Complaints, Sensitivities and Responsibility: An Ethnographic Investigation into the Debates Concerning the Care of Bangladeshi Mothers in the East End
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2008.00492.x |
| Author | Laura Griffith |
| Date | 01 December 2008 |
| Published date | 01 December 2008 |
Complaints, Sensitivities and
Responsibility: An Ethnographic
Investigation into the Debates
Concerning the Care of Bangladeshi
Mothers in the East End
Laura Griffith*
ABSTRACT
The subject of this paper is a maternity services awareness day organised by
a community centre in the East End of London. In what I interpret as the
fractured political landscape of Tower Hamlets (in East London), this event
formed a rare focus for the diverse groups of people I worked with in my
fieldwork and provides a focal point through which to reflect upon issues of
diaspora, culture and health care. This paper attempts to analyse the public
voices of a diasporic community which were challenging mainstream health
provision. In this paper, I suggest that the voicing of complaint both reified
and contested the needs of Bangladeshi mothers specifically, yet did not alter
the services provided. The ways in which ‘‘culture’’ is used or discarded as a
critical platform on which to base claims about health care are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Tower Hamlets forms part of London’s well-known East End and has
long been associated with immigration, radicalism and poverty. When I
first started working in Tower Hamlets, a woman who had been work-
ing in the health services there for sixteen years told me:
You will either run a mile and drop out after a couple of months or stay
here and never leave.
* Division of Health in the Community, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick.
Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, England.
2008 The Author
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Journal Compilation 2008 IOM
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, International Migration Vol. 46 (5) 2008
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doi:10.1111/j.1468-2435.2008.00492.x
What I interpreted she was implying here was that Tower Hamlets had
the feel of an area beset by insoluble problems and political infighting,
but was also a place of dedicated and radical activists. Over time, East
End ‘‘radicals’’ have included Protestant Huguenot refugees from France
in the late 1600s and early 1700s, Eastern European Jews in the latter
part of the 19
th
century, and in the 20
th
century, Bengali Muslim immi-
grants from Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). The current Banglade-
shi population of Tower Hamlets stood at 65,553 in the 2001 census
(34% of the total population) and is concentrated in specific areas, on
particular housing estates and streets, occupying what Eade et al. have
described as ‘‘encapsulated’’ communities (Eade, Vamplew, and Peach,
1996). In political terms, the Bangladeshi population of Tower Hamlets
has various elements. Debates concerning poverty, racism and exclusion
were dominated by left-wing secularists in the 1980s (Eade and Garbin,
2002) and are now argued by many commentators to be taken over by
Islamist groups which are increasing in power and dominance (Glynn,
2002). Despite the well documented divisions amongst Bangladeshi and
Pakistani populations in the United Kingdom mainly stemming from
the Liberation war in 1971, other commentators have suggested that the
emergence of a South Asian Muslim identity is not based upon the
increase of Islamic fundamentalism ‘‘but becomes predominant, para-
doxically, as people become British’’ (Samad, 1994: 17).
Most research on the Bangladeshi diaspora in the East End has concen-
trated upon male public and political identities (Eade, 1989, 1990 are
just two examples). However, other work has investigated Bangladeshi
women’s roles in public and private spheres (Ahmed, 2005; Gardner,
2002; Gavron, 1997). What this paper aims to do is to analyse the ways
in which Bangladeshis (and briefly Somalis) are included and⁄or margin-
alized by mainstream health services provided by the National Health
Service (NHS) in the East End. In doing so, it is possible to assess the
formation of Bangladeshi women as a cohesive political category. It will
also investigate the strategic and tactical use of the term ‘‘culture’’ in
debates about poverty, social exclusion and the provision of medical
care. The diasporic Bangladeshi population in East London exists in a
rapidly changing social geography and events such as the Access All
Areas day act as one of many places in which notions of community
identity are developed and defined.
The Access All Areas event was one of many I attended in 18 months
of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2003-2004. Other aspects of
the research included policy work and interviews with mothers, and
144 Griffith
2008 The Author
Journal Compilation 2008 IOM
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