Segregated Britain. Farhaan Wali
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