Making space for Muslims: housing Bangladeshi families in East London

Abstract

My argument in this chapter is that we need to pay attention to the domestic geographies of home in order to generate spaces of hope for Muslims in Britain. This is largely in a context where on the one hand, British Muslims are increasingly facing a pressure to ‘integrate’ as their spaces and places are being labelled as segregated at best and fundamentalist at worst. On the other hand, British society is also being called upon to ‘integrate’ British Muslims within larger social, cultural, political and urban spaces. This is particularly significant in affordable housing designed by British architects for ethnic minorities in East London where the challenges of integrating a range of minority British identities are felt at their strongest. While I suggest that these identities cannot be disentangled from a wider Muslim identity which shapes the use of domestic spaces among Bangladeshi Muslims, I also suggest that these homes can reflect spaces of hope for British Muslims both through the production of hybrid architectural layouts as well as through the renegotiation of spatial practices and identities of those minority groups who inhabit them.