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THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON URBAN REGENERATION: DISCOURSES SURROUNDING THE REPRESENTATIONS OF CARIBBEAN IMMIGRANTS IN POST-WORLD WAR II BRITISH PRESS
Abstract
This article proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the discourses surrounding the arrival and settlement of Caribbean immigrants in London. The theoretical approach draws on the interplay between theories on migrant memory (Derrida), discourse (Foucault) and spatial literary studies (Bhabha, Moslund) to examine the role of migration in the creation of the modern multicultural, cosmopolitan city against the racism encoded in the public discourse and the migration crisis reinforced by the British press. The research objective is to investigate the confluence of media representations, life narratives and fictional depictions of Caribbean immigrants in post-war London, as well as the ensuing changes and exchanges within the urban landscape caused by the flow of immigrants, in particular by the arrival of the first generation of Commonwealth immigrants on board the Empire Windrush, which marked the inception of a multicultural London and a superimposition of the cultural and spatial arrangement of the colonizer and the colonized. In addition to the ensuing hybrid spaces of modernity, it is argued that the discursive space generates cognitive maps and geographies of memory that offer an insight into the post-World War II spatial intersections and cultural disruptions, from the “hypermnesia” (Derrida) of the immigrants to their crossing of “landguage” (Moslund) borders. The narrative design rendered through a spatial lens advances an innovative portrayal of the modern city both as a geographical location and as a set of relations anchored in a socio-political reality.
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References14
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