Geographies of Inclusion/Exclusion: British Muslim Women in the East End of London

Abstract

This paper takes a look at the place-based multicultural construction of ‘Banglatown’ in the East End of London, and asks what meaning it offers for young Bangladeshi women growing up in Spitalfields. It begins by bringing together theoretical debates on identities, youth, gender and space, and goes on to ground the discussion on Bangladeshis and Islam in the East End. The conclusions suggest that there are new challenges to place-based constructions like ‘Banglatown’ that show such places to be masculine and subtly prohibitive for Bangladeshi women. The limits of multiculturalism are thrown wide open from two unlikely quarters – from young women who are pressurised into vacating that space, and others who take issue with its secular, Bengali based identity, preferring a transcendental identity like Islam. The growing attention on Muslims in non-majority Muslim countries (e.g. Britain) has sharply focused on women's mobility and the visibility in veiling practices, and progressively over time visibility has come to denote multiple meanings and perceptions in spheres of representations. How does this growing visibility sit with the pressures and practices of selling ‘places’ and the representation of commodities and multicultures as the East End competes for mega city status? Building on geographic thinking on space the research charts some direction towards a gendered understanding of regeneration processes taking place in the East End of London, and more widely in different parts of the United Kingdom. The arguments made in the paper point to the limits of multiculturalism in accommodating young feminine identities in Spitalfields’ redevelopment.