Changing Narratives of Violence, Struggle and Resistance: Bangladeshis and the Competition for Resources in the Global City

Abstract

Tower Hamlets contains the largest concentration of Bangladeshis in the UK and they have been very successful in campaigning for resources in a borough which has high poverty levels in the north, while to the south it has been radically transformed by global capital and new white middle class "immigrants" employed in the service sector. A debate concerning poverty, social exclusion and the growing incidence of criminality among third generation Bangladeshis was dominated during the 1980s by secularists whose hegemony was challenged during the 1990s by Islamist groups. This struggle between secularist and Islamist leaders is not just a local phenomenon since it is shaped by ideological, political and social ties with Bangladesh and with other Muslim-majority countries. It raises the issue of how leaders seek to represent their "community"--variously defined--in a non-Muslim nation where state institutions (locally and nationally) attempt to co-opt community leaders through multiculturalist strategies. So far, the struggle has not been overshadowed by the kind of urban violence seen in other areas of substantial Bangladeshi population.