Immigration in The Postcolonial Era: Mimicry and Ambivalence in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Arrangers of Marriage

It is well established that immigration brings about fundamental changes and the immigrant faces significant challenges in the new culture. The present research uses Homi Bhabha’s critical theories of mimicry and ambivalence to determine the effects of ‘state of mimicry’, and to pinpoint the ‘site of identity’ in the immigration experience in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Arrangers of Marriage (2009). The results indicate that antagonist’s (Ofodile) ‘state of mimicry’ continuously grows him apart from his wife Chinaza (protagonist) and intensifies gender inequality against her in their relationship. In addition, the results indicate that protagonist’s ‘site of identity’ is fluid and not fixed, and this place-less-ness of identity is because of the never-ending comparison between her past with the present situation she experiences as an immigrant.

A Voice: The Role of Child Interpreters in their Parents’ Immigration and Settlement Experience in Canada

Child interpreters are children of immigrant parents who have limited proficiency in the host country’s official language(s) and serve as their parents’ interpreters. Child interpreters, therefore, become their parent’s voice throughout their settlement in the host country. This paper explores the experience of Portuguese-Canadian immigrant parents who use their children as interpreters. More specifically, it investigates the extent to which child interpreters shape and/or influence their parents’ immigration and settlement experience in Canada. As I will demonstrate, my research found that child interpreters, as their parents’ voice, play a significant role in their parents’ experience in Canada. From interpreting at the doctor’s office to interpreting during the purchase of a home, the parents in this study agree that their immigration experience would not have been the same without their children as interpreters.

A Voice: The Role of Child Interpreters in their Parents’ Immigration and Settlement Experience in Canada

Child interpreters are children of immigrant parents who have limited proficiency in the host country’s official language(s) and serve as their parents’ interpreters. Child interpreters, therefore, become their parent’s voice throughout their settlement in the host country. This paper explores the experience of Portuguese-Canadian immigrant parents who use their children as interpreters. More specifically, it investigates the extent to which child interpreters shape and/or influence their parents’ immigration and settlement experience in Canada. As I will demonstrate, my research found that child interpreters, as their parents’ voice, play a significant role in their parents’ experience in Canada. From interpreting at the doctor’s office to interpreting during the purchase of a home, the parents in this study agree that their immigration experience would not have been the same without their children as interpreters.

Emigrar: Vale la Pena

In this short but comprehensive essay where prose bridges poetry, Pablo Marcos Martin summarizes the immigrant experience in six steps, and reveals the multiple characteristics and the multiple outcomes of the immigration experience. Originally published in 2006, this essay remains profoundly pertinent to the study of survival migration, including family separation, the journey to the border, consequences of choice and circumstance, and the possibilities for failure as well as for happiness.

Growing Up Indian, Becoming Immigrants

Chapter 3 focuses on narratives about immigration and reveals performers’ interpretations of the immigration experience and the processes by which they shape their transnational social realities. A close reading of their performances uncovers the ways that dharm (“religion” or “duty”) shapes the Guptas and their social networks’ understandings of immigration, adjustment, and the identities that both precipitate and result from these experiences. Interpreting the Guptas’, their family’s, and their community’s narrative performances of immigration within the context of dharm demonstrates their participation in creating identities, shaping community, and reinterpreting dharm in a transnational context. Two features of the Guptas’ immigration narratives—ambivalence and comparison—work together to help these immigrants and their families enact their imagination in co-constructing their experience as transnational.