Segregated Britain. Farhaan Wali
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evident in the social space of the city, which was heavily divided. After the civil war, the city was geographically reshaped along ethno-religious lines, permanently separating the eastern and western blocks. The spatial segregation I witnessed could be seen in local parks, schools and shops. The Vice News article raised concerns about whether similar types of divisions exist across modern Britain. This provoked my interest and scepticism. Thus, when I began my fieldwork, my goal was not to prove the existence of Muslim enclaves in Modern Britain; but rather, I sought to understand everyday experiences of British Muslims who allegedly live in segregated Muslim enclaves.
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Some British politicians claim that Muslims are not actively dissolving the social boundaries between themselves and wider society. Dame Louise Casey, the former integration tsar, for instance, asserted that segregation and social exclusion are at ‘worrying levels’ amongst Muslim communities in Britain (BBC, 5 December 2016). She singled out the Muslim community, claiming that regressive practices are socially upheld in Muslim enclaves, which limit the self-agency of Muslim women. A cultural disconnect, she claims, fuels continued Muslim segregation in which Muslims reside in parallel communities. There are large segments of British society that believe British Muslims live in separate religious spaces, which are often termed Muslim enclaves (Tausch, 2014). The inability to locate these enclaves is a major problem. It is easy to claim Muslims live in separate territories, but does Muslim residential clustering equal an enclave? This book tries to offer ethnographic insight into the everyday lives of Muslims living in East London, North Wales and Scotland. Thus, the goal was not to ascertain physical data concerning the demographic distribution of these people – relating to their economic condition, housing and welfare – but to discover, through observations of everyday life, the various ways in which British Muslims construct a sense of belonging and segregation. In essence, I seek to understand the social world of Muslims living in so-called enclaves.
Starting in the East End of London: Cluster or Enclave?
I often think to myself, what would you find if you walked the streets of the East End a hundred years ago? The area has undergone a radical alteration. Beyond the changing physical landscape, the ethnic upheaval experienced in the city stands out perhaps most vividly. I remember a few years ago, well before I began this book, I found myself strolling down the rustic back alleys of Brick Lane. There I encountered a small group of German tourists, who were meticulously tracking down the hotspots of Jack the Ripper’s victims. While hunting in the East End, one of the tourists asked me about the local area. He said that the East End was not what ←2 | 3→he had expected. I rather impulsively asked what he had expected to find, and his reply has haunted me ever since: ‘I do not believe I am in England … there are no English people here’. Despite the racist undertones of the statement, I was more concerned by the experiences of Britain that had shaped this point of view. I grew up in Bedfont, a small village in suburban west London, and thus rarely stepped foot in the East End. So, in many ways, I felt somewhat like a tourist too.
With this encounter fresh in my head, I started aimlessly wandering the East End. I had the opportunity to speak to several non-Muslim white residents. They felt that the entire landscape appeared at odds with the wider city, believing the Muslim presence had vividly changed the cultural landscape of the area. The Muslim inhabitants of the East End, they asserted, seemed to be consciously constructing a community apart from British society. This type of alarmist sentiment exhibits some parallels with the rhetoric of the far right. According to Rydgnen (2018), the rhetoric of the far right focuses on defending against perceived threats to national identity and culture. He claims ‘immigrants from Muslim countries are singled out as particularly threatening, allegedly because they have the least in common with the native population’ (Rydgnen, 2018, p. 2).
Even though it was clear to me that there were real causes of concern, I realised that my observations were very superficial. I needed to test my observations. Initially, I just focused on the East End of London. I meticulously scoured the numbers, to understand the demographic breakdown of the area. The data was compelling. In Tower Hamlets, for example, ethnic minorities outnumber the white population by nearly two to one (Riaz, 2016). Almost one-third of the borough’s population is Bangladeshi, making them the largest ethnic group in the area. As a result, Tower Hamlets has the largest concentration of Bangladeshis in the UK. However, I felt this broad data presented a skewed demographic picture. The concentration of Muslims in the area does not necessarily mean one should constitute it as a Muslim enclave. For instance, there are over eighteen different ethnic groups living in this area, which means it might be better characterised as an ethnic enclave, due to the multi-ethnic composition of the East End (Young et al., 2011, p. 31).
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According to Park (1969), the creation of migrant enclaves often drew people of similar race, ethnicity and language together. However, as these migratory bonds gradually weaken, some members seek to integrate into the host society. Yet, on the surface, this does not appear to be happening. As one local white resident put it, ‘on the streets of Tower Hamlets people are living apart’. The demographic data gives a broad picture, but this does not necessarily tell the real story about the social lives of Muslims living in the East End. After spending several months in the area and speaking to locals, I started to see significant social gaps and differences between Muslim residents. Ultimately, my goal was not to determine whether the East End was a Muslim enclave; rather, I wanted to find out how some British Muslims construct a sense of belonging and whether those Muslims living in the East End considered the area a Muslim enclave. This distinction is important because I did not see evidence of British Muslims living in parallel worlds in the East End. Rather, I observed different pockets of Muslim populations. This, I felt, equated to residential clustering, which is a relatively common phenomenon within urban environments. According to Finney (2013), this residential clustering is a natural by-product of socio-economic structural forces. As a result, it is common across the UK to find ethnic minority populations clustered together within towns and cities. Peach (2006) claims that Muslim clustering functions at two distinct levels of civic engagement. The first level relates to the preservation of segregated communities, which Peach termed multiculturalism. The second level relates to assimilative processes, in which Muslim communities are gradually absorbed into the dominant culture of the host society (Peach, 2006).
In 2005, Trevor Philips delivered a damning address to the Manchester Council for Community Relations in which he expressed his concern that Britain was harbouring ‘fully fledged ghettos’ (The Guardian, 19 September 2005). In large parts of the UK, the Muslim community appear clustered together (Varady, 2008). In the East End of London, residential patterns are drawn along ethnic and religious grounds, which have been facilitated by discriminatory housing policy and accelerated white flight (Simpson and Gavalas, 2005). Large parts of the East End, therefore, exhibit high clustering of Muslims. This was evident during the fieldwork, as the vast majority of respondents resided in areas populated with people of the same ←4 | 5→ethnic and religious background. However, despite the title of the book, it is vital to be extremely cautious while employing the term ‘enclave’. This is because Muslim residential clustering, in some parts of the UK, seems generally accepted by the academic community (Finney, 2013; Johnston et al., 2007; Vaughan, 2007). Yet, there is less agreement concerning Muslim enclaves. There are many reasons for this lack of agreement. Firstly, enclaves imply that communities become culturally disconnected from the dominant culture (Pores and Jensen, 1987). Secondly, it is assumed that residential clustering occurs after migration, and as the population cluster grows and settles it becomes distinct from the host society, turning it into an enclave (Vaughan, 2007). Therefore, if the East End of London is a Muslim enclave, then it must be culturally disconnected from the wider society. In order to assess whether this is actually the case, I undertook ethnographic fieldwork to discover if the inhabitants of the East End are culturally disconnected. In essence, I wanted to know whether Muslims believe that where they live is a Muslim enclave. I felt that gaining insight from inside the so-called enclave could provide me with a deeper understanding of the complex social world of Muslims and their perception of the outside world. This would help answer questions related to segregation and belongingness.
Urban Enclaves
According to Flint, in a modern urban sense, enclaves refer to a ‘city neighbourhood