Playing the Ethnic Card - politics and ghettoisation in London’s East End

Abstract

Ghettoisation is a politically charged subject, and politicians are often accused of encouraging racism and ghettoisation by ‘playing the race card’. But it is not just political parties that may be found to be promoting ethnic separation. There are strong drives towards separate organisation within different ethnic communities, and organisational separation can easily manifest itself as physical separation; indeed sometimes that is an important aim. This paper explores the role of political forces on the evolution and development of ghettoisation through the example of one of the most ghettoised immigrant communities in Britain, the Bengali Muslims in Tower Hamlets, whose families largely immigrated from Sylhet in what is now Bangladesh.