Migration and Diaspora Experiences in Selvon’s Lonely Londoners and Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen

    Abstract

    Literature does not exist in a vacuum as it projects the socio-political and economic issues in human society. Diaspora literature as a sub-genre of literature beams its search light on either forceful enslavement of individuals from their homeland or voluntary migration from homeland to another world in search of greener pastures. The crux of this paper is to showcase the complexity of diasporic experiences ranging from identity crisis and /or double consciousness. In order to foreground this, Samuel Selvon’s Lonely Londoners (1956) and Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen (1974) are employed as it explicates the complexity of identity crises. The texts also serve as renaissance to the on-going influx of blacks and West Indians to the Western World. The study adopts Postcolonialism as theoretical basis for assessment in depicting how the characters in the selected texts grapple with issues of identity, race, alienation and nostalgic feelings in the new homeland.The study observes the authors come from different climate yet same setting, present valuable insights into racial complexity struggle in multicultural societies as individual migrant navigate through this conflict by hybridity and social cohesion.

    Key Words: Diaspora, Diapora Literature, Migration, Postcolonialism, Hybridity, Mimicry 

    DOI: 10.36349/alqajolls.2026.v01i02.035

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    author/Hanafi Monsur Alabere, Issa Aishat & Ibrahim Balikis

    journal/AL-QALAM JLLS 1(2) | June 2026

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