Reflections on Migration and Chimamanda Adichie’s "Americanah" (spoilers included)
Social and physical geographic spaces are vitally important to people's values, knowledge, and well-being, so when people want change, they often move. Therefore, the regulation of movement has profound effects on people’s lives. The geographical implications of place, mobility, and migration policy are central themes of Chimamanda Adichie’s novel Americanah. Ifemelu and Obinze, the two young protagonists of Americanah, face social, political, and economic challenges in migration. Adichie criticizes injustices faced by migrants while also emphasizing the benefits of forming a liminal, transnational identity through migration.
Americanah blurs the popular distinction between refugees and economic migrants. Ifemelu and Obinze are middle-class Nigerians who attend university, but their reasons for migration are not primarily economic. Adichie (2013) writes, “Strikes were common. In the newspapers, university lecturers listed their complaints, the agreements that were trampled in the dust by government men...Campuses were emptied, classes were drained of life” (p. 120). Adichie (2013) portrays how constant interruptions of education are a good reason for migration, and Ifemelu gains a scholarship and visa to study in the USA (p. 122). The fictional strikes are based off real-life occurrences in Nigeria, where public university teachers have utilized strikes for better autonomy, pay, and conditions on and off since 1988: partially as a result, “In 2017, out of 37,735 African students studying in the US, 11,710 were Nigerian” (Unah, 2018, under “Overcrowded and unhealthy” heading). Quality education is a push or pull factor for many African immigrants, as “In the U.S., 69% of sub-Saharan immigrants ages 25 and older in 2015 said they had at least some college experience” (Anderson and Connor, 2018, p. 1). Americanah also blurs the refugee/economic migrant distinction in the case of Ifemelu’s Aunty Uju’s migration: she leaves Nigeria for the USA with her son Dike both to escape the family of the recently deceased man she had an affair with and to seek a career as a doctor (Adichie, 2013, pp. 105, 134-135).
Ifemelu’s success at college and happy relationship (Adichie 246) and Aunty Uju becoming a practicing doctor (Adichie, 2013, p. 212) portray how migration to the USA can bring benefits to Africans. However, Adichie comments on pressing real-world issues that African migrants face. Because today’s African migrants grew up in predominantly black societies, the importance of race and unfortunate prevalence of racial prejudice in America is unfamiliar to them. Godfried Asante’s thesis uncovers: “Eventually, [African immigrants to the USA] felt their race became extremely relevant...For example, the relevance of their skin color for job and school applications were at first incomprehensible” (2012, p. 47). Ifemelu’s experience regarding race in America parallels this description: An orientation registrar at her college doubts her English skills despite her having always known the language (Adichie, 2013, p. 163), she cannot find a job (likely due to discriminatory hiring practices) and is forced in desperation into sex work to pay her rent (Adichie, 2013, pp. 178, 188-190), and she is pressured into painfully straightening her hair for a job interview (Adichie, 2013, pp. 250-252). She eventually starts to blog about race in the USA, and in one post writes, “We all have our moments of initiation...Mine was...when I was asked to give the black perspective, only I had no idea what that was” (Adichie, pp. 273). The introduction to racism can be a shocking, harrowing experience for African immigrants as they migrate, so they often take on collective identities as black and African as a form of community-building. Kwame, a participant in Asante’s research, states “I identify myself as African. Because I have travelled a lot and I realized that there are some values that I can identify as purely African values” (2012, p. 32). This transformation of identity is seen in Americanah, as Ifemelu joins her school’s African Students’ Association that promotes a Pan-African identity (Adichie, 2013, p. 173), and is semi-autobiographical: Adichie states: “...when I first came to the U.S., I really didn't consciously think of myself as black because I didn't have to. I thought of myself as Igbo, which is my ethnicity. And then in the U.S...this African-American man called me sister” (“‘Americanah' Author”, 2013).
Migration affects how African immigrant children form identities. This passage from Americanah shows how child-rearing can create tension within African immigrant communities:
‘Dike, I mechago?’ Ifemelu asked.
‘Please don’t speak Igbo to him,’ Aunty Uju said. ‘Two languages will confuse him.’
‘What are you talking about, Aunty? We spoke two languages growing up.’
‘This is America. It’s different.’ (Adichie, 2013, p. 134)
This conversation between Aunty Uju and Ifemelu shows their competing visions for Dike’s identity. Aunty Uju wants her son to conform to American culture so he is viewed well by Americans and is prepared for success. Ifemelu is concerned for Dike because she wants him to value his Igbo heritage and sees the prejudice behind American expectations for black African immigrants. Aunty Uju supports Dike assimilating language-wise, or “discarding the heritage culture and adopting the host culture”, while Ifemelu supports Dike integrating, or adopting “the host culture...along with the maintained heritage culture”, (Onwujuba, Marks, and Nesteruk, 2015, p. 26). In another instance regarding Dike, Ifemelu begins to distrust his schooling when “he told her that his teacher sometimes gave him homework coupons” that could get him out of a night's work (Adichie, 2013, p. 138). Her attitude runs parallel to real immigrants in research by Roubeni, De Haene, Keatley, Shah, and Rasmussen (2015): “West African immigrant parents adaptation in the United States notes parents’ disappointment with the U.S. educational system, which they described as morally inferior and lacking in the ability to teach children to ‘act proper’” (as cited in Onwujuba et al., 2015, p. 27). Although his transnational identity leads to him facing prejudice (Adichie, 2013, p. 212) and mental health struggles (Adichie, 2013, p. 470), Dike enjoys an amusement park (Adichie, 2013, p. 147), plays high school basketball, and gains American friends (Adichie, 2013, p. 412).
Unlike Ifemelu, Obinze faces political barriers to migration. He is denied visa access to the USA after little deliberation, and therefore is unfairly shut out of his lifelong dream to study and work there (Adichie, 2013, pp. 287-289). Unable to find work in Nigeria, he gets a temporary visa to the UK (Adichie, 2013, p. 290): he overstays this visa, becoming an undocumented migrant, and eventually attempts to marry a Briton to gain residency (Adichie, 2013, pp. 281-282). This type of marriage is sought by real undocumented migrants in the UK, but the media’s popularization of the practice exaggerates its occurrence (D’Aoust, 2018, p. 49). Securitization practices that apprehend suspected undocumented migrants during wedding ceremonies by profiling certain ethnicities and people having few guests, lacking expensive wedding items, and showing “too little” or “too much” affection to their partner have been expanded (D’Aoust, 2018, pp. 50-52): These securitization practices “can be horrifying” (D’Aoust, 2018, p. 50). In Americanah, Obinze is arrested at his marriage ceremony and subjected to deportation (Adichie, 2013, pp. 343-344): “In detention, he felt raw, skinned, the outer layers of himself stripped off” (Adichie, 2013, p. 347). The article and novel suggest that the suffering and discrimination central to current UK bordering practices warrant a change in migration policy. The immigration process must be streamlined, avoid producing fear-inducing undocumented statuses, and prioritize legitimate security. Although Obinze faces troubles in England, his migration experience leads to a positive connection: a co-worker named Nigel shows him London sights and split tips evenly, and eventually Obinze repays his kindness by offering him a job in Nigeria (Adichie, 2013, pp. 315-316, 324).
Chimamanda Adichie’s novel Americanah explores pressing current issues in the socio-political-economic matrix of migration, while also commenting on the benefits of forming a geographically transnational identity.
References
Adichie, Chimamanda (2013). Americanah. New York: Anchor Books.
“‘Americanah' Author Explains 'Learning' To Be Black In The U.S.” (2013). Retrieved from
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=195598496.
Anderson, Monica and Phillip Connor (2018). “Sub-Saharan African Immigrants in the U.S.
Are Often More Educated Than Those in Top European Destinations.” Retrieved from http://www.pewglobal.org/2018/04/24/sub-saharan-african-immigrants-in-the-u-s-are-often-more-educated-than-those-in-top-european-destinations/.
Asante, Godfried (2012). “Becoming "Black" in America: Exploring Racial Identity
Development of African Immigrants.” All Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects. Paper 43. Retrieved from https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=etds.
D’Aoust, Anne-Marie (2018). “A moral economy of suspicion: Love and marriage migration
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SgGEKcWmOSXwRrIBdj0SAdRekswNejV625SK2Lz3EE2RaH5ol97CFJjx33JJgonmlFzbvYLPAA.
Onwujuba, Chinwe, Loren Marks, and Olena Nesteruk (2015). “Why We Do What We Do:
Reflections of Educated Nigerian Immigrants on their Changing Parenting Attitudes and Practices.” Family Science Review, 20(2). Retrieved from http://www.familyscienceassociation.org/sites/default/files/2%20-%20Onwujuba,%20Nigerian%20immigrant%20parenting.pdf.
Unah, Linus (2018). “Nigeria: Misery for students as university lecturers strike.” Retrieved
from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/nigeria-misery-students-university-lecturers-strike-181205095211545.html.