Mapping London’s multiculture

On 6 September 2004 in London’s Stanhope Centre, openDemocracy and Counterpoint, the British Council’s cultural relations project, jointly hosted an innovative one-day conference around the theme of London’s multiculture.

For a full list of participants at the openDemocracy / Counterpoint event, “Mapping London’s multiculture”

Our event was designed to bring together two strands of thinking we are developing in the online debate on openDemocracy, which focuses on the experience of difference on the one hand, and theoretical approaches to multiculturalism on the other. London was our starting–point, as a good example of a multicultural space. We hoped that everyone would be able to discuss their experiences of London and relate them to debates shaped by policy, academic theory and political activism.

Mapping the city

We put a large A–Z roadmap of the city on the wall. The morning began with the idea of using maps to understand how multicultural space works. Mapping could be revealing or dangerous. Looking at Charles Booth’s 1889 map of London poverty we saw that though the city is marked by strong general patterns, such as a concentration of wealth in the west, even the richest areas were or are not far from places of poverty. London is a mixed city that cannot be divided into discrete areas of any type.

I would stress the importance of how physically intermingled and mutually influencing London’s different “ethnic” cultures are; far more so than in most European or United States cities, or indeed some other British ones (such as Burnley or Bradford) with their starker residential segregations – let alone deeply divided places of which I have some experience like Jerusalem or Belfast.

Stephen Howe, tutor in politics, Ruskin College, Oxford

But maps, like statistics, present only a limited picture, and show what mapmakers choose to reveal. In her discussion of refugee London, Kirsteen Tait warned that facts and figures are open to manipulation and misinterpretation, particularly in the media, and can lead to a “policy of nervous breakdown” from politicians who cannot control the information, the political context or the reality of the situation.

Could the A-Z map of London help us understand the city as a multicultural space?  (Andrea Rocca)

A map of refugee London would again show a very mixed picture, shaped by migrants searching out pre–existing communities, or being spread by dispersal policy, or making secondary migrations after arrival in the city. Migrants don’t necessarily know where they are going when they leave their country of origin, especially when they put themselves in the control of people–smugglers, but London’s attractions include the English language, which is often a migrant’s second language, and the perception that the United Kingdom is tolerant, particularly in religious terms.

Maps reveal but importantly conceal: questions of who owns the map, what is configured and how, and what is left out of the map are key concerns for me. The map can be an object of intense debate, as the map appears in the positivist sense as a finding which offers insights into particular issues which the map explores and reveals. The various possibilities and configurations and contending positions about what the map portrays and how it represents are often left in silence. The map is about power and should be problematised, with emphasis on what a map serves and who it serves.

John Nassari, photographer and researcher

London’s migrant communities have historically grown up around the docks on the river Thames but now that trade and transport are changing, the movements of migrants across the city are also being transformed.

Ray Powell from the National Black Police Association discussed the fact that London police need a picture of the different communities and language groups in the city so that they are better able to work with local people and local knowledge as they move from area to area. They actually use maps that represent London by community, despite the difficulties in gathering accurate information. There has been a shift from institutional resistance and hostility to diversity, to a realisation that understanding diversity is essential to good police work.

openDemocracy’s Caspar Melville discussed another kind of institutional perspective, clubbing London. He described how London’s multicultural nightclub culture emerged in the early 1980s, in the hidden and partially abandoned spaces of the city, such as Paddington basin and the disused goods yard at Kings Cross railway station. An analysis of the forms of “bottom–up” creativity that can happen in such “no–places” reveals much about how people can put city space to use in surprising, unanticipated ways.

Once we’d looked at the refugee, policing and clubbing versions of London, we broke into groups to grapple with the mapping process for ourselves and represent our versions of London on paper.

We discussed what drew people to London and what factors influenced where they ended up living. (Andrea Rocca)

Despite the fact that some similar topics were taken up in the groups – where people felt safe, unsafe or “other” in London and why, what forces they saw shaping London, historical change and change that had occurred over people’s lifetimes – the maps that came out were surprisingly varied. We had London in food, taxi drivers’ London, London shaped by people’s ideas of London, and a sketch of different personal boundaries – where someone took off their tie after work on the way home, where someone could safely hold their same sex partner’s hand, where someone used to have to carry a letter explaining why they were going into the West End to avoid being sent away by the police, where someone had experienced verbal abuse for being visibly Muslim. This provided grounding in the everyday issues that would later inform our afternoon discussion.

We spoke about London as an area of identifiable, and as such, designated zones of public safety. What this meant was that many in the group spoke of the kind of awareness you need to navigate a safe journey through hostile spaces, in the context of race, gender, sexuality and identifying yourself with a religion such as Islam in the contemporary climate of paranoia that leads to open hostility. I found it insightful as I always recognised the no–go zones for black people such as myself, especially the West End, where I used to work as a youth in the early 1970s (I was a solicitor’s clerk) and had to have a letter explaining my presence, in this “white man area” (see how racism collapses class identification in interesting ways) to the police who would frequently harass me; even though I was “suited and booted”. Being the recipient of such a letter is that which induced my west–end–a–phobia to this day, but moments like the conference force me to reflect on that aspect of my acculturation and also to consider how such negative identifications impact on many of us irrespective of cultural or racial differences.

Lez Henry, reggae DJ and lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College, London

Huda spoke about where she had experienced abuse for wearing the hijab, as we mapped the city's hostile zones. (Andrea Rocca)

The most interesting insight I gained was about the invisible borders and boundaries that divide London. Inside the mind of many Londoners there is a mental map which separates a London that is safe and tolerant from a London that does not allow obvious symbols of otherness, be it of an ethnic, religious or sexual kind. These lines don’t appear on official maps of London, but they are real and part of the daily experience of many.

Nushin Arbabzadah, academic and writer

A place of safety?

After lunch Nick Wadham-Smith was speaking about Counterpoint’s work on diasporic cultures, when the performance poet/rapper shortMAN interrupted with live poetry and improvisation (organisers planned this but it came as something of a surprise to the other participants). His fiery performance productively disturbed the polite surface of the meeting and sparked off discussion of “black London”, its history and the experience of growing up with and through changing notions of black identity.

Having taken in London's hostile zones in the morning, we then turned to the qualities that make London a tolerant and attractive place for newcomers. Various reasons for the perceived tolerance that distinguished London were suggested – it was the anonymity of the city, or the neutrality provided by such a mix of people, or the way people respected each other’s personal space. Igor Tojcic observed that there was no way he could behave as he does in London anywhere else in the world, and that, having been shaped by London, he is a stranger when he returns to his original home. He described this in terms of being “a Londoner”, rather than belonging to a “community” as such.

Three kinds of people live in London, the transient populace, those who pretend to be Londoners and those who are born and will die in London. The transient population is a global mix and includes European exchange students, Australian bar tenders, careerist New Zealanders and Japanese tourists. Those who pretend to be Londoners are originally from the English provinces, the darkest corners of Wales and the wettest parts of Ireland, but quickly transform themselves into the type of metropolitan citizen that looks the same from Tokyo to New York, cool and detached or stressed. Long–term Londoners, meanwhile, often escape from London to the English countryside.

Nushin Arbabzadeh

This led into the contrast between the newcomer’s expectations and the surprises and discoveries of arrival. Outdated ideas of Englishness formed preconceptions of London, but rather than finding old English values here, what incomers found was a multicultural mix. One big surprise for Nushin was the number of hairdressers in the city. Fabio Santos had arrived as a Brazilian and made for Brixton because of the idea he had formed of it from Brazil as a haven of multiculture in the context of a “white” London. Brixton in London, Harlem in New York and Soweto were all idealised places, where he expected to feel at home. But none have come near to his mental images. Across the entire city, London was more mixed. He added that São Paulo and Brazil are not the harmonious multiracial democratic places they are portrayed as.

Fabio told us about what his expectations of London had been and how his work in theatre here has opened up ‘the world in London. (Andrea Rocca)

Different waves of migrants have brought different expectations and different relationships to Britishness. When Afro–Caribbean migration took place, migrants brought English educations with them and expected to be welcomed as British. Racist attitudes made them outsiders, despite their strong understanding of British culture. New waves of migration are less associated with empire and thus the experience of Britishness people bring with them can be very different to having – for example – studied Shakespeare in colonial education systems.

James Kennell said in this context that there is a need to create safe spaces for refugees. Assimilation is not a one–step process but there is also a need to avoid ghettoisation: any walls that are put up for protection need to be broken down afterwards, for integration. Kirsteen added that integration policy is often based on inflexible pictures of movement from being “alien” to being “integrated”, with a necessary stage of being with “your” community in between. In fact, there are many ways in which people integrate to a new society, and a mixture of models is needed, with “multi–communities”.

Nushin asked what integration meant anyway – was it living somewhere, spending money there, or, as a German, fitting in with bourgeois middle–class European lifestyles, even though there are different ways of being German? She was very aware that integration is often used to mean cultural integration, where it can equally be linked to income, class and other levels of participation in a society.

I wish I – and/or others – had laid more stress on unequal access, especially on gender lines, to “multiculture” or “integration”. One could say the people most “left out” by all this are older women from poor families: most obviously those from migrant communities who (unlike their husbands or children) may still not even get a chance to learn English or interact with people outside their households, but also older “indigenous” white working class women.

Stephen Howe

One of the main barriers to safety and the wider community is language. There are hundreds of languages spoken just in Lambeth, for example. Language is essential to integration, for being comfortable to express yourself, finding a doctor, or avoiding problems with police. But even leaving aside linguistic integration there can also be barriers to cultural integration. You might be trapped in the currency of images a society has of the country you came from. How can you escape images when you turn up to parties and the questions on everyone’s lips are about the war you’ve escaped? And how can one escape the spokespeople who emerge for your putative community?

Igor describes being a newcomer to London while John listens. (Andrea Rocca)

Spokespeople often reach for positions of power and authority through wanting to be part of the establishment and through their own insecurity. Self–selected spokespeople are not necessarily appropriate or constructive representatives of a community. So immigrants can be politicised and misrepresented in ways that are outside their control. They may be diminished by images imposed from within a community or images imposed onto a community.

Marie James pointed out how labels allow people to speak both for and against a community. While labels may be necessary in some respects, they also allow for the fulfilment of dangers to individuals and communities. By contrast, the arts can be a powerful source of self–discovery and reinvention, where preconceptions are broken down. While arts institutions can lag far behind change, as Olu Alake pointed out, the arts at the cutting edge can offer a space where people can engage on a human level, rather than through the preformed filters of society.

We all have seen over and over again, the outcomes that some artistic processes have achieved in terms of cultural exchange and multiculturalism. The arts enable understanding, experimentation and create opportunities for conversations to take place.

Fabio Santos, co–ordinator for Project Phakama, an intercultural arts exchange programme

Huda Jawad spoke about how London’s Muslims have discovered that they can no longer simply keep their heads down to avoid trouble. The change in the political atmosphere since 9/11 has been a wake–up call. Islam has been politicised for all Muslims, regardless of whether, as individuals, they simply see religion as a personal experience, without any need for judgement of others. The label “Muslim” has changed meaning. And yet there are too many forms of Islam for Muslims to create a united front or a “Muslim community” with which to respond strategically to the labelling and stereotypes that confront them. In fact, it was suggested that “community” is a comfort concept that doesn’t adequately describe the social formations and dynamics that individuals experience in daily life.

Nushin added that the problem that does belong to Muslims is that some Muslims claim a “right” to interpret the religion, which can be distorting. There is a dark side to the variety of versions of Islam. As to the idea of London being a Muslim city, Huda said that the spiritual aspect of the city is in the fact being here permits you to be who you want to be. Set into the historical backdrop of the city, a mosque doesn’t fit – as a Muslim in London, she would rather go to a church to be spiritual. Far from being secular, the city continues to have its own spiritual topography. And tolerance is one of its spiritual qualities.

Diversity and shared experience

As the day drew to a close, we turned to discussing London in the world - what it means and how it is perceived - as well as the world in London. Harun Hassan talked about the BBC world service standing for free speech and reaching countries like his own, Somalia, where tolerance is scarce. London offers the opportunity for diasporic media to have a positive influence across the world.

Marie James saw London as a springboard, where people could use the city’s resources, including free speech, before the seven–year itch made itself felt and they moved on, taking London with them wherever they went next. Igor suggested that London becomes redundant once you’ve done what you came to do, but while the experience ends, the idea lives on. James raised the question of how London might affect those who are unable to arrive and leave as they choose, while Kirsteen observed that, contrary to the sense that things are improving, Londoners are in fact becoming more worried about immigration and harassment of asylum–seekers is a daily occurrence. Diversity is increasingly criticised rather than appreciated.

If we were going to support a new, improved “multiculturalism”, what would we call it? (Andrea Rocca)

As multiculturalism becomes dated and inadequate to the experiences and meanings of London’s multiculture, what terminology might we replace it with? Respect, interaction and acceptance were ideas that passed around. Igor thought English “decency” captured what we had been discussing. On the other hand “engagement” might be more appropriate, rejecting distance and reserve.

Marie thought a single word would not be adequate, and would be subject to problems of definition. She put forward the ten commandments as an articulation of the values and ideas we might like to see in practice. “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” “Mutual acceptance” and “new society” were popular suggestions. Stephen Howe cited “parity of respect” and “parity of ridicule” as a pair of concepts that might work.

Could we export London? Would it work elsewhere? When we thought about translating London’s multiculture to other places, we saw how difficult London was – too big, overweighing the United Kingdom, a hard place to live where people are always coming and going. And Caspar Melville suggested that perhaps it is the way that London doesn’t work that produces its democratic respect. He wondered if it was the shared ridiculousness, experienced by anyone who has been on a broken down bus or overcrowded tube train, that creates London’s particular kind of social bond.

shortMAN interrupts and shakes up the discussion with his poetry.(Andrea Rocca)

Taking part in “Mapping London’s multiculture” were:

Olu Alake, senior officer of cultural diversity at Arts Council England

Nushin Arbabzadah, academic and writer, originally from Afghanistan

Harun Hassan, director of programmes of the Somali Television Network

William (Lez) Henry, one of the pioneer British, reggae/dancehall DJs, currently a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College

Stephen Howe, author and tutor in politics at Ruskin College, Oxford

Marie James, filmmaker and games–maker whose work includes audio diaries and photos of her trip to Jamaica to retrace roots

Huda Jawad, civility programme administrator at the Foreign Policy Centre

James Kennell, who works for Counterpoint

Sami Khan, trainee facilitator for Project Phakama, an intercultural arts exchange programme

Sarah Lindon, editorial assistant at openDemocracy

Ginny Marriott, project and research co–ordinator at Counterpoint

Caspar Melville, executive editor of openDemocracy, and commissioning editor of openDemocracy’s online debate, “Multiculturalism: translating difference”

John Nassari, photographer and director of the art association PhotoInsight, which is concerned with exploring issues of migration, cultural difference and identity

Ray Powell, president of the National Black Police Association

Martin Rose, director of Counterpoint

Fabio Santos, co–ordinator for Project Phakama, an intercultural arts exchange programme

shortMAN, a London–based performer and poet

Kirsteen Tait, recently retired founder director of the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees in the UK

Igor Tojcic, local government worker in London responsible for the health of asylum–seekers

Nick Wadham–Smith, Counterpoint’s deputy director, who has worked in comparative cultural studies

Nicola Wissbrock, openDemocracy’s business development manager, who was born in Germany and now lives in London

Original photographs by Andrea Rocca. Copyright openDemocracy