnic groups is not straightforward. For instance, demographic studies could not explain why some ethnic groups were drawn to enclaves while others were not (Pattillo, 2013). This chapter, which documents the narratives of early Bangladeshi immigrants, identifies three historical causes for the formation of a Muslim enclave in the East End of London. Firstly, ethnic familiarity pulled newer immigrants together, as they wanted to live near people similar to themselves. This desire gave rise to the creation of an ethnic immigrant enclave in the East End. However, ethnic ties began to erode when the early immigrants were joined by their wives and children, triggering a shift towards national-religious familiarity. Secondly, ←38 | 39→the experience of racial discrimination by early immigrants pushed them away from British society, reinforcing the need for a separate ethno-religious space. Thirdly, as the community grew, economic exploitation by established immigrants created a power imbalance, forcing newer immigrants to become socially and economically reliant on the enclave. In theory, this process helped consolidate their segregation, as it deepened dependency on the social networks located in the East End enclave.
Before I try to delve into these three specific concerns, I want to explore some background issues that help understand the social world from which the early Bangladeshi immigrants emerged. The vast majority of first-generation immigrants I spoke to in the East End came from rural Sylhet in Bangladesh. When they first arrived, they collectively struggled to adjust to the new urban environment. According to Hoque (2015), this is a natural by-product of the migration process. Early Bangladeshi immigrants grew up and lived in small rural villages. In this respect, even if the men had migrated to a major city in Bangladesh, they would have struggled to adapt to urban life. Migration to the East End of London only exacerbated the sense of dislocation and upheaval the early immigrants experienced. As Bodrul, who migrated in 1972 from Bangladesh, narrated, ‘life in my village was very simple, we worked in field, my wife also worked … there was no electricity, no gas, no water, no car or machines. We’d just work with our hands. My village was like my family, it was one family’ (translated from Bengali). The rural village described by Bodrul is a small inter-connected social system, combining kin and neighbours. This interconnectedness forms the local village; it is custom and family ties that bind the people together. In this regard, the social interactions between individual family units create an extended communal village. Trying to understand the context of village life in rural Bangladesh is very important, as it will reveal insight into the ideals and customs imported by the early Bangladeshi immigrants. As Bodrul mentioned, farming and social life was not dependent on technology; instead, it was exclusively reliant on human labour. In essence, the male members of the village were expected to work the fields in order to provide for their family.
From the narratives I collected several early immigrants provided insight into the social life of the village, making it possible to identify various ←39 | 40→common characteristics. Firstly, the vast majority of villages were essentially peasant farming communities. The Bangladeshi men emerged from pre-modern agricultural farms that were feudalistic, and thus the farmers had to pay tax, as free tenants, to a landlord. As Ashraf explained, ‘it was difficult, we owned nothing; while, the landowner took everything’. The Bangladeshi landscape was dominated by impoverished farmers struggling to provide for their families, due to natural disasters, drought and increasing land taxation (Sen, 1983). Secondly, there were limited links beyond the local villages and extended community, which restricted the knowledge base of the village. According to Ashraf, who migrated in 1971, ‘we never went outside our village, to come here [UK]; I went to the big city for the first time in Bangladesh’ (translated from Bengali). Thirdly, due to limited access to the outside world, religious and cultural traditionalism were embedded within the social structure of the village. As Bodrul explained, ‘in our village, we had izzat [honour] and we had good values’ (translated from Bengali). In essence, the village preserved primordial wisdom, which was a combination of religious and cultural ideals that were constructed around the unique reality of the distinct village. These preserved ideals became the source of religious and social life. As a result, the village gave more significant emphasis on ritual, mysticism, and superstition. These ideals served as the basis of social practice within the village, uniting individual villager by providing them with a coherent worldview. This worldview provided continuity between the local and the historical context; yet, beyond the village, these localised traditions may not make sense to people living outside the context in which they were formed. This makes the process of incorporating these localised village ideals highly problematic in the new setting.
The traditional ideals used to bind the local village were imported as a means to organise social life in the UK and unite the dispersed Bangladeshi rural worker while outside his country of origin. Despite the localism of tradition, it was felt broader religious and cultural traditions could provide continuity to immigrants during the labour migration to the East End, which was initially seen as a temporary endeavour. Religious-traditionalism provided those in the UK with a set of ideals that could repeal the contradictions of the host culture. As a result, the early immigrants were quick to establish communal spaces to perform rituals, as these would reinforce the ←40 | 41→ethno-religious identity of the immigrant while living away from home. These ideals and practices provided a focus to daily activity, providing workers with a common bond, helping them to settle in a foreign environment without their family. The early immigrants encountered a new social reality, exposing them to the host culture, which geographically left them physically and emotionally displaced from their country of origin. As Iqbal explained, ‘I came from my village to London. All I saw was white faces; everything here was different from Bangladesh. I do not think we [immigrants] were ever welcomed, but we did the jobs they did not want to do … living with them [native population] never was an option we wanted to protect our culture, our religion, and our children’ (translated from Bangladeshi). It seems apparent this realisation forged the foundation for new ethnic enclaves in the UK. By opting to form a distinct ethnic community in the East End of London, the early Bangladeshi immigrants sought to establish an ethno-religious base that could allow them to preserve their identity. Added to this, as Geaves (1996, p. 43) notes, immigrant communities often form as ‘close-knit inner city’ dwellings designed to shield the immigrant population from the hostility of the white English majority.
The Enclave: Ethnic Familiarity
The high demand for a cheap workforce created by the post-war shortage of labour facilitated the mass immigration of unskilled workers from the ex-colonies. According to Hiro (1991, p. 261), ‘there were more unfilled vacancies than unemployed workers, the excess being 174,000 in June 1956’. Despite the economic need for supplementing the employment shortfall, most newly arriving economic immigrants were immediately confronted with extreme prejudice and hostility from the white English population (Hiro, 1991). This hostile reaction triggered the early tendencies towards forming separate communities.
This somewhat evasive resistance to integration can be understood by exploring the early narratives of Muslim settlers. When, in 1971, Mr Miah ←41 | 42→arrived in the East End of London from Bangladesh he tried to get a job and secure a place to live. Nevertheless, as he quickly discovered the reality of life in the East End was far removed from his initial expectations. As he recalls, ‘the first thing they [white English] call me Paki, three hours of plane … I was shocked, I didn’t understand what this meant. We [immigrants] were treated very badly [in the beginning]’. Most of the early immigrants arriving in the East End were very unaware that a negative white consensus existed concerning the new arrivals. They were subjected to constant racial harassment and attack, especially those who ventured into white dominated areas. As Mr Miah suggests, ‘they [white English] rejected us, they think we are here to take their jobs … so, we were not wanted’. The overt forms of racism encountered by early settlers forced them to seek refuge amongst the ‘familiar’.
On the surface, according to the narrative of early Bangladeshi immigrants, it seems during the phase of early settlement; living in physically separated communities in the East End became a necessity rather than a choice. These isolationist trends developed greater meaning when the receiving culture seemingly rejected the migrants during the early phases of the diaspora. This directly affected the way migrants interacted with the white English population, limiting their social contact with the ‘other’. What caused early Muslim settlers to seek out the ‘familiar’ and seemingly resist the integration of the host society?
To start with, the ethnic enclave that formed in the East End of London appeared to form somewhat organically, as immigrants arrived; they were drawn to the ‘familiar’. The community rapidly became an enclosed ethnic space. The confined geographic location meant that the large build-up of immigrants quickly started to alter the physical landscape of the East End. In this organic stage, the area attracted a high concentration of immigrants seeking out safety and security. Eventually, the immigrant community grew in strength and offered economic benefit to newly arriving immigrants. Some British academics, who studied immigrant experiences during the early 1960s and 1970s, predicted that newly arriving immigrants would adapt relatively easily to their new environment (Taylor 1962, Evens 1971, Anwar 1982). In reality, as Tsang and Inkpen (2005) noted, thirty years later, the closed inner dynamics of the immigrant community restricted ←42 | 43→the immigrant’s ability to access and integrate into the dominant culture. As Imrul explained, ‘I came to London to get a job, I had a room … I didn’t interact with English people’. The immigrant communities constructed in the heart of the East End were visible symbols of the immigrant desire to live geographically apart from the white population. However, the reality of living geographically apart inadvertently spawned cultural separation as well. The newly forming immigrant communities sought to retain connectivity with the land of origin. This meant moulding an immigrant identity in London that had close associative ties to the Indian sub-continent.
In my study of the East End, Bangladesh and Pakistan appeared the most frequent places of origin for all the participants I interviewed. I suppose this is to be expected, as 37 per cent of the population of Tower Hamlets is South Asian (Riaz, 2016). Early immigrants arriving in the East End of London found it daunting to engage the broader social environment, as they lacked proficiency in speaking the host language. Bodrul, for instance, arrived in the East End after Bangladeshi independence; he came from a small fishing village near Sylhet. He had no formal education and could not speak English. Limited proficiency in the English language adversely impacted newly arriving immigrants, as Bodrul explained, ‘I don’t speak English well in the start. So who [will] I talk too? Desi people [Asian]’. Those early immigrants that arrived in the East End, without a basic command of English, found it difficult to locate jobs and housing opportunities. Mohammad, for example, immigrated to the UK in 1967 and he described several problems he encountered:
I settled in Birmingham, near Small Heath, but I can’t find a stable job. I would get occasional work in a factory, but nothing long-term. I got rejected all the time for lots of work, the same excuse, ‘you can’t speak English’. So, I got frustrated and moved to London in 1968. I knew a few family friends, and they helped. I got a job working in a laundry shop in Bethnal Green, and then I worked as a factory hand and so on until I bought my own shop. (Translated from Bengali)
Employment involving interaction with white English people often required the ability to speak English. The inability to speak English pulled early immigrants to the perceived security of the enclave because knowledge of language did not hinder job prospects. When early immigrants ←43 | 44→arrived in the East End, they were extremely reluctant to remove themselves from the community, as the enclave provided them with a cultural stepping stone into the host country. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants who arrived in the East End with limited language skills had little difficulty in social interaction within the immigrant community. The lack of language meant immigrants were unwilling to venture beyond the boundaries of the enclave, as they did not understand the cultural norms of the majority culture.
Mohammad’s case illustrates the entrenched attitude that developed amongst some immigrants. For instance, he has been living in the UK for over fifty years, yet he has minimal knowledge of the English language. As he commented, ‘I don’t need English; I work and speak to Asian people. So, why learn their language’. As Urdu and Bengali are completely distant from English, learning English was a real challenge for some early immigrants, especially those who migrated from rural villages that had no schooling system. Early immigrants found it difficult to construct sentences, limiting communication with white English people. As Amin narrated, ‘we could not understand the accent’. Accents represent geographical belonging, but for those who did not have an English accent, it was seen as an obstacle. As Amin explained, ‘[During] British rule [in India] they speak Queen’s English [Received Pronunciation]. When I come here [England], they speak different [common English], so we can’t understand’. Under British rule in India, the English language had prestige, and Received Pronunciation was spoken by English officers making it the perceived accent of the British people. In reality, this misrepresented the extreme diversification of regional accents within the United Kingdom. Thus, when immigrants arrived in the UK, they struggled to understand regional variations in accent and language.
Added to this, early immigrants developed unique accents that further alienated them from white English people. Even though the East End housed multi-ethnic peoples, language strengthened the ties between the immigrants. The similarity between the dominant South Asian languages meant that immigrants from the Indian sub-continent could communicate with each other, creating a sense of immigrant belonging in the East End community. Mr Qureshi arrived in the East End in 1962 he was inspired ←44 | 45→to immigrate by his older cousin, who had made a move two years earlier. After spending several weeks in the East End, he noticed a significant cultural and physical divide between immigrant and native (white English). As he explained, ‘we feel comfortable with our people; I meet people from all over Pakistan. We eat, we live, we have good time … I enjoy this time. I don’t speak good English at the start, I need to speak, and I have only our people!’ The East End ethnic community proliferated because it offered newly arriving immigrants a socio-cultural environment that replicated aspects of the country of origin. In the East End, immigrants could speak and freely interact despite widespread ethno-religious differences. Language acted as an instrument that accommodated people from different backgrounds. Most of the immigrants struggled to integrate into wider British society because of language. Therefore, the ethnic enclave offered a safe social space in which immigrants could communicate with their neighbours and secure jobs.
The second main pull of the East End was ethno-cultural familiarity. Stack (1986) argues that ethnic identity is shaped by a sense of ‘people-hood’, assuming a natural aspect of immigrant identity. He contends that this group identity is passed down from each generation, connecting individual solidarity to a larger collective, which differentiates members of the group from non-members. The East End evolved in order to generate a new basis for the immigrant community identity. In other words, it involved the formation of a physical space that imported the ethnic and cultural markers of the land of origin. This sense of common origin and experience united the members of the community together. The East End rapidly developed distinct boundary lines related to ethnicity and culture. These ethno-cultural boundary markers reinforced membership – that is, those who can and cannot gain entry. Bodrul, for instance, referred to the East End as a separate and distinct place set apart from the rest of Britain, as he stated ‘their country, our home’. This would suggest the enclave did not simply provide immigrants with a space to pursue ethno-cultural practices; rather it represented an ethno-cultural separation. From the narratives collected, it would seem early immigrants did not think of themselves as British. As Bodrul explained, ‘we [immigrants] came here for work not to live’. Economic incentives overwhelmingly drew the reason for migration. ←45 | 46→In some way, this created an unhealthy association with the state, a residual side effect of British colonial rule, which maintained Britain as a source of employment. As a result, early immigrants developed a transitory ethos, believing that they would eventually return to their country of origin. While the myth of return was strong, the East End offered a safe pragmatic space to mix with people of the same ethnic backgrounds. In this respect, the East End provided immigrants from South Asia with a way to protect themselves from the unfamiliarity and hostility of wider society. Therefore, membership in the East End community provided early immigrants with an ethno-cultural link to home.
However, ethno-cultural connections to home are not just bound by group ties to family and friendship but are also connected to other deep-seated primordial bonds. Eventually, as the East End community grew, religious attachment replaced ethnic bonds. During the early phase of immigration to the East End of London, the enclave broadly united ethnic immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. As Iqbal explained, ‘English people don’t care if you are Hindu or Muslim, you’re just a paki’. At this stage, despite deep-seated religious division in South Asia, ethnic identity superseded religious attachment in the East End. The reason for this was somewhat aptly simplified by Iqbal, who described it as a ‘numbers game’. In other words, the early immigrants were vastly outnumbered by the white English population in the East End, who did not discriminate in their racial hostility. Thus, Asians from diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds joined together in solidarity against the perceived white backlash.
Initially, immigrants arrived in the East End believing that they would eventually return to their land of origin, making their stay in the UK transitory. As Rubel mentioned, ‘my family [were in] Bangladesh, I [came to] make money and go home [Bangladesh]’. Rubel described the underlying reason for his migration as economic, but once his family joined him, then this migratory viewpoint gave way to permanent settlement. As he explained, ‘when my family came here we have Muslim community’. When the myth of return faded, the immigrant landscape in the East End enclave rapidly began to change. Early immigrants invited their family members, sparking a further influx of immigration. Mohammad Miah, a Bangladeshi who arrived in the East End before independence, suggested ←46 | 47→Muslim identity became important when his wife and child arrived. As he described, ‘I needed to look after them, make a safe home. I didn’t want my children growing up like them [non-Muslims]’. At this stage, the ethno-religious attachments to South Asia became more focused on building a Muslim community. Before this, the enclave was a large immigrant enclave that combined different ethnic and religious groups from the Indian subcontinent together. It seemed the Asian element of the East End was somewhat removed and replaced with the ethno-religious identity.
The newly arriving families were not united by the generic place of origin, namely South Asia, but instead, a sense of belonging was derived from ethnic and religious associations. In other words, despite the massive influx of Bangladeshis to the East End, it was not referred to by the inhabitants as a Bangladeshi enclave. As Mohammad Miah explained, ‘we make a community, no Pakistani or Bangladeshi, just Muslim!’ This religious attachment helped build somewhat generic Muslim communities in the East End, yet the East End is full of mosques that cater to different ethnic subdivisions. This is not contradictory since the East End enclave functions at two distinct, but interconnected, levels: macro-Muslim and micro-ethnic levels. At the macro level, the enclave appears Muslim, facilitating a physical space to be Muslim. While, at the micro-ethnic level, the enclave enables members to conceive of communal identities related to diverse ethnic-religious origins. So, on the surface, the East End may appear as one homogenous Muslim space, but in reality, this hides the diversification of religious sects and ethnic differences. This means the early immigrants imported different religious traditions from the Indian subcontinent, synchronising religious identities in the host country with those in the land of origin. This limited the hybridisation of Muslim identity amongst the first generation in the UK, as they merely imported the religious traditions and identities from the Indian subcontinent. This as we shall see in the next chapter degraded the social space for the second generation. The importation of ethno-religious and cultural attachments into a host country need to be merged with the national context. The first generation brought strong links to kin and country of origin, making religious formation static and disconnected. For instance, Friday sermons were largely delivered in Bengali or Urdu.
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Family Structure: Importing Value-Systems
During my interactions with first-generation Bangladeshi immigrants, I found that they often made constant reference to their ‘gram’ [village] or ‘bari’ [home]. I eventually discovered that these terms had greater meaning than the physical spaces they represented in Bangladeshi. In the UK context, they refer to a network of relationships that connect identities and peoples through common immigration experiences. In many ways, these were attempts to establish social connectivity across the immigrant community in the East End that embodied Bangladeshi village life. The village, the household, and family were considered central elements of social identity in Bangladesh that were left behind. As a result, early immigrants to the East End sought to revive Bangladeshi ideals and social networks. They wanted to reconnect the ‘ghor’ [family home] to the broader Bangladeshi network that was forming in the East End. Within the early enclave, Bangladeshi family units were dispersed across small geographic clusters in the East End. Each newly formed household would represent a distinct and separate individual unit, but beyond the specific ghor there was the more extensive social unit and network. Different Bangladeshi households connected this small network; often these households would contain large extended families.
The family unit in Bangladeshi households, in contrast to those prevalent in much of Britain, is often not nuclear. Preferably, the household make-up of a given family not only consists of the nuclear family (including both spouses and any children) but also conforms to a patrilocal make-up where numerous generations of the family reside together, incorporating a collection of nuclear units to form a whole. For example, it is usual and conventional for a married couple (and any children) to reside within the same home as the husband’s parents and siblings. In cases where male siblings of the husband are married, it is also common for their wives and children to live in the same homestead as the husband’s parents. The husband’s female siblings, who are yet to be married, also share the same domestic space as the rest of the extended family until they leave to live with their husbands and his family post-marriage.
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I discovered that in most Bangladeshi homes in the East End, kinship ties were determined through patrilineal associations and thus family structure and male ancestors governed identity. In a social context, this forms the biradari, a family unit defined by male kinship. According to Lieven (2012), the biradari system plays a vital role in South Asian society, which can be stronger than any ethno-religious bond. In reality, male kin hold significant power and authority within the extended family unit, controlling common property and earnings. Importantly, izzat [honour] is connected to individual members and can affect the public perception and status of the family unit within the community (Lefebvre, 2014). In theory, the function of the biradari system is to aid family welfare and provide mutual support (e.g. in times of financial hardship). As Aminur explained, ‘when I came I stayed in my brother’s house for three years with my wife. Then I buy a house. I live there for more than forty years’. For three years they operated as an extended family; despite belonging to separate family units according to Bangladeshi family structure.
Besides, the East End was visibly occupied by unaccompanied men, who had often immigrated without their immediate family. Initially, after they had secured a job and located suitable dwellings, they would summon their family members. This trend contributed to a population bulge amongst the Bangladeshi community in the East End. It became apparent that in the early stages of the enclave separate households would often co-operate financially and socially. Households would come together supporting newer immigrant families. The size of new Bangladeshi immigrant households was often substantial, combing multiple families or exclusively comprising of all male residents in temporary housing. In general, Bangladeshi households are more significant than the national average, due to pragmatic need and Bangladeshi social structure.
The early immigrants describe the first communities that formed in the East End were largely modelled on traditional Bangladeshi homesteads. The early community was strongly influenced by kinship ties, which played a crucial role in organising social life in the enclave. In the early period, most Bangladeshi households actively maintained regular contact with kinship and non-kinship households. In essence, the clustering of households developed a Bangladeshi village spirit, in which households joined ←49 | 50→together for mutual support and protection. It also allowed the households to maintain their ethno-religious identity at the social level.
Initially, caste did not play a functional role, but as the Bangladeshi population rapidly grew, in relatively concentrated areas, there was evidence of inter-communal conflict based on status. The vast majority of immigrants from Bangladesh were of similar social status, namely peasant labourers. However, when some middle-class families migrated to the UK, they expected higher status privileges, as they had received in Bangladesh. However, despite aspects of the social structure being imported from rural Bangladesh, little special recognition was given to higher status families. In the East End, social status was determined by economic mobility; rather than lineage. If a family became wealthy, then they were considered ‘noya Chowdhury’ (Aminur). As a result, the Bangladeshi caste system became mostly redundant in the UK context, especially in the East End were several peasant families gained mobility upward. Eventually, those families that were noya Chowdhury became economically high status; however, these families were despised by the high class as they had elevated their status through wealth and not lineage.
The social practice of Samaj was established in the East End. It was considered an essential communal practice, as it encouraged family-based social cooperation and interaction. Samaj is somewhat tricky to describe as it has different variations of understanding in Bangladeshi villages. However, most would agree that it is often viewed as a moral duty to interact and engage with the social network, usually through religious and cultural events. In Bangladesh, this practice at the village level relates to caste interactions; however, in the East End, it became a way to facilitate social and community cohesion and belonging. When the wives of immigrants began to join their husbands, some women engaged in Samaj in order to interact with other newly arrived women, building a friendship network that bypassed the practice of purdah [seclusion].
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Reinforcing the Enclave: Racism and Discrimination
When the early Muslim migrants arrived in the heart of the East End of London, some of them encountered considerable challenges. As they encountered the white English people, they quickly become conscious that the host society did not want them. This overtly hostile reaction left many immigrants socially displaced. As Minhajul noted, ‘we live away from Gora [white people] because they hate us … they attack us [immigrants]’. During the late 1970s, the streets of London erupted with violence, as many South Asians were attacked and some killed. Altab Ali, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi migrant, was brutally beaten to death by a group of white youths in 1978. White gangs prowled the back streets of the East End, seeking out Asians. Some of the most extreme forms of violence saw a spate of arson attacks on migrants living in the Tower Hamlets area, as these attacks intensified the local council installed ‘anti-arson letterboxes’ to protect immigrants (Sampson, 1992). The racial violence flaring up on the streets of London facilitated widespread social polarisation as ethnic groups sought protection in separate enclaves. Early immigrants chose to live apart from the white population, because as Minhajul explained: ‘we didn’t feel safe living with white people’.
At one level, enclaves can be considered a geographical reality. Urban enclaves, for instance, grew out of the desire to elevate social status. During the colonial era, white Europeans carved out separate communal spaces that were geographically and culturally distinct from the non-white English population. As Nightingale (2012, p. 3) asserts, ‘the idea of separating a “black town” from a “white town” dates back to 1700’. The British adopted racial segregation across the empire in order to maintain a power imbalance between indigenous and colonialist. The construction of ‘hill stations’, in which Europeans built separate residential colonies in the highlands of India, symbolised deliberate racial and cultural enclaves. The white colonialists manufactured racial boundaries and chose to reside apart from the non-white native. So, if this was the attitude of the British colonialist in India, then when mass immigration took place, how did the white UK population react?
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On the night of 25 January 1982, a gang of forty attacked the home of the Saddique family in the East End of London. They threw stones, smashing the shop window and narrowly missing the family crouched inside in darkness. They daubed swastikas, gave Nazi salutes and chanted, ‘F**king Pakis out!’ They did this for six straight hours without intervention from the police. (Teare 1988, p. xi)
Some of the earliest encounters with the white English population narrated by early immigrants often involved racism and violence. Taijul, after just four weeks in the East End of London, was chased and viciously assaulted by a gang of white youths. As he describes, ‘I walk home … I hear shouting I see five or six white English people running to me. So, I ran. They catch me and they say “no pakis here”. Then they start punching and kicking … next thing I wake up in the hospital’. He suffered two broken ribs and several head injuries. He spent over two weeks in the hospital recovering from his injuries. Eight months after this incident, several white youths tried to assault him again, but he managed to escape. According to Taijul, it was common to encounter verbal and physical racial abuse; it was a natural fabric of early immigrant life in London. However, this was not contained to disgruntled white youths, hanging out on street corners. Instead, racial abuse was encountered across society.
Aftab, who immigrated to London in 1974 from Pakistan, worked in a textile factory in the East End. He describes, ‘it was hell! Working with white people … they call us Pakis every day and they give us the worst jobs’ (translated). Racial abuse proved to be a standard part of the London workplace. The tension between the white and non-white labour force had been escalating for several years in the factory where Aftab first worked, as the white English viewed the immigrant as a threat. They felt newly arriving cheaper foreign labour would result in their termination and thus loss of livelihood. This perhaps inspired the treatment received by immigrants. As Aftab explained, racial abuse was not restricted to the labour force. He asserted the management echoed similar racial abuse. The supervisor separated non-white workers and actively limited upward mobility. Aftab claimed, Asian workers were ridiculed and degraded both privately and publically, which gave the white labour force full licence to insult non-white workers racially. Most of the immigrant workforce emerged from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, but the collective racial discrimination ←52 | 53→they experienced gave them a sense of communal togetherness. This initially dissolved the deep-rooted religious differentiations that existed amongst most of the immigrants while in the Indian Sub-continent. However, this sense of communal solidarity slowly declined as the immigrants settled and began establishing distinct identity markers.
Racial violence and abuse became a standard part of social life in London. The height of which was a spate of racially motivated murders of young Bangladeshi men in Tower Hamlets during the late 1970s (Teare 1988, p. 3). Racial violence towards immigrants became a widespread epidemic on the streets of London, triggering the immigrant desire to live apart from the white majority. Early immigrant communities in London were inspired by communal refuge. When early immigrants entered the social space, beyond the sanctuary of the home, they would instantly encounter the physical and verbal violence of the white majority.
While on the bus, for instance, immigrants recounted stories of being spat upon, verbally insulted and physically attacked. Nayeem, who arrived in the East End of London in 1971, described an incident that took place on a bus. Nayeem was heading home on the local bus after a long day’s work; a group of white youths sitting at the back of the bus began to yell out racially abusive taunts. As they stood up to leave the bus, they hurled a wave of verbal abuse at Nayeem. Then, in a despicable act of racism, one of the youths poured milk onto Nayeem and shouted: ‘once a coon always a coon’. For Nayeem, this incident underscored the overwhelming hostility white people felt towards immigrants. As he described, ‘abuse from English people was normal, they [white English] are racist and they’ll never accept us [non-whites] and we should never think we will be’. This statement reflects the sentiment early immigrants developed in response to the perceived host rejection, as consequence immigrants chose to live apart. Living amongst immigrants in separated communities ensured a sense of sanctuary from physical and verbal assault from the white majority. Asian and black communities formed in direct response to white English racism, ‘no Hindu or Sikh called me Paki … only English people. So, we lived with our people’. Thus, this particular form of segregation from the mainstream population was a strategy to escape racial attack and harassment.
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The ‘Inner’ Enclave: Exploiting ‘Our Own’
The migrants who arrived in the early 1970s found it slightly easier to navigate the turbulent social terrain of life in the East End because they benefitted from existing migrant networks. These networks allowed immigrants to circumvent the social reality of racism and discrimination. The racism experienced by early immigrants inspired the formation of migrant enclaves and networks. These communities popped up across London, allowing new immigrants the opportunity to find housing and work.
Consequently, the exposure to overt forms of racism fostered the formation of immigrant enclaves, drawing immigrants to the familiar. The familiar gave the immigrant a connection to home while adjusting to life in the receiving country. In this regard, the enclaves became distinct residential and commercial areas, which saw the rapid growth and clustering of Asian restaurants and businesses. These shops offered the immigrant accesses to the cultural familiarity of ‘home’: ‘we get halal meat and desi [Asian] food … so we make [a] community’ (Ahmed Miah).
For the vast majority of immigrants finding work was a primary activity, but as Ahmed explained, he never envisaged having to downgrade his professional expertise. In Bangladesh, he worked as an accountant, yet migration had stripped him of his skill. Initially, he was optimistic of securing a job in the financial sector, but as time quickly passed, he became increasingly desperate. As he explained, ‘I take any job, I start washing dishes, I leave Bangladesh to wash dishes … I suffer too much and then I drive bus. I was accountant back home, but in England, I am bus driver’.
Those professionally trained migrants who underwent job-downgrading felt immensely emasculated by British society, and many attributed their lack of success to institutional racism. Ahmed narrated that he sent hundreds of applications and when on the rare occasion he managed to secure an interview was subjected to humiliating questions about his language, culture, and ethnicity.
Beyond the workplace, early immigrants found securing suitable housing a significant challenge. Nurul, for instance, arrived in London ←54 | 55→in 1952. He mentioned that finding accommodation became his priority. As an early immigrant, he could not rely on established Asian networks for social and economic support, as they were not prevalent. Eventually, communal-support would become the backbone for new arrivals. However, Nurul was an early trailblazer, and as such had to navigate through the social displacement, he felt after leaving his homeland. Initially, he struggled to locate accommodation in the private rented sector often because white property owners were unwilling to rent to non-whites. On one occasion, a property owner refused to give him residence because he did not want his flat smelling of curry. In the end, after three days of sleeping in a bus station, Nurul found a bed in a halfway house, this temporary stopgap gave him time to understand the housing situation in London. Immigrants, he discovered, had to fill the housing vacuum left behind by the white English population. Nurul shared a small three-bedroom terrace with twelve other immigrants from South Asia. Living in substandard conditions became the norm for early immigrants. Nurul recalls half a dozen men ram shacked together into a single bedroom, having to share a bathroom, and no central heating or hot water. Despite the poor living conditions experienced by early immigrants, joint housing offered a sense of the familiar and protection from white English hostility. Patterns soon started to emerge related to ethnic clustering. Immigrants did not want to live in isolated areas in which they were vulnerable to racist attack. Therefore, they choose to reside in newly forming ethnic enclaves across greater London. The white English rejection of immigrant workers induced these early settlement patterns. This rejection pushed many immigrants towards the perceived sanctuary of the East End enclave.
However, as I discovered, as the enclave grew it became a significant source of inward exploitation. In particular, those immigrants who arrived during the 1970s often felt enslaved by the enclave elite. As Raqibul explained,
I came here in 1977, I had to work day-night in Mr. Malik’s shop, he paid me very little. I know nothing, I need work. I need [place to] sleep. He gave me a job, I thank him, but he treated me very badly. I work ten years for him. I have nothing … He cheated me.
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From the outside, the class disposition of the East End appears to be a homogeneous entity. The Muslim members of the East End occupy the lowest levels of the economic base. This image masks the exploitative role played by a small segment of the enclave. Through commerce, a few early immigrants attained partial economic upward mobility. They started to control and manipulate the economic condition of the enclave, restricting newly arriving immigrant’s entrance into the host society. As a result, immigrants had reduced contact with the dominant culture, which allowed the community elite to reduce the socialising effect of the wider society. In essence, the enclave defined the role and function of the immigrant, physically detaching them from the state. Despite the inner exploitive aspect of the enclave, the outer social reality seemed far more daunting for newly arriving immigrants. The harsh reality of racism helped concentrate immigrants within the East End.
The racism experienced by immigrants across London inhibited social integration in the capital. Consequently, immigrant social activities became internalised. In other words, immigrants actively utilised the skills and resources of fellow immigrants to establish basic social needs, fostering the spatial clustering of immigrant enclaves in Greater London. The immigrant network became an essential utility, helping migrants establish themselves within the boundaries of the community. Newer immigrants were warmly introduced to a safe social space, providing them access in some cases to an alternative labour market. This densely populated area on the surface provided a cultural connection to the land of origin, but gradually systems of control were quickly cemented that would exploit newer immigrants. This economic exploitation actively negated assimilative attempts to integrate with the wider society, it utilised ‘social capital’ as a means to keep immigrants enslaved to the community.
Within the immigrant enclave, social capital was often utilised through kinship ties to self-control the social and economic dynamics of the East End community. Early immigrants built a platform for newer immigrants entering the host country. However, kinship ties mixed with a complex system of culturally embedded seniority meant their community exploited newly arriving immigrants. As Sadik explained:
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I came [to] Whitechapel in 1982 from Bangladesh, for nearly five year[s] I work washing dishes for [my] brother in-law in his restaurant … he [has been in] England for over forty year[s]. He give me help and room, room behind restaurant, I sleep on floor and wash in kitchen. He use me, I work for nothing. This is what happened to us, we called paki in street and then we use like slave by own people … I cry every night I here for five years … it was Hell.
The exploitative nature of the enclave limited the mobility and success of newer immigrants, who were often used as social capital. New arrivals, like Sadik, were immediately inculcated within the enclave about the social reality of life in the UK. They were often told they had limited job opportunities amongst white people, due to racism and inadequate language skills. Thus, they were given jobs and shelter through kinship networks, and thus became enslaved by the social functionality of the immigrant enclave. In some cases, new immigrants were discouraged from seeking welfare assistance from the state, as this may break the social control of the enclave. As Saied suggested ‘my family tell lies about housing and job[s] … they want me to work for them. When I get job outside then I see truth’.
The Muslim communities that have formed in the East End of London are not self-autonomous territories. They are subject to the legal and economic constraints of the state. This did not stop early immigrants from establishing rigid systems of cultural constraints, which were designed to control the newer immigrant labour force. The formation of an economically strong immigrant class within the enclaves promoted cultural separatism from the white majority. However, this slightly wealthier immigrant sub-group were constrained socially and economically in their sphere of domination. They could only exploit newly arriving immigrants, and thus their influence did not extend to the second generation. There are two likely explanations for this lack of complete communal control. First, the second generation was educated within the UK, and this enabled them to gain social mobility. Second, the apparatus of control utilised by the dominant classes in the enclave exclusively rely on newer immigrants remaining socio-culturally disconnected from the wider society. When new immigrants arrive within the host country, they often lack the necessary language skills to navigate British society. Therefore, they gravitate ←57 | 58→towards the familiar. On the surface, the enclave offers the new immigrant sanctuary from perceived host hostility. In reality, the enclave functions as an overreaching power that provides immigrant business with an endless supply of cheap labour.
The systematic exploitation of the immigrant labour force by established immigrants became more evident when industries across the UK began to close. The economic instability caused by downsizing unskilled labour meant some immigrants became entangled again within the separate economic sub-system of the enclave. As Saied explained, ‘when jobs become less here [East London], some people [immigrants] were forced to work in restaurants for little pay’. The decline in the broader job market drove many immigrants back into the enclave social network, as the enclave had an endless need for cheap migrant labour. The faltering economic condition of the UK, coupled with the availability of work within the enclave, stimulated an upsurge in benefit fraud. Ali, who owns a chain of shops and restaurants in London, provides insight into this dual economic system.
I came to the UK in 1956. I worked very hard, I cleaned dishes in restaurants, and I worked long hours in factories. After many years I bought a shop, it did well, so Alhamdulillah [praise be to God] I started my restaurant, which did well … I helped my community, I helped our people by giving them work … We paid cash-in-hand, to help with their income they got housing benefit and income support … I never took them hand in hand to the benefit office!
