Immigration and identity have been difficult topics to discuss for centuries. As globalization has increased, so too has immigration, and as a result, restrictions on migration have increased. Modern-day literature about migration is an incredibly ripe source of insight into the experiences of immigrants and their descendants as identity formation becomes increasingly complicated in a connected, globalized world. Ultimately, as we have moved into the 21st century, the increasing turbulence of migration has shifted the weight of the burden of representation, impacting people differently based on their generation. While older generations were more focused on survival and assimilation, younger generations have embraced their culture and language, not only being forced to act as a spokesperson for their culture, but inadvertently increasing cultural precarity, and thus, anti-immigrant sentiment. This essay will utilize various sources: Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, Mary Jean Chan’s Bright Fear, short stories from Agnieszka Dale’s Fox Season, poetry, and academic papers.

The turbulence of migration has always existed, but increased globalization has increased turbulence, thus increasing anti-immigrant sentiment. The turbulence of migration “refers to the breakdown of easily identifiable patterns in human migration” and that “contemporary migration is characterised by its multidirectional, reversible and often unpredictable patterns” (Llena 2). Llena, in her book on the fictions of migration, continues that these turbulences “challenge the traditional view of societies as homogenous, fixed and rooted to a specific geographical space while sharing certain common values and traditions” (Llena 4). As globalization increases, national identity becomes less and less important, leading to fears of what defines a nation. This uncertainty ultimately manifests itself as anti-immigrant sentiment, with many viewing increasing immigration as the reason for the degradation of a strong, cohesive national identity. Immigrants can retain their culture and their connection to their homeland through plane flights and the internet, and as a result, do not feel as much of a need for survival or assimilation. This sentiment is visible in poetry that asks “But me wonderin how dem gwine stan / Colonizin in reverse” (Bennet-Coverley). There is a marked difference in how older and younger generations have adapted to migration, with the younger generations retaining their culture and “colonizing in reverse,” as Bennet-Coverley puts it.

When older generations assimilated to Western culture, it reduced fears of immigration because it elevated whiteness and white culture as the ideal. Poetry from the Windrush Generation, a mass migration from the Caribbean to the UK, states that “The refugee’s heart often grows / an outer layer. An assimilation” (Shire 21). In the past, immigrants were first and foremost focused on survival, not on defining their identity. Multi-racial families would oftentimes attempt to erase their past and fully pass as white if they could. Evaristo writes “why wear the burden of colour to hold you back” of a family who is passing as white (Evaristo 350). It is viewed not as something to be proud of, but a burden. Even if one could not pass, they could assimilate, erasing all parts of their culture. In the novel, after Bummi sends her daughter Carole to Oxford, “Bummi did not subsequently expect Carole to return home after her second term speaking out of her nose like there was a sneeze trapped up it instead of using the powerful vibrations of her Nigerian vocal power” (Evaristo 150). Carole does everything she can to assimilate and erase her identity, though Evaristo notes that there is still a difference: “Carole amended herself to become not quite them, just a little more like them” (Evaristo 137). It is only through assimilation that Carole is able to achieve the highest privileges and powers of society, and even then it is only if she continues her perfect assimilation. “The more you successfully / assimilate the more you see / the terms and conditions,” and this truly encompasses Carole’s existence (Chan 20). It is an unfortunate fact of the past that to be successful, immigrants and people of color often had to erase their culture entirely in order to be successful.

Other immigrants did not erase their identity, but instead weaponized and almost appropriated their own culture for the benefit of the society around them, twisting the burden of representation they hold into a caricature of itself. In Buddha of Suburbia, the narrator notes that his father “was hissing his s’s and exaggerating his Indian accent. He’d spent years trying to be more of an Englishman, to be less visibly conspicuous, and now he was putting it back in spadeloads.” (Kureishi 21). His father is teaching yoga to the white suburban families around him and diluting his own culture in the process, simply for influence that he is unable to get any other way. Chan puts it precisely: “I have been trained to plunder my own / thoughts, exploit my deepest resources” (Chan 31). Are these immigrants truly embracing their identity if it is not for themselves, but solely for the benefit of the Western society around them, and only in a palatable manner? Evaristo even touches on the topic, when a character named Grace uses her color to her advantage to marry favorably and secure her future despite her husband Joseph stating “you’re Queen Cleopatra, the Lady of the Nile” and fetishizing her (Evaristo 390). It adds a layer of uncertainty to the situation: is Joseph simply fetishizing Grace, or is she using him in return to secure the future of her family? Yoga is an example of a cultural practice from India that has been diluted and westernized until it is practically unrecognizable from its origin. Literature ultimately leaves it up to interpretation whether it is even possible for one to appropriate their own culture, though it is clear that for culture to be acceptable, it must be palatable. 

Younger generations, on the other hand, do not have to worry about survival in a new country in the same manner, but when they embrace their culture, they are forced to carry the burden of representation whether they want to or not. In Girl, Woman, Other, one of the characters, Yazz, has an incredibly diverse group of friends who all wear their identities proudly, and strive to be different. They are described as “a Somali-looking girl wearing a blinged-up hijab, a rosy-cheeked milkmaid who looked about twelve, and a Kardashian-Arab type with a designer handbag, cleavage, heels, and black hair so straight and glossy it looked like a wig made of plastic”—and Yazz gushes that “she was thinking of becoming non-binary as well, how woke was that” (Evaristo 338). Instead of pushing away their cultures, Yazz and her friends, who represent Generation Z in the book, are blatant and in-your-face about who they are. They shoulder the burden of representation for their culture happily, possibly because they have grown up that way, and is the only way they know how to live—if you grow up with a burden your entire life, in most cases, it ceases to be a burden. Chan, on the other hand, writes about her childhood growing up in Hong Kong and moving to the UK, and she states “I spoke to a nice, white woman who told me she never knew ESEA people faced racism in this country. How I had proven otherwise, and she was appreciative. In that moment, I thought to myself: I’d rather be doing something else” (Chan 18). In the 21st century, it does not seem to be possible to avoid the burden of representation, even if one tries. One of Evaristo’s characters ignores his race in his work completely, asking, “why should he carry the burden of representation when it will only hold him back? white people are only required to represent themselves, not an entire race” (Evaristo 415). He makes an excellent point, but he forgets something important; the personal will always be political. People of color or LGBTQ+ people cannot exist in an apolitical manner due to how society is structured at this time, and even if he does not embrace his culture wholeheartedly like the mother of his child—Amma—and write a play about queer black Amazon queens, he cannot escape the burden of representation.

Increasing cultural precarity has further inflamed fears about immigration and national identity. Cultural precarity can be defined as “an ambiguous positionality that is influenced by a ‘fantasy of belonging’ in the face of a “rhetoric of fear” by a majority population against a migrant population” (Nowicka). An example of cultural precarity can be found in Evaristo’s novel in the character Penelope, who does not discover that she is ¼ black until the very end of the book when she is seventy and passes for white her entire life. When she is younger, she is described as “tall for a girl at almost five-nine, with the full natural pout and hazel eyes that sealed her reputation as a glamorous beauty at school, she wore her curly, strawberry-blonde hair in a style a la Marilyn Monroe, had a ‘light dusting of freckles’ around her nose, and acquired an easily-won suntan in the summer” (Evaristo 283). If Penelope can pass as white her entire life, then is there truly a difference between the black and white populations that is not made up in society’s head, Evaristo asks? Increased cultural precarity has only increased fears of immigrants and increased racism and nationalism around the world.

Authors and scholars are increasingly probing at the topic of immigration and asking us how to form a national identity in an increasingly globalized world. In a short story, Polish author Agniezka Dale writes that “I can speak English like a British person now. And that’s exactly why you want to let me go, isn’t it? Because you’ve lost control. You can no longer tell me from the others… So I am a threat” (Dale 72). She perfectly sums up the increasing fear of immigration: either immigrants embrace their culture and are so different that they do not retain the general national identity of the culture they immigrate to, or it is impossible to tell that they are immigrants in the first place. Brexit, which largely targeted immigrants from the EU, revealed a hidden truth: it showed that “anybody could be an enemy, for otherness is not a matter of a particular skin color, religion, or legal status” (Nowicka). If it is impossible to tell between us and them, does this boundary even exist? If boundaries do not exist outside of the heads of the population, as is becoming increasingly evident, what community are people meant to cling to? Throughout history, humans have needed a community to belong to to create meaning for themselves: if immigrants in the West do not simply identify themselves as British or American, but as Indian-American, or Polish living in Britain, then what is the new national identity?

The turbulence of migration has always existed, but its inevitable increasing visibility has not only increased the burden of migration on people of color but also increased cultural precarity and anti-immigrant sentiment. Whereas before immigrants were focused on survival and assimilation, now they must focus on representing their culture whether they would like to or not, and face the fears of “other” that have only increased. Brexit is only one example of the backlash to increasing cultural precarity. Immigrants and people of color are increasingly forced to reside in what scholars describe as zones of instability. There is no going back from globalization. National identity will slowly give way to a more global identity, but it will take time to adjust, and we are living in an era of heightened fear and political polarization as we adjust to increasing instability. Humans must discover how to define themselves in a globalized world and adjust their self-identity to match if we are to survive.

Bibliography

Bennet-Coverley, Louise. “Colonization in Reverse.” Www.poetrybyheart.org.uk, 1966, http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/colonization-in-reverse.

Llena, Carmen Zamorano. Fictions of Migration in Contemporary Britain and Ireland. Springer Nature, 2020.

Dale, Agnieszka. Fox Season. Jantar Publishing Ltd, 2017.

Evaristo, Bernardine. Girl, Woman, Other. 2019. Penguin Books, 2019.

Kureishi, Hanif. The Buddha of Suburbia. Penguin Books, 1991.

Chan, Mary Jean. Bright Fear. Faber & Faber, 2023.

Nowicka, Magdalena. “Cultural Precarity: Migrants’ Positionalities in the Light of Current Anti-Immigrant Populism in Europe.” Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 39, no. 5, Aug. 2018, pp. 527–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2018.1508006.

Shire, Warsan. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head. Random House, 2022.