Segregated Britain. Farhaan Wali
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 At this stage, despite deep-seated religious division in South Asia, ethnic identity superseded religious attachment in the East End.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.
←47 | 48→
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.
←48 | 49→
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