ABSTRACT
Most of our wives rely on other people all the time. I didn’t have a car before and I had to ask someone to make a shopping for me. Now I bought a car but if I could have good transportation otherwise I would not buy a car. (Somali Muslim man, 29 years old, Easton, Bristol accompanied by wife in burkah wearing the veil)
67% of all people from minority ethnic groups live in the 88 most deprived local authority districts compared with 40% of the general population. (DfT Race Equality Scheme 2003-2005, 2003 @ https://www.dft.gov.uk/ stellent/groups/dft_mobility/documents/page/dft_mobility_02239601.hcsp#P28_549)
As well as significant areas of deprivation which are often poorly served by the transport networks, specific groups amongst Londoners are excluded from fully benefiting from transport services. These can include, for different reasons, women, young people, older people, people on low incomes, black and ethnic minority people, and most acutely of all, disabled people. (Draft Transport Strategy for London, 2003 @ https://www.london.gov.uk/ approot/mayor/strategies/transport/pdf/2challenges.pdf)
In mainstream British transport analysis, the assumption is that all citizens have equal and ready access to public movement and public space. The advent of a multi-cultural society has not been accompanied by any refinement of the analysis of individual entitlement to movement. Yet within the United Kingdom for example, there are minorities present who practice the social seclusion of women. The number of women secluded in Britain has neither been investigated nor is it known. Whilst the research into transport and social exclusion in Bristol and in Nottingham did not provide examples of the absolute seclusion of women, references are made by respondents to the partial seclusion of Asian women. A Muslim woman in Bristol reports on her preference for using Muslim driven taxis whilst an Asian shopkeeper in Bristol reports on the chaperon practices surrounding his daughter’s mobility even as a professional woman. A Somali man reports on shopping being undertaken for his family not by his wife, as we would find in mainstream British society, but by himself or others performing the service for him. Significantly, in the research Asian women
showed a propensity to be car passengers. Examining Asian women’s travel behaviour as car passengers has an added importance if viewed from the perspective of cultural practices of seclusion within the Asian Islamic community. The fear of assault in the transport environment for Asian women is not simply that of physical assault but of the culturally feared and proscribed assault on honour.
