TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background to the Study
1.2. Statement of the Problem
1.3. Objective of the Study
1.4. Research Questions
1.5. Scope of the Study
1.6. Significance of the Study
1.7. Methodology
1.7.1 Justification for Choice of Texts
1.8. Theoretical Framework
CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Typologies of Migration
2.2 Theories of Migration
2.2.1 Macro theories of Migration
2.2.2 Micro theories of Migration
2.3 Reasons for Migration
2.3.1 Global Systems
2.3.2 Political Economy
2.3.3 Structural Constraints and Facilitators
2.4 Gender in Migrant Studies
Content
2.5 Gendered Experiences of Migrant
2.6 Gendered Experiences in African Migrant Narratives
2.7 Review of Related Literature on Selected Texts
2.7.1 Ike Oguine’s A Squatter’s Tale
2.7.2 Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Thing that Heaven Bears
2.7.3 Bulawayo NoViolet We Need New Names
2.7.4 Miral alTahawy Brooklyn Height
CHAPTER THREE: PORTRAYAL OF GENDER ROLES IN THE BEAUTIFUL THAT HEAVEN BEARS AND BROOKLY HEIGHT
3.1 Background of Dinaw Mengestu: The Beautiful Thing that Heaven Bears
3.1.1 Synopsis of The Beautiful that Heaven Bears
3.1.2 Role Reversal in The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears
3.1.3 Sepha’s Battle for Identity and Placement
3.1.4 Tucking Away the Past and Berhane’s Survival Instincts
3.2 Background of Miral Al-Tahawy: Brooklyn Height
3.2.1 Synopsis of Brooklyn Height
3.2.2 Portrayal of Gender Roles in Brooklyn Heights
3.2.3 The Listening Friendship
3.2.4 Hends Quest for the Breath of Independence
3.2.5 Emilia’s quest for friendship
3.3 Traditional Gender Archetypes and Transnational Life
CHAPTER FOUR: GENDER POLITICKING IN SQUATTER’S TALE AND WE NEED NEW NAMES
4.1 Background of Ike Oguine: A Squatter’s Tale
4.1.1 Synopsis of Ike Oguine’s Squatter’s Tale
4.1.2 Gender Politicking and the disillusioned migrant in Squatter’s Tale
4.1.3 Obi’s Success Finding Mission
4.1.4 The Dreams and Schemes of Uncle Happiness
4.2 Biographical sketch of NoViolet Bulawayo: We Need New Names
Content
4.2.1 Synopsis of We Need New Names
4.2.2 Gender Politicking and the colonised mind in We Need New Names
4.2.3 Migration and changes in Gender Relation
4.2.4 Beyond Darling’s “American Dream”
4.2.5 The Disillusionment of Aunt Fostalina
CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Summary
5.1.1 Summary of Findings
5.2 Conclusion
5.3 Recommendations
5.4 Contribution to Knowledge
5.5 Suggestion for Further Studies
References
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Due to the volatility in the political terrain in African states, migration of the citizenry has been on the increase daring all odds just to escape from political violence and victimisation and also seeking for greener pastures. Constantly, African writers have narrated their experiences and memoirs alike. Some of such memoirs are based on personal experiences of the writers while others are either fiction or observations of the writes. In all, migration remains a recurrent theme in the current literary circle and has been broadened with close relation to other fields and areas of interest such as gender, child development and so on.
In the politics and governance of migration, migrants are studied in the new nations of settlement they occupy. However, in according preferences and conditions of service and living, migrants are assessed based on gender. There are therefore militating factors in the life of the immigrant that arise as a result of gender politicking and gender roles. The migrant narrative is arguably one of the best ways to understand these influences. According to Marita Eastmond (2007;248), “Placed in their wider socio-political and cultural contexts, stories can provide insights into how forced migrants seek to make sense of displacement and violence, re-establish identity in ruptured life courses and communities, or bear witness to violence and repression”. The effects of gender politicking further come into play in the making of decisions “in the workplaces of immigrants, in neoliberal or welfare state policies towards migration or foreign-born populations, in diasporas, and even in the capitalist world system” (Donato et al. 2006: 6) as well as other areas involving the migrant.
Migrant narratives usually focus on international migration and the ordeal of the migrant seeking for a better self or a better tomorrow in countries other than theirs. And the narrative perspective is usually the scenario whereby the migrant writer that engages extensively in the literary preoccupation of telling migrant stories is a migrant or have been a migrant at one point in life. Therefore it is safe to say that the migrant writer usually writes from experience, that is, in fictionalising stories he or she may have witnessed while a migrant. So in effect, a study of migrant narratives reflects the reality of the migrant’s new milieu.
An understanding of what it is to be an international migrant is essential. In the apt description by Mary Chamberlain (1998):
International migrants are by definition global people whose horizons and allegiances, education and enterprise, family and friendship are both portable and elastic. What, finally, unsettles about international migration is that it internationalizes the nation-state and globalizes identity. Fluidity, not fixity, characterizes the migrant, contemporary nomads and cultural gypsies.
The effect of international migration internationalizing the nation-state according to Yurick (1995:205) is that “Newly emerging states had to make political choices upon which all aspects of national and economic survival depended and to position their autonomy not merely within a regional perspective, but a global one.” The outcome of this new global order is that “trade emerged not as .a precursor to territorial and imperial expansion, or as an economic lubricant but as a display of ideological finery, to sell and seduce”.
This idea of ‘selling and seducing’ in the type of trade that largely accommodates the migrant is an offshoot of gender politicking in effect. The purpose of this research therefore is to examine portrayal of gendered experiences in African migrant narratives. In view of this, migrant narratives and “oral histories can tease out ways in which gender differences impact on, or are impacted by, transnational lives” (Chamberlain & Leydesdorff 2004:227).
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Several decades back, studies on gender and migration has essentially focused on the female folk. The female migrant has technically been used to imply or connote gender in gender and migration based researches. Researchers in gender and migration field had focused more on female migrants owing to the assumption that women migrate to accompany or reunite with their breadwinners and in other cases migrate to escape the largely patriarchal society or seeing migration as another means of securing greener pasture especially for single mothers.
Nonetheless, gender is the biological reality that there are two sexes. Over time, gender discourses as it relates to migration has focused more on the female gender and subjugated the experiences of the male gender in its discourses. This has led to a dearth of critical work on the real focus of gender migrant experiences as encompassing both sexes. There is therefore a need to fill this vacuum and examine the entire migration process as a gendered phenomenon by studying in detail migrant narratives and the militating effects of gender politicking and gender roles in the lives of all the migrant characters they present. This study unlike previous researches focuses on both the male and female gender without downplay on the male counterpart.