Due to discriminatory restrictions on Commonwealth British citizens accessing public services including housing, the family joined the British-Bangladeshi squatter movement and lived in a series of derelict buildings in the East End of London, one condemned for demolition as a result of bomb damage caused by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz.

[8] As a teenager, Begum co-founded Women Unite Against Racism to combat the rising incidence of racial discrimination and Islamophobia in East London, including Millwall and the Isle of Dogs.

In an episode of the BBC World Service series Emotional Baggage, dedicated to her life and experiences of migration, Begum recounted to host Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones how the NHS initially refused to offer her parents access to treatment for their child, despite the family's status as British citizens.

[10] Begum described to the BBC how her father, a textile factory worker, felt he had no choice left but to hand custody of his two-year-old daughter to the Imam of Brick Lane Mosque.

[28] In February 2021, Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty announced that ethnicity would be considered a Covid risk factor in the UK, along with social deprivation and body mass index.

In a BBC interview with Robert Carlyle, Begum described the considerable racial and physical abuse to which she was subjected as a child by the National Front, which maintained a bookstand outside her parents' home on Brick Lane.

[11] In various discussions on BBC Radio 4 with interviewers including Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones and Samira Ahmed, Begum has described being taken to school with her mother and siblings, dressed in a saree and having to push through the Neo-nazi extremists outside the family home.