Dench, G., K. Gavron, et al. (2006). The New East End: kinship, race and conflict. London, Profile Books.
The New East End is a repeat study of the famous Bethnal Green study 'Family and Kinship in East London' (Young and Willmott, 1957), involving one of the same original authors (Michael Young) as well as two other researchers. Following the methods of the original Bethnal Green study, this repeat study uses a range of mixed methods including a randomised sample survey, in-depth qualitative interviews, policy analysis, visual methods, and secondary analysis of reports and documents. The original study set out to explore the impacts of housing relocation from the East End residential inner city community of Bethnal Green to the outer estates of London, but ended up focusing primarily on the importance of strong kinship relations within the white working class community, based on extended families living in close proximity to one another, seeing one another regularly, and held together by strong mothers. By contrast, this follow-up study of the New East End focuses on the impacts of post-war destruction, the migration of Bangladeshi families to the East End, and current conflicts over housing, benefits and services between Bangladeshi families and 'traditional' white working class families. The authors argue that these conflicts have been exacerbated by the influx of students and middle classes to the area, and challenges liberal debates which tend to portray the white working class as racist, rather than understanding the complex social, economic and historical factors shaping white working class perspectives. One of the most controversial claims of this study was that white perceptions of disadvantage in relation to public housing allocation had some basis in fact, which poses an interesting methodological and epistemological issue about the role of perceptions in social research. Another book which explores neighbourhood relations in the End End of London during a similar time period, using similar methods but with different perspectives and conclusions, is Mumford and Power*'s East Enders: Family and Community in East London.