Governing and contesting marginality: Muslims and urban governance in the UK

Sites of Muslim settlement in the UK are frequently portrayed as poorly integrated and governed areas – a situation that is often attributed to the excessive cultural and religious accommodation of Muslim minorities under flawed policies of state multiculturalism. Through a case study of an English city, Birmingham, home to the UK’s largest Muslim population outside of London, I argue that sites of Muslim settlement have, rather, been subject to extraordinary and punitive governing practices. These governing practices moreover rely for their legitimacy on the portrayal of these sites as poorly integrated and governed. Nevertheless, whilst areas of Muslim settlement have been subject to spatially focused, punitive forms of governance, these have not necessarily been fully coherent and they have also been contested.