Migration and the Anxieties of Belonging: Diasporic Identity in Ike Oguine’s a Squatter’s Tale and Cristina Farah’s Little Mother

Abstract

This article examines the aftermath of the movement of Africans to the West. Many Africans have continued to migrate from their African countries to Western countries for a variety of reasons; employment, education, exiles seeking asylum. Basically, the diaspora has morphed from involuntary or forceful migration to voluntary. By and large, this movement, which in a way is a self-displacement and forceful displacement, impacts the diasporans’ attachment to their homelands and hostlands. The attachment or lack of it brings out the unbelonging and belonging to the homelands and hostlands. Diasporans are people who have migrated from their home of origin. These are people who are trying to assimilate and or attempting to settle in their new lands. This articleis a qualitative and library-based research which aims to discuss Ike Oguine’s a Squatter’s Tale and Cristina Ali Farah’s Little Mother. The study employs post-colonial and psychoanalytic theories within the interpretivist approach. This approach focuses on the meaning attributed to attitudes, relationships and occurrences. The interpretive method assumes that social phenomena are constructs that are negotiated and widely shared. This study focuses on the characters’ sense of belonging and unbelonging to the homelands and the hostlands as well as their otherization. This study explores the prejudices, discriminations and racism the diasporans are subjected to which culminates into the unbelongingness. Consequently, the diasporans are subjected to alienation, which is a prime catalyst for otherization, marginalization, exclusion and segregation in Western countries. Besides, the people in the homelands might erase the diasporans from their memories.