By
Ibrahim Aishatu Alhassan
Faculty of Arts, Nasarawa State University Keffi,
Nigeria
Corresponding author’s email & phone No: aisua445@gmail.com, 08069567944
Abstract
Europe occupies a powerful place in African migrant
imaginaries as a site of economic redemption, social mobility, and structural
stability. This paper interrogates the idea of Europe as a space of “better
opportunities” for African migrants. While Europe offers measurable economic
advantages; higher wages, social welfare systems, and remittance potential,
these opportunities are unevenly distributed and embedded within racialized
labour hierarchies and restrictive border regimes. African migrant narratives
have increasingly challenged this long-held imagination of Europe. This paper
examines how Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Helon Habila’s
Travellers dismantle the myth of Europe by representing migration as a
condition of prolonged exile, disillusionment, and existential unhomeliness.
Drawing on the postcolonial, Marxist, and feminist thoughts, the paper argues
that both novels reconfigure Europe not as a destination but as a liminal space
of economic exploitation, bureaucratic violence, and psychic displacement.
While Unigwe foregrounds the gendered commodification of African female bodies
within sexual economies, Habila exposes the precarity of refugee masculinity
and the endless temporariness of migrant life. Through close textual analysis,
this study demonstrates that the migrant dream collapses into a crisis of
belonging in which “home” becomes unattainable, fragmented, or reimagined
beyond geography. The paper contributes to migration studies by reading exile
as a shared yet gender-differentiated condition and by positioning contemporary
African migrant fiction as a counter-narrative to Eurocentric fantasies of
mobility and freedom.
Keywords:
Migration, Exile, Unhomeliness, Myth
Introduction
African migration
to Europe is often framed as a desperate flight toward economic survival.
Nevertheless, Europe remains symbolically central in African migration
imaginaries. This perception is shaped by structural wage differentials,
welfare systems, educational infrastructure, and remittance economies. The
question is not whether Europe offers better opportunities relative to many
African economies—it often does—but how these opportunities are structured and
at what cost.
The theme of
migration which occupies a central place in contemporary African literature, is
often framed as a journey toward economic survival, safety, or
self-actualization. Europe, in particular, has historically functioned as a
symbolic destination—an imagined space of opportunity shaped by colonial
history, global capitalism, and neoliberal promises. However, recent African
migrant novels have increasingly interrogated and dismantled this myth. Chika Unigwe’s
On Black Sisters’ Street and Helon
Habila’s Travellers exemplify this
shift as they expose Europe as a site of disillusionment, exploitation, and
emotional estrangement rather than fulfilment.
Exile is a
condition of enforced or voluntary displacement from one’s homeland that
produces enduring experiences of loss, alienation, and fractured identity.
Beyond physical separation, exile signifies a psychological and cultural
rupture in which the subject is cut off from familiar social, linguistic, and affective
structures. Edward Said defines exile as “the unhealable rift forced between a
human being and a native place,” emphasizing its permanence and emotional
dislocation (Said 173). In postcolonial discourse, exile functions as both
trauma and critical consciousness, enabling displaced subjects to interrogate
dominant narratives of nation, belonging, and identity (Ashcroft, Griffiths,
and Tiffin 9).
From a Marxist
standpoint, exile is inseparable from the material conditions of capitalism,
labor exploitation, and global inequality. Economic deprivation, uneven
development, and neo-colonial structures compel subjects, especially from the
Global South into migratory exile in search of survival. Such exile reflects
what Marx terms alienation, as the displaced subject becomes estranged not only
from homeland but also from labor, self, and social value. In this sense, exile
is a structural outcome of capitalist modernity rather than merely an
individual misfortune.
Feminist theory
highlights the gendered nature of exile, stressing how women experience
displacement differently through bodily vulnerability, sexual exploitation, and
domestic precarity. Exile often intensifies patriarchal control, rendering
migrant women doubly marginalized as economic outsiders and as gendered
subjects. Chandra Talpade Mohanty argues that women’s displacement must be read
within intersecting structures of gender, race, and class, rather than as a
universal experience (Mohanty 21). Thus, exile becomes a site where gendered-suffering
and resistance coexist.
In African migrant
literature, exile frequently signifies the collapse of the myth of Europe or
the West as a space of redemption. Writers such as Chika Unigwe, Helon Habila,
and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie depict exile as a space of unhomeliness (Bhabha 13),
where migrants remain socially and psychologically displaced despite physical
relocation. The African exile is often caught between nostalgia for home and
disillusionment abroad, producing mix but unstable identities. Exile thus
becomes a narrative lens for critiquing postcolonial failure, global
capitalism, and racialized exclusion.
Unhomeliness is a
concept popularized by Homi K. Bhabha, referring to the psychological and
cultural condition of feeling estranged both from one’s place of origin and
one’s place of residence. It describes a state in which the boundary between
“home” and “world” becomes blurred, producing a sense of displacement, anxiety,
and fractured identity.
Bhabha describes
unhomeliness as “the profound sense of displacement and alienation where home
no longer feels secure or familiar” highlighting how migrants and diasporic
subjects inhabit spaces where they belong fully to neither culture. In African
migrant literature, unhomeliness manifests through identity fragmentation,
cultural dislocation, nostalgia, and alienation, especially within European
spaces that remain racially exclusionary despite promises of inclusion.
A renowned African
writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o defines African literature as literature rooted in
African experiences and worldview often addressing themes such as colonialism,
resistance, identity, migration, gender, and globalization. In its contemporary
form, African literature increasingly interrogates transnational mobility,
diaspora, and the African presence in Europe and the Americas, challenging
Eurocentric narratives while asserting African agency and voice. This paper
pulls out two of Africa’s writers from Nigeria to discuss the experience of
African subjects who migrate to Europe in search for Economic fortunes.
Chika Unigwe is a
Nigerian-born contemporary African writer and academic whose works engage
critically with migration, gender, sexuality, and the African diaspora. Born in
Enugu, Nigeria, and later based in Belgium, Unigwe’s transnational experience
significantly shapes her literary vision. She is best known for her novel On
Black Sisters’ Street (2009), which explores the lives of African women
trafficked into sex work in Europe, exposing the intersections of patriarchy,
global capitalism, and racial exploitation. Unigwe’s writing foregrounds female
subjectivity and challenges moralistic narratives by humanizing marginalized
women, making her work central to feminist and postcolonial African literary
studies.
Helon Habila is
also a Nigerian novelist, poet, and essayist whose works examine migration,
exile, political violence, and the fragility of belonging in a globalized
world. Born in Kaltungo, Gombe State, Nigeria, Habila gained international
recognition with Waiting for an Angel (2002). His novel Travelers (2019)
presents fragmented migrant stories across Europe and Africa, highlighting
experiences of displacement, racialization, and unhomeliness. Habila’s
transnational perspective and experimental narrative style situate his work
within contemporary African diaspora literature, offering critical insights
into the human cost of borders and global inequality.
In On Black Sisters’ Street, African women
migrate to Belgium believing in the promise of economic empowerment, only to encounter
sexual slavery and dehumanization. Unigwe writes that the women arrive in
Europe “with dreams wrapped in hope, only to find chains disguised as
opportunity” (Unigwe 42). Similarly, Travellers
presents Europe as a fragmented space of refugee camps, border crossings,
and bureaucratic stagnation, where migrants exist in a perpetual state of
waiting. Habila observes that “…always talking about his journey across the
desert and his prospects in Europe. England is his ultimate destination, he and
everyone else” (Habila 127).
This paper argues
that the experience of characters in the two novels deconstruct the migrant
dream of Europe as economic Eldorado. Through a comparative analysis, the paper
examines how gender, labor, and displacement shape migrant experiences and how
the concept of “home” is destabilized within transnational movement.
Literature Review
The idea of Europe
as a site of economic redemption for African migrants has been shaped by
competing scholarly traditions: modernization optimism, political economy
critique, and transnational migration theory. A theoretical synthesis of these
perspectives reveals that African migrant “success” in Europe is neither an
illusion nor an uncomplicated triumph. Rather, it is historically structured,
racially mediated, and transnationally negotiated.
In the age of
migration, Stephen Castles, Hein de Haas, and Mark J. Miller argue that
international migration is embedded within global capitalist restructuring.
Europe’s demand for both skilled and low-wage labor produces stratified
incorporation. African migrants often enter segmented labor markets, yet the
income differentials between Europe and African sending countries generate
measurable upward mobility (Castles, de Haas, and Miller).
De Haas, in
particular, challenges deterministic accounts that portray migration as
failure. He demonstrates that migration frequently correlates with improved
household welfare and expanded life chances. Thus, “success” must be measured
comparatively and contextually. Even precarious employment in Europe may
represent significant economic advancement relative to origin’s conditions.
This political
economy framework complicates the myth of Europe as automatic redemption.
Europe offers opportunity, but access is mediated by immigration regimes,
credential recognition systems, and racial hierarchies. Success is conditional
rather than guaranteed. The transnational turn in migration studies
fundamentally alters how success is conceptualized. Peggy Levitt, in The Transnational Villagers, argues that
migrants operate within multi-sited social fields. Economic mobility abroad is
only one dimension of achievement. Migrants transmit “social
remittances”—ideas, norms, and practices—back to origin communities (Levitt
2001).
Similarly, Dilip
Ratha’s research on remittances demonstrates that financial transfers from
Europe to African countries contribute significantly to poverty reduction,
educational attainment, and small-scale entrepreneurship. Within this
framework, success cannot be confined to assimilation into European
middle-class life. It includes household upliftment in origin communities,
investment in property and education, entrepreneurial circulation between
continents and symbolic status elevation within transnational networks Thus,
the European “redemption” narrative persists partly because material
gains—however uneven—are real within transnational comparison.
Oliver Bakewell
critiques overly deterministic migration theories and foregrounds migrants as
strategic actors navigating restrictive regimes. African migrants mobilize
kinship networks, religious associations, and informal economies to carve out
spaces of survival and advancement (Bakewell 2008).
Godfried
Engbersen’s research on irregular migrants in European cities shows that
undocumented migrants often transition into semi-formal or regularized
employment over time. This empirical evidence challenges binary narratives of
total exclusion. Europe’s structures are restrictive yet porous. The
contemporary narrative of Europe as economic salvation echoes colonial
hierarchies, positioning Africa as lacking and Europe as providential.
Yet migrant
success destabilizes this binary. African professionals, entrepreneurs, and
intellectuals who achieve mobility within European societies complicate
narratives of dependency. They reveal that Europe’s advantage lies not in
inherent superiority but in historical accumulation and structural positioning
within global capitalism. Thus, the myth of European economic redemption
functions ideologically—motivating migration and legitimizing selective
inclusion—while material gains render it partially credible.
Most of critical
appraisal of these text by scholars are done in the frameworks of postcolonial
studies, diaspora theory, gender studies, and cultural materialism. They view
the novels as depicting migration not as liberation but as a complex terrain
marked by trauma, commodification, and existential uncertainty. They approach
Unigwe’s novel through the lens of social realism. Haruna-Banke and Gogo argue
that the novel foregrounds the “ugly life of four young girls… trafficked into
Antwerp” (2022) where they endure abuse and hardship caused by unemployment and
insecurity in Nigeria. This reading situates the novel within a realist
tradition that exposes the socio-economic forces driving migration.
Similarly, Akung
notes that the novel portrays young Nigerians fleeing harsh economic conditions
in search of better opportunities, only to become trapped in prostitution
abroad. Thus, the narrative becomes a critique of both the conditions in the
homeland and the exploitative structures awaiting migrants in Europe, Nalova
argues that African migrants in diaspora often “commercialize their bodies to
make ends meet,” with women becoming sex workers while men resort to domestic
servitude or sham marriages. In this interpretation, the female body becomes a
site of economic exploitation and transnational control which aligns with the
topic under review.
Shija extends this
argument by reading the novel as a modern re-enactment of slavery, noting that
the women willingly enter systems of bondage under the illusion of freedom and
economic mobility. His cultural materialist reading suggests that both novels
expose the paradox of African migration: migrants voluntarily enter systems of
exploitation under the illusion of freedom and economic redemption. This study
aligns with this argument which reveals Europe as a site of inequality rather
than liberation
Ligaga reads the
novel as a narrative of the “trafficked body” that exposes Europe as both
promise and failure in African migrant imaginaries. In this reading, Europe
represents an illusory space that promises liberation but delivers trauma,
vulnerability, and existential instability.
Moses and Ogbazi
describe the novel as a cautionary tale that exposes migrants to exploitation,
racism, and even death, thereby challenging the romanticized vision of Europe.
From a womanist perspective, Falode and Kehinde emphasize female bonding and survival
strategies among the four protagonists. Despite exploitation, the women form
emotional alliances that become crucial to their survival. For them, the novel
is a cautionary narrative about the dangers awaiting African migrants,
including exploitation, racism, and social alienation and warn against the
uncritical pursuit of Europe, showing that the dream of prosperity often leads
to exploitation and suffering.
Critical responses
to Travellers emphasize its
representation of migrant trauma. Akung and Sunday argue that the novel is structured
around narratives of “despondency, despair and trauma” experienced by African
migrants in Europe. None of the characters achieve economic or psychological
stability, reinforcing the text’s pessimistic vision of migration.
Shija situates Travellers within the tradition of transnational Nigerian fiction,
noting that the novel portrays immigrants caught in “the complex debilitating
web of multiculturalism and identity crisis.” Here, Europe is not a space of
belonging but of fragmentation and uncertainty. The novel’s episodic structure;
where different migrants narrate their stories reinforces this theme of
fractured identities and unstable belonging.
Gender critics
also examine Travellers through a
feminist lens. Deakaa and Hwande argue that the novel exposes persistent gender
inequalities and cultural practices that harm women, emphasizing the need for
social reform. This approach highlights the intersection of migration, gender
oppression, and social injustice.
Scholarly reviews
of On Black Sisters’ Street and Travellers consistently interpret the
novels as critiques of the myth of European economic salvation. Critics
emphasize themes of exploitation, gendered violence, identity crisis, and the
commodification of migrant bodies. Both novels function as cautionary narratives
that dismantle the romanticized vision of Europe prevalent in African migration
imaginaries.
Both novels depict
Europe as an imagined paradise that collapses into exploitation and alienation
and migration is driven primarily by poverty, unemployment, and social
instability in African societies, migrants become economic objects—sex workers,
domestic servants, or asylum seekers trapped in bureaucratic systems, and they
occupy liminal spaces where they belong neither to the homeland nor the host
country
Taken together,
the critical literature positions these works as significant contributions to
contemporary African diaspora writing, exposing the contradictions of
globalization and the enduring inequalities shaping transnational migration.
However, while these studies provide important insights into migration, gender,
and diaspora, they also reveal certain critical gaps that this present study
seeks to address.
The existing
scholarship reviewed above is largely united in its interpretation of On Black Sisters’ Street and Travellers as narratives of
exploitation, trauma, and disillusionment. Scholars such as Akung, Shija, and
Ligaga emphasize the collapse of the European dream and foreground migration as
a site of suffering, commodification, and identity crisis. Similarly, feminist
critics including Nalova, Falode, and Kehinde examine the gendered dimensions
of migration, particularly the ways in which African women’s bodies become
sites of economic exploitation within global capitalist structures. These
readings are closely aligned with the position of this study, particularly in
their shared recognition that Europe functions not as a space of liberation but
as a terrain marked by inequality, exclusion, and precarity.
At the same time,
much of the existing literature tends to approach these texts either through
single theoretical frameworks or in isolation from one another. For instance,
several scholars read On Black Sisters’
Street primarily through social realism or feminist theory, while
Travellers is often examined within the frameworks of diaspora, trauma, or
transnational mobility. While these approaches are valuable, they do not
sufficiently bring the two texts into a sustained comparative dialogue. This
study departs from such approaches by offering a comparative and
interdisciplinary reading that examines both novels within a unified analytical
framework.
Furthermore, while
migration scholars such as Castles, de Haas, and Miller, as well as Levitt and
Ratha, acknowledge that Europe provides measurable economic advantages and
transnational opportunities, their analyses largely remain within
socio-economic and empirical paradigms. In contrast, this study shifts
attention from questions of economic success or failure to the lived and
existential realities of migration. Rather than evaluating migration in terms
of upward mobility alone, it interrogates how migration produces conditions of
prolonged exile, unhomeliness, and psychic displacement.
What distinguishes
this study, therefore, is its reconceptualization of migration not as a linear
movement from lack to fulfillment, but as an ongoing condition of instability
and fractured belonging. Drawing on postcolonial, Marxist, and feminist frameworks
simultaneously, the study demonstrates how both novels reconfigure Europe as a
liminal space where migrants are caught in cycles of waiting, alienation, and
economic vulnerability.
In addition, this
research makes a specific intervention by foregrounding the gendered
differentiation of exile. While existing studies often emphasize either female
commodification in Unigwe’s work or migrant precarity in Habila’s narrative,
this study brings both into a single analytical frame. It shows that although
exile is a shared condition, it is experienced differently across gendered
bodies—manifesting as sexual exploitation in On Black Sisters’ Street and as bureaucratic and existential
marginalization in Travellers.
Ultimately, while
the literature reviewed provides the theoretical and critical foundation for
understanding African migration narratives, this study extends that
conversation by offering a comparative, interdisciplinary, and text-centered
analysis. It moves beyond structural explanations of migration to foreground
the emotional, psychological, and existential dimensions of exile. In doing so,
it not only aligns with existing scholarship but also advances it by
demonstrating how contemporary African fiction reimagines migration as a
condition of unending displacement rather than resolution.
Imagining Europe from Africa in On Black Sisters’ Street
and Travellers
Europe occupies a
central space in African migration narratives as both destination and desire, a
fantasy of prosperity, visibility, and reinvention. For the characters in Unigwe’s
On Black Sisters’ Street and Habila’s Travellers, Europe functions as a symbolic elsewhere, an imagined
terrain where the socio-economic failures of the postcolonial African state may
be escaped. Yet the novels dismantle this seductive myth by exposing the
violence, precarity, and alienation embedded in the migrant experience.
Contemporary
African migration narratives have increasingly interrogated the ideological
construction of Europe as a site of economic redemption and existential
fulfillment. Chika Unigwe’s On Black
Sisters' Street and Helon Habila’s Travellers
offer complementary yet distinct explorations of displacement, belonging, and
postcolonial precarity. While Unigwe foregrounds the gendered commodification
of African female bodies within European sex economies, Habila presents a
polyphonic meditation on exile, asylum, and the instability of identity in
transnational spaces. Scholars have read both texts as interventions in African
diasporic literature, exposing the myth of European prosperity while
complicating simplistic victimhood narratives.
Critics frequently
situate On Black Sisters’ Street
within discourses of transnational prostitution, trafficking, and neo-colonial
capitalism. Madhu Krishnan argues that Unigwe’s narrative destabilizes
romanticized migration tropes by exposing “the structural entanglements of
global capital and African female mobility” (Krishnan 112). The novel portrays
Europe not as sanctuary but as another site of subjugation. Upon arrival in
Antwerp, the women confront their commodification under Dele’s control: “Now
you belong to me. It cost us a lot of money to organise all this for you”
(Unigwe 17). This statement encapsulates the economic logic governing their
displacement: migration is framed as investment and ownership rather than
liberation.
Similarly, Ayo
Kehinde reads the novel as a critique of “the myth of the Eldorado abroad,”
arguing that Unigwe dismantles the ideological narrative that positions Europe
as inherently redemptive (Kehinde 54). The women’s debt bondage exposes how
global inequalities reproduce forms of enslavement under neoliberal conditions.
In Travellers, Habila complicates the same
myth through a broader geopolitical lens. Rather than focusing solely on
economic migration, he situates African displacement within asylum regimes and
border politics. The narrator reflects, “Every departure is a death, every
return a rebirth” (Habila 23). This articulation underscores migration as
ontological rupture rather than economic ascent. Critics such as Yogita Goyal
interpret Habila’s work as expanding African diasporic fiction beyond the
binary of home and exile, emphasizing mobility as a condition of fractured
belonging (Goyal 189).
Unigwe’s novel has
attracted substantial feminist scholarship. Chielozona Eze contends that On Black Sisters’ Street foregrounds
“embodied trauma as a gendered consequence of global inequality” (Eze 78). Each
protagonist—Sisi, Ama, Efe, and Joyce, carries histories of abuse, abandonment,
or poverty that shape her migratory choice. Ama’s recollection of incest and
Joyce’s experiences of civil war reveal how violence precedes migration; Europe
merely reframes it. The collective voice of the women further emphasizes shared
precarity: “We are all secrets to each other” (P. 92). This line suggests that
exile produces both intimacy and fragmentation. While the women inhabit the
same physical space, their psychic displacements remain individualized,
reflecting what scholars describe as diasporic interiority.
By contrast,
Habila’s engagement with gender is less centralized but nonetheless
significant. Through characters such as Mark, a transgender refugee navigating
hostility in Europe, Habila broadens migration discourse to include queer
vulnerability. Lindsey Green-Simms notes that Habila “destabilizes the
heteronormative refugee narrative by foregrounding sexual and gender
nonconformity within displacement” (Green-Simms 141). Thus, both novels situate
gender as a key axis through which migration is experienced and regulated.
In On Black Sisters’ Street Unigwe exposes
the deeply entrenched belief among her protagonists that “Antwerp would provide
her with the ability to sift the real thing from the chaff, to adorn her own
fingers with real shiny gold,” a metaphor for the irresistible allure of
European economic promise:
I want a gold on
each finger… I am very lucky to be here, living my dream (Unigwe 19)… She had
never owned gold and could not tell the difference. But this is another thing Europe will teach me. To
spot real gold. Antwerp would provide her with the ability to sift the real
thing from the chaff to adorn her own fingers (Unigwe 104).
This vision that
Europe is a space where dreams are readily attainable, mirrors the pull factor
of migration theorists’ accounts: that “unfavorable conditions in Africa push
women into the hands of traffickers, while the promise of economic redemption
pulls them toward Europe.”
I am in Europe. I
am earning my own money. I am even managing to put some aside. This should make
me happy. I didn’t leave any sort of life behind to come here (Unigwe 177)
In On Black Sisters’ Street, gold and money
function as powerful symbolic economics that shape desire, justify migration,
and ultimately expose the illusion of European economic redemption. Unigwe does
not present wealth merely as material aspiration; rather, she foregrounds it as
an ideological construct-a seemingly universal solution to poverty, trauma, and
lack-only to dismantle it through the lived experiences of her characters.
This tension
between home and exile is further highlighted by the characters’ reflections on
what it means to be made economically vulnerable at home: despite
qualifications and aspirations, women like Sisi cannot secure employment in
Nigeria,
Yet two years
after leaving university, Chisom was still mainly unemployed (she has done a
three month stint teaching Economics at a holiday school: the principles of
scarcity and want; law of supply and demand) and had spent the better part of
the two years scripting meticulous application letters… (Unigwe 21/22)
which leaves them
receptive to the enticements of traffickers promising opportunities abroad. Upon
arrival, however, variation of the myth becomes starkly apparent; the women
find themselves in prostitution in Antwerp, confronting a reality that belies
the dream of liberation. In one widely circulated line attributed to the
novel’s dialogue, the protagonist reflects that Europe long imagined in her
mind as “the place where opportunities litter the floor” is actually fraught
with disillusionment once lived.
Madam half closed
her eyes, took another long drag on her cigarette and slowly opened her eyes…as
if she was trying to size her up, a commodity for sale, a slab of meat at the
local abattoir. ‘Now you belong to me…Here, your work clothes. Tonight, you start’
Then with a flick of her hand, Sisi was duly dismissed (Unigwe 182/183)
While Unigwe’s novel
positions Europe as a site of harsh economic realities that fracture the idea
of home, Helon Habila’s Travellers
expands this inquiry into the broader diasporic experience. Travellers follows a Nigerian narrator
forced into movement, first from his home country to the United States, and
then to Europe, where he gradually confronts how migration and exile complicate
personal identity and notions of belonging.
The opening of Travellers attests to the fragile hope that characterizes
many migrant experiences: “We came to Berlin in the fall of 2012, and at first
everything was fine…” (Habila 1) though benign at the outset, this ordinary
sentence foreshadows a complicated reality in which the comforts of Europe are
contingent and often illusory. Habila’s portrayal of characters scattered
across Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom interrogates not merely economic
desperation, but the collision between the mythic promise of a new life and the
lived reality of alienation and displacement. One of the book’s most
often-quoted lines underscores the emotional cost of such a journey: “There is
no loneliness like the loneliness of a stranger in a strange city.” (Habila 47)
This articulation of exile is rooted not only in physical movement, but in the
way migrants repeatedly encounter unfamiliar social terrains that challenge
their sense of self and rupture the idea of Europe as an unequivocal site of
redemption.
Both novels also
show how stories about Europe from those who have “made it” feed the myth
itself. In Unigwe’s narrative, “returnees” herald exaggerated tales of
prosperity, boasting about household imports and riches, which reinforce the
perception that Europe equals a guarantee of success. In Habila’s work,
characters discuss the ease with which the West seems to absorb migrants, yet
their interactions with asylum seekers, refugees, and displaced people reveal
the precariousness and fragmentation of such hopes. Thus, home in both texts
becomes a dual idea: it is a memory of belonging and cultural rootedness, yet
it is also a site of economic constraint and social disillusionment. The
characters’ departures into exile, whether into Antwerp’s sex-work districts or
Berlin’s migrant communities become both a literal and symbolic negotiation
between the myth of European economic restoration and the reality of
displacement.
Conclusion
African migration
narratives frequently explore the tension between home and exile, often framed
through the illusion of Europe as a site of economic redemption. In
contemporary African fiction, Europe is frequently imagined as a space of
prosperity, freedom, and modernity. However, as many writers demonstrate, this
image is largely a myth, constructed through global capitalist narratives,
colonial memory, and unequal economic relations. Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Helon
Habila’s Travellers interrogate this
myth by presenting migrant experiences that expose the economic, emotional, and
existential costs of exile. Both novels portray Europe not as a promised land
but as a space of racialization, exploitation, alienation, and displacement.
At the heart of
both Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’
Street and Helon Habila’s Travellers
lies a profound interrogation of how the idea of “Europe” functions as a mythic
refuge and economic savior, an imagination of prosperity that draws
protagonists out of their homes and into unpredictable exile. Both novels,
written by Nigerians deeply versed in transnational experience, dissect how the
dream of a better life abroad is shaped as much by stories of success returned
home as by structural inequalities at home itself.
This study
contributes to scholarship on African migration literature and contemporary
postcolonial studies by offering a comparative reading of Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Helon
Habila’s Travellers through the
shared conceptual lens of the myth of Europe. The paper brings the two novels
into critical dialogue to demonstrate how both texts dismantle Europe as a
symbolic destination of hope and belonging. By doing so, it reframes Europe as
a liminal and unhomely space rather than a site of arrival.
It also
contributes theoretically by conceptualizing migration as prolonged exile
rather than linear movement. Drawing on Bhabha’s notion of unhomeliness and
Brah’s idea of homing desire, the paper shows that migration in both novels
results in suspended belonging, endless waiting, and psychic displacement. This
intervention shifts scholarly attention away from success/failure binaries in
migration narratives toward a more nuanced understanding of existential
displacement.
The paper makes a
gender-sensitive contribution by contrasting female sexual commodification in On Black Sisters’ Street with male
refugee precarity in Travellers. This
comparative gendered analysis reveals how exile operates differently across
bodies while remaining rooted in the same structures of global capitalism and
border control. In doing so, the study extends feminist migration scholarship
by placing women’s sexual exploitation and men’s bureaucratic marginalization
within a single analytic frame.
The paper
contributes methodologically by combining close textual analysis with
interdisciplinary theory (postcolonial, Marxist, and feminist) without
subordinating the literary texts to theory. This approach foregrounds narrative
form, voice, and symbolism as critical sites for understanding migration,
thereby reinforcing the value of literary studies in broader migration
discourse often dominated by sociological perspectives.
Finally, the study
contributes to contemporary African literary criticism by positioning On Black Sisters’ Street and Travellers as counter-narratives to
neoliberal and Eurocentric migration imaginaries. It demonstrates how African
migrant fiction challenges dominant global discourses that equate mobility with
freedom and progress, instead it exposes migration as a terrain of
exploitation, invisibility, and reimagined belonging.
In summary,
critical scholarship demonstrates that On
Black Sisters’ Street and Travellers
dismantle the myth of European economic redemption while articulating a
multifaceted account of gendered and political displacement. Unigwe’s feminist
realism exposes the commodification of African women’s bodies within global
capitalism, whereas Habila’s polyphonic narrative situates migration within
transnational asylum regimes and existential inquiry. The promise of Europe is
real—but conditional.
Works Cited
Akung, Jonas
Egbudu. “In Search of a Future: Hope in Despair in Chika Unigwe’s On Black
Sisters’
Street.”
Matatu, 2022.
Akung, J. E., and
O. N. Sunday. “‘Scattered abroad’: The Trials of African Migrants in Helon
Habila’s Travellers.” Nairobi Journal of
Humanities and Social Sciences, 2021.
Bakewell, Oliver.
“Keeping Them in Their Place: The Ambivalent Relationship between
Development and
Migration in Africa.” Third World Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 7, 2008
Bill Ashcroft,
Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin. The
empire writes back: Theory and Practice in
Post-Colonial
Literature.
Bhabha, Homi K.
The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Brah, Avtar.
Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. Routledge, 1996.
Castles, Stephen,
Hein de Haas, and Mark J. Miller. The Age of Migration: International
Population
Movements in the Modern World. 6th ed., Guilford Press,
2020.
Chandra Talpade
Mohanty. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing
theory, practicing
Solidarity.
Deakaa, Maasuur
Demian, and Terhemba Hwande. “A Gender Analysis of Helon Habila’s
Travellers.” Journal of Gender, Politics &
Development Studies, 2024.
Engbersen,
Godfried, et al. “Illegality and Criminality: The Case of Irregular Migrants in
the
Netherlands.” Journal of
Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 32, no. 5, 2006.
Eze, Chielozona.
“Gender, Trauma, and Transnational Prostitution in Unigwe’s On Black
Sisters’ Street.”
Journal of African Cultural Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, 2017,
pp. 70-85.
Falode, Iyabo, and
Ayobami Kehinde. “Womanist Tenets in Selected Novels of Chika
Unigwe.” Journal
of Arts and Humanities, 2022.
Gilroy, Paul. The
Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard UP, 1993.
Goyal, Yogita.
Runaway Genres: The Global Afterlives of Slavery. New York UP, 2019.
Green-Simms,
Lindsey. “Queer Refugees and African Mobility in Contemporary Fiction.”
Research in
African Literatures, vol. 51, no. 2, 2020, pp. 135-150.
Habila, Helon. Travellers. Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.
Haruna-Banke,
Laura, and Iorwuese Gogo. “A Realist Interpretation of Chika Unigwe’s On
Black Sisters’ Street.” Journal of
Critical Studies in Language and Literature,
2022.
Kehinde, Ayo. “The
Myth of the Eldorado Abroad in Contemporary Nigerian Migration
Fiction.” African
Literature Today, vol. 34, 2016, pp. 50-65.
Krishnan, Madhu.
“Refugee Aesthetics and Narrative Temporality.” Journal of Postcolonial
Writing, vol. 56,
no. 2, 2020.
Levitt, Peggy. The Transnational Villagers. University
of California Press, 2001.
Ligaga, Dina.
“Ambiguous Agency in the Vulnerable Trafficked Body.” Tydskrif vir
Letterkunde,
2019.
Lindsey B.
Green-Simms. Queer African Cinemas.
Duke University Press, 2022.
Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Black Reason. Duke UP, 2017.
Moses, Peter
Ukochovwera, and Ifeyinwa J. Ogbazi. “Japa Syndrome in African Narratives.”
Interdisciplinary
Journal of African & Asian Studies, 2025.
Nalova, Sarah.
“Commodification of the Female Body in On
Black Sisters’ Street.” Journal of
English Language,
Literature, and Culture, 2023.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
Decolonizing the Mind: The politics
of language in African Literature,
1986.
Okafor, Chinyere.
“Trafficking, Gender, and Global Capitalism in Unigwe’s Fiction.” African
Literature Today,
vol. 35, 2017,
Said, Edward W.
Culture and Imperialism. Vintage, 1993.
Shija, Terhemba.
“The Paradox of (Re) Inventing the West in Nigerian Diasporic Fiction.”
International
Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, 2025.
Unigwe, Chika. On Black Sisters’ Street. Jonathan Cape,
2009.
This article is published in ALQALAM: A Journal of Language and Literary Studies, FUGUS, Volume 1, Issue 2 - June 2026
0 Comments