THE INNER TURMOIL OF MIGRATION: THE COLONIAL LEGACY, LINGUISTIC FRAGMENTATION & PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to amplify the reader’s understanding of how migration can profoundly affect the psyche through Brian Chikwava’s novel, Harare North. Using a psychological lens to break down migration theory, the objective of this essay is to investigate disillusionment, linguistic breakdowns, assimilation, precarity, and alterity that are the result of migration. Using Ernest Cole’s migration theory, Burke and Stets’s identity theory, and postcolonial frameworks advanced by Tyson and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o to enhance the textual evidence from Harare North, which follows a man grappling with the realities of migration. This essay provides ethical information necessary for considering immigration and serves as an intervention to pathways that leave them vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation. In conclusion, there is more to migration than the socioeconomic processes in which migrants face, which is the psychological experience which is faced by institutionalized colonialism.