Italian Bengalis: Meet London's newest ethnic minority

Tower Hamlets is the landing place of choice for a new wave of migrants who lived in Italy but now want to try Britain

The Ahad family from Bow, east London, came to the UK from Italy two years ago (Micha Theiner)

The melting pot that is East London is gaining a distinctive new flavour – thanks to the arrival of thousands of Bangladeshi-Italian migrants fleeing economic stagnation in southern Europe.

An estimated 6,000 such families have come to the UK from Italy over the past three or four years, the majority settling in East London.

They might be a drop in the ocean compared with the estimated 250,000 white Italians resident in the capital, but they are making their mark in the Tower Hamlets Bangladeshi community and beyond, opening coffee shops and forming their own welfare associations to help new arrivals.

“They have brought a refreshing change to the community here,” Anser Ahmed Ullah, a community activist, told The Independent. “These people are truly European. It is much easier for them to integrate – but they need the opportunity to do that and if they just end up mixing with Bangladeshis that won’t happen.”

On the predominantly Bangladeshi Cannon Street Road in Whitechapel, squeezed between East London Hairdressers and Sylhet Newsagents, Caffe Italia – with its green, white and red hoarding – looks like one of the old-school Italian coffee bars that opened in London in the 1950s.

It has become a meeting point for Italian Bengalis, as well as white Italians who appreciate an authentic cappuccino at the reasonable price of £1.70. The small shop has been lovingly furnished with smart black tables and designer red chairs, imported from Italy. Downstairs, the brick walls of the courtyard have been painted with the green and red Bangladeshi flag.

Further East in Stepney Green, the British-Bangladeshi owner of the popular Café Fresh says his business has boomed since his Italian-Bangladeshi sister-in-law arrived from Milan and showed them how to make proper Italian coffee.

According to the most recent census, there were 110,000 Bangladeshi immigrants living in Italy in 2013. Many were skilled graduates who left their homes in South Asia attracted by jobs in Italy’s industrial north. But as manufacturing work has evaporated, thousands are deciding to make a second migration, to the UK.

Dressed in a smart Barbour jacket and leather cap, Swopon Homiedi’s story is typical of the new wave of immigrants. A chemist by training, he worked at a large chemical factory in Mantua, Lombardy for two decades before being made redundant last year and moving with his wife and two daughters to the UK. “When there is no work, it is really hard in Italy,” he said. “Here you can at least find something.” Even so, he makes sure his family continues to speak Italian at home, because “you never know what will happen in the future”.

Tipu Golam Maula, 43, one of the 18 elected UK members of Comites, the Italian government-sponsored organisation for Italians resident abroad, said: “People in the north of Italy got their passports earlier than those in the south because they had regular jobs in factories. That is how they were able to come here”

Mr Maula first came to Europe on a student’s visa to Austria. He crossed into Italy illegally, on foot across the Alps, in the early 1990s, eventually gaining citizenship. He now lives in Ilford and works as a minicab driver while he sets up a business importing Italian marble tiles.

Zakir Hussain, a middle-aged Italian Bengali who has a master’s degree in economics from Dhaka University, says British education is the main reason Italian-Bengalis are drawn to the UK, rather than Germany or elsewhere in Europe. “Bangladesh used to be a British colony, and it is still under English influence. That is why we want to give our children a British education,” he said.

Mr Hussain, who runs a Japanese restaurant on Commercial Road, is also president of the Bangladeshi Italian Family Welfare Association of Tower Hamlets, one of a growing number of organisations being set up for second-wave Bangladeshi migrants.

The cacophony of excited children at an Eid celebration at the Blue Moon social club on Whitechapel Road a few weeks ago was so loud even the Imam’s opening prayers could not silence the room.

The event, attended by more than 200 people, was organised by another Italian Bangladeshi group – the Bangladesh Italian Welfare Association UK. The organisation’s banner reflects the eclectic identity of its members. To the left, the Colosseum in Rome, in the middle the pyramid-shaped National Martyrs’ Memorial in Dhaka, and to the right, Tower Bridge.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for Italian Bangladeshis arriving in London is housing, with rents for a run-down two-bedroom former council flat in the borough now costing around £1,800 a month.

Integration with British Bengalis is not always smooth. The day before I visited Caffe Italia, some local boys had thrown eggs at the menu board on the wall outside.

“I think they are jealous,” said Belal, one of the baristas. “They don’t like it that we have all kinds of people coming in here; that we are different.”

Thirteen-year-old Maliha Mazumbder came to Tower Hamlets with her parents and brother from Rome two years ago. She says she has been consistently bullied at her school in Bow, where the vast majority of the students are of British-Bangladeshi heritage. She said: “They call me ‘Freshy’ and other things I can’t repeat. I have never faced this bullying before in Italy. I was shocked.”

As life in London becomes harder, many Italian-Bangladeshi are already moving on to the Midlands, others back to Italy or Bangladesh. Most, though, hope to stay.

Mr Hussain said: “My children were born in Italy. They are European. They don’t know Bangladesh, even though we sometimes go there for the seaside.

“They are studying here, after that they will get a job, after that they will marry here. It would be hard to go back to Bangladesh and stay there with our children living here. So we need to stay here. We have nowhere to go. One-way ticket.”

Connecting cultures: Continental flavour

The Ahad family from Bow, east London, came to the UK from Italy two years ago. Muhamad Ahad, who has a Master’s degree in chemistry from the National University in Bangladesh, lived in Brussels for several years before moving to Rome in 2000. His wife, Syeda, is also a graduate, with a degree in social welfare. Both their children, Maliha, 13, and Muzadin, seven, were born in Italy.

Mr Ahad, who speaks fluent Italian, French, English and Arabic, opened an Indian restaurant in Rome, before working as a waiter for several years in the Vatican City branch of the popular L’Insalata Ricca restaurant.

In London, he is working as a delivery driver for a pizza chain. Mrs Ahad is training to be a teaching assistant. She, like her daughter Maliha, is also a singer, performing both Bengali and Italian songs as well as hip-hop. Mr Ahad said: “With the children it is not always an easy matter managing all the different cultures, which is why we organise Italian cultural evenings as well as Bangladeshi activities.”