In many processes of migration, the destination often assumes a paradisiacal status, embodying all the characteristics that are diametrically opposite to those of the place from which the migrant community is leaving. The ‘Promised Land’
is conceived as a place of abundance and opportunity or place of purity and hence where ideals and values held dear by the migrant community are safeguarded and upheld. The reality of the new homeland often falls short and
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thus arises the clash between myth and reality. This encounter of the perceived and the real shapes not only the psyche of the migrant community but also the built environment they inhabit.
“The myth of a promised land is a fundamental narrative in many identity constructs. Whether it be an imaginary place or a real country, a mythic elsewhere always presents itself in the image of a lost paradise, a land of
abundance and a better world.” (Anteby-Yemini, 2004, p. )
These disparities between the notional and the physical realisation of this ideal state, can be best described in the case of two migration processes dealing specifically with a migrant population ‘returning’ to a promised home land; the Jewish Diaspora’s ‘return’ to Israel and the migration of Muslims and Hindus from India to Pakistan and vice versa, after the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent. In both cases, history shows how upon arrival, the migrants found that the host community was far less awed by the appeal of a Promised Land;
the day-to-day realities of life and the state - provision and management of infrastructure, security and safety of the populace, etc. - very quickly overshadowed the achievements of various Independence movements for the host communities. And, especially in the case of Israel previously central religious texts and ideals were relegated to become issues of lesser importance; despite the fact that these had been anticipated by the migrants to be key points of reference within governance. This shift from the religious to the secular added to the deconstruction of the notion of the ideal state (Safran, different peoples that made up the territory that was to become Pakistan whilst limiting their right to territorial sovereignty (Devji, 2013). In his first address to the constituent assembly of Pakistan, M.A. Jinnah – Pakistan’s first Governor General - stated that “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are
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free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Yet despite this, Pakistan’s constitution of 1956 proclaims it as the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’ illustrating the schism between the notional homeland for the Indian Muslim where due to their experience as a persecuted minority all were free of religious persecution and the physical realisation of it, where definitions of identity were sharpened and took on an orthodox interpretation.
To add to this idea of actualisation of identity, whilst the Muhajireen saw themselves as the only true Pakistanis due to their often traumatic migration and sacrifices for Muslim independence, thus theirs was a community to be celebrated yet, their experience upon arrival was quite different (Verkaaik, 1994;
Zamindar, 2010). In this case, though religion may have been a uniting factor and suggested a natural solidarity between all adherents to the belief but, upon arrival, the diasporic communities were considered as migrants or viewed as the other by the host communities due to linguistic or ethnic distinctions.
“They came to the promised land torn and broken in body and soul but still hoping for a secure future. Treated and accepted as a refugee at the outset,
they earned a variety of brand names - panahgir [asylum seeker], mohajir [refugee/migrant], tilyar [a small migratory bird], makkar [locust], Hindustani - each carrying a different shade of commiseration or pity or scorn if only by way
of a joke.” (Siddiqi, 2008, p.119)
Thus, this sense of disillusionment and a betrayal of sorts experienced by the new arrivals, coupled with the host community’s desire to distinguish between the so called sons of the soil and migrants who were often economically weakened due to the processes of migration they experienced, has been pivotal in the isolation - both cultural and physical - of migrant communities in their respective Promised Lands. Hence, despite the proposition in the opening of this review that ethnic segregation is primarily of three distinct types: forced due to externally applied social prejudices, chosen by the minority community for cultural preservation and a default outcome due to economic limitations of the
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migrant group, it seems that often, segregation is a combination of all three factors.
To assume that the only party affected by this migration is the migrant community seems simplistic, there are expectations on the part of both migrants as well as their host community. This sense of expectation is summed up below;
“Because both migrants and hosts anticipate that the diasporic return of co-ethnics will be less problematic than other types of immigration, the mutual ethnic and social alienation that results is all the more disorienting, forcing both
migrants and hosts to fundamentally reconsider their ethnic identities.”(Tsuda, 2009, p. 7).
The hosts often expect an immediate assimilation or at least a conformist approach to life on the part of the new migrants, sometimes going as far as to provide services - language classes and equivalency training for professionals - to facilitate this transition (Remennick, 2009). Yet despite this desire to have migrants assimilate, often, as has been the case with both Jewish returnees and Indian Muslim refugees, due to their large numbers, concentrated in a few urban centres, migrants have gone through a process of restricted assimilation.
This resistance to assimilation is possibly due to their numeric strength, the establishment of institutions within their settlements to safeguard their cultural identity and liaise where necessary with the state, and the degree to which they consider themselves to be distinct from the host community (Safran, 2005).
Their reluctance to assimilate and in fact the emergence of a parallel ethno-nationalism different to that of the state has often resulted in a certain degree of resentment on the part of many host communities. The outcome of the rise of migrant ethno-nationalism, especially in the case of the host population of Sindh, Pakistan who received the Muhajir settlers at Partition, has been reactionary ethno-nationalistic movements of their own that are often (but not always), if not instigated, then at least supported by the state. The above mentioned political reactions are often seen by migrants as lopsided state policies. These coupled with the above mentioned occurrences of numeric strength concentrated in a few localities, Coakley (2003) suggests, are key in a
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community going from asking for their rights and an acknowledgement of their distinctness as a community from the host population to demarcating a territory of their own whether that is in the form of enclaves, ghettoes or actual certain characteristics that can be attributed to the processes of postcolonial urban development found in many postcolonial cities in Africa and South Asia.
For the purposes of this study it is important to identify what these are so as to be able to systematically differentiate between the unique features of city development and identity and those that are similar as a result of a shared postcolonial trajectory.
In many cases, cities in Africa and South Asia had been used as colonial administrative hubs and therefore had a significant military presence, developed as composite entity exhibiting what may be described as the ‘Dual city’
phenomenon (Lari and Lari, 1998). These ‘dual cities’ showed two distinct urban fabrics developing simultaneously, one usually the grid-iron ‘European’ city comprised of the Civil Lines, Saddar (cantonment) bazaar and barracks area, whilst the other consisted of a system of narrow, congested, meandering streets favoured in the ‘native’ city (Lari and Lari, 1998). Additionally, as the description above suggests, the ‘European’ city was laid out in distinct functional districts – administrative, commercial, communal/recreational and residential – with limited overlap between functions. The ‘native’ city on the other hand was often organised into neighbourhoods defined by the trades of their residents (Lowder, 1986) where marketplaces, communal spaces and residential areas overlapped creating a vibrant 24 hour environment. It should be noted that the two parts of the city would typically be highly segregated from one another, stemming from a desire to separate ‘native’ and ruling populations (Nightingale, 2012). Added to this spatial diversity was an additional layer of social diversity often associated with colonisation; many colonial towns were strategic administrative and trade