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Identity Politics of South Asian Enclaves
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racial segregation (1996: 232). According to S. J. Smith, in reality,
“[t]he origins of this iniquitous division of space can be traced”
first to “the economics of labour migration” and to “the politics of
social (including housing) policy” (1993: 128). It is thus too
simplistic, as well as unfair, to claim that residential differentiation
is a racial issue and that immigrants are self-segregating and
unwilling to assimilate into the mainstream society and culture.
Despite the complexity of the factors involved, and the fact of
social inequality implied in residential differentiation, Smith
attempts to shift our focus of attention from the reality of
residential differentiation to the political imagery of racial
segregation because she believes that it is necessary “to recognize
that the ideology of racial segregation informs the legislative
process in ways which further undermine the status of racialized
minorities” (1993: 129). When spaces are divided along racial or
ethnic lines, people can easily align the racialization of residential
space with the racialization of immigration, as exemplified by the
long history of the “practice of imposing discriminatory
immigration controls in Britain,” especially on colored immigrants
(1993: 129). On that condition, Afro-Caribbean and South Asian
immigration can then be “constructed as a threat to the integrity of
Britain’s cultural landscape” (1993: 132).
Furthermore, when the rationale is accepted, individuals can
be assigned to “‘racial’ categories as much because of where they
live now as because of their presumed migrant status,” as seen, for
example, in the so-called “inner city” that is “so conveniently
indexed by ‘ethnic mix’ or ‘racial concentration’” (S. J. Smith,
1993: 133-134). Along a similar line of thought, critical reviewers
of Malkani’s novel associate Hounslow with South Asian
immigrants and South Asian immigrants with the ghetto, as if place,
identity, and race define and complete one another. These
reviewers’ idea of self-segregation in racial and spatial terms
demonstrates that “all spatialities are political because they are the
(covert) medium and (disguised) expression of asymmetrical