Segregated Britain. Farhaan Wali
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origin are socially displayed, forming a visible distinction between the enclave and the host society. More significantly, as Gopinath (2018) argues, when the migrant communities became more settled within the host country, the enclaves they populate developed into ethnic enclaves. This makes the term migrant enclave problematic as it relates to the migration process, but after settling the application becomes slightly redundant. Migrant enclaves, as a descriptive category, equates to the social reality of the first generation of migrants. For this reason, the term cannot be easily applied to the second and third generations, who are a by-product of settlement.
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In a historical context, early migrants from the Indian subcontinent were seen as homogenous and thus lumped together under the broad category of South Asian. However, after a period of settlement, immigrants from South Asia were relabelled according to ethno-nationalistic and religious affiliations. As a result, terms like Pakistani and Bangladeshi became popular, but these are equally problematic descriptive labels. Before the migration process, these terms were anchored to one’s country of nationality, but after migration, they become re-designated to ethnic identity markers. This would suggest labelling enclaves as ‘ethnic’ might be equally problematic. According to Anthias and Yuval-Davis (2005, p. 4), ethnicity is often determined in relation to ‘who can and cannot belong’ to the group according to the credentials of birth, cultural practice and language. Enclaves do not function with such restrictive credentials, because the interplay between the enclave and wider society can be determined by factors that transcend ethnicity, like social mobility and status.
Some theorists have argued that ethnic enclaves are designed to preserve ethnic identity within the host country in order to counter-act assimilative processes (Whitfield, 2013). In essence, behind the veil of the enclave, individuals can adopt the worldview of the enclave, enabling them to engage the dominant culture with an established ideological framework. This would mean internal forces position the enclave as a mechanism to maintain a shared cultural resource for its residents, providing them with the means to negotiate the struggles of living in the host country. This perspective appears to overlook the economic networks that function within the enclave.
The ethnic enclave provides social protection due to its high contraction of non-native people in an enclosed space, but the dynamics controlling the enclave may hinge on economic activity. Migrant networks, argued Massey (1990), provided migrants with alternative modes of social capital. Initially, these migrant networks developed through close family ties that provided help to newly arriving migrants. Eventually, they evolved into more systematic and rigid interpersonal systems, providing low-cost housing and job opportunities that bypassed the state. According to Pietsch and Clark (2015), this had a profoundly negative effect on migrant integration, as migrants fell out of the broader social structure. Social mobility ←10 | 11→was dependent on access to education and capital resources. Those migrants, for instance, who could not speak English, would face long-term struggles (Berardo and Deardorff, 2012). Therefore, it was advantageous for migrant enclaves to keep newly arriving migrants embedded within the closed socio-economic structure of the enclave.
Some theorist believe social capital in the enclave can provide a collective benefit to its members by providing them with access to economic opportunities, which may be denied to them in the wider society due to discrimination (Saegert et al., 2002). Migrant enclaves often construct ethnic-based employment opportunities, which are non-skilled, allowing migrants to find work straight away. In reality, by disengaging with the social and cultural structures present in the host society, migrants over time lack connectivity to society. Thus, despite the short-term benefits, the ethnic enclave inhibits social and economic integration. As will be shown in Chapter 1, the immediate advantages newly arriving migrants receive when they join the ethnic enclave are often quickly eclipsed by the long-term drawbacks of not participating in the wider society. I am not alone in highlighting this insular disadvantage. A recent report issued by the Runnymede Trust suggested that ethnic minorities in Britain suffer from an ‘invisible glass ceiling’ (Runnymede Trust, 14 April 2017). One aspect of this alleged invisible glass ceiling relates to the socio-economic barriers placed on ethnic minorities from attaining upward mobility in the workplace. In theory, beyond this unseen institutional discrimination, the ethnic enclave itself functions as a glass ceiling restricting migrant progression. The enclave labour market, for instance, is often cut off from accessing host country skills that may benefit migrant economic mobility over the long term. By impeding the migrants’ ability to access more extensive skills, the enclave creates a social barrier that prevents the migrant from learning the basic social norms to navigate society. When I spoke to first-generation migrants in the East End of London, several of them told me how they lacked the means to access essential welfare services because of the inward-looking nature of the Muslim enclave. As a result, for most migrants learning the host language became a significant challenge, making it easier for migrants to opt out of mainstream society and remain attached to the enclave. In simple terms, the ethnic enclave provides a sense ←11 | 12→of security to the immigrant, while also giving them access to the familiar. Ultimately, the insular nature of the enclave acts as a socio-cultural barrier.
Why Enclaves Form?
In the modern world, no one is unaffected by changes that take place in cities. Speaking broadly, cities are beckons for cultural and social change as they encourage new trends that shape how people live. For this reason, cities attract a broad spectrum of people from different social backgrounds, making an adjustment to the urban setting often tricky. Historically, in the nineteenth century, when the west experienced rapid industrialisation, it prompted a population shift from rural to urban (Alexander, 2009). As a result, the urban city arose in a somewhat chaotic and disorganised fashion; it evolved and developed through competition for space and resources. The tensions between capital and labour symbolised the end of feudal society and the birth of capitalism. This supposedly cultivated spatial class divisions, spawning the first urban enclaves (Hilton, 2006). If true, then space became divided along class fault-lines within the city, sowing social segregation into the fabric of modern urban life. However, is this separation physical or has physicality been ‘assigned’ to it?
During the 1950s and 1960s, America experienced substantial social upheaval. The city of Chicago appeared to be an epicentre for such upheaval, and not surprisingly, became the focal point of academic focus regarding immigrant settlement processes. For this reason, I shall focus my attention on the theories that arose during this period related to immigrant assimilation. In particular, did immigrant enclaves form in response to different modes of structural incorporation? According to Portes and Manning (2001, p. 568), two distinct views emerged to tackle this question, namely ‘assimilation theory’ and the ‘segmented labour market theory’.
In theory, according to Gordon (1964), the assimilation process for new immigrants occurred sequentially. This means that after encountering ←12 | 13→financial difficulty and racial prejudice, they secured social stability and gained economic mobility, which was attributed to increased adaptation of the host society and culture (Gordon, 1964). In keeping with this assimilationist-theory, it was believed that some immigrant groups struggled to adapt, and thus failure to acquire social mobility pushes them towards the ethnic enclave. However, the formation of the enclave is not necessarily just dependent on economic factors. The host society often expects the immigrant to abandon their cultural and religious mores, making assimilation appear a one-way process. As a result, some migrants are reluctant to surrender their cultural values and identity. This suggests that immigrants do not merely ‘melt’ into the host society; instead, they seek to safeguard their migrant identity in the new society (Portes and Manning, 2001, p. 569).
This desire to preserve their ethnic identity can also be observed in the labour market, as some newly arriving migrants looked to circumvent the free labour market for jobs in the enclave. Those migrants that selected this pathway represented the broad category of the so-called ‘unmeltable ethnics’ (Portes and Manning, 2001, p. 569). These migrants have been socially positioned by the labour market, which gave them distinct jobs and roles. When the British colonised India, for example, they assigned roles to the indigenous population based on physical and social attributes, confining generations to specific jobs (Maddison, 2013). This type of cultural