Claiming Space in a Hostile Environment: Journeys of Migration

Abstract

This hybrid article combines memoir, poetry and cultural and literary critique to examine the multiple hostile environments faced by Black migrants to Europe in the twentieth century. Emily Zobel Marshall draws from her own family history alongside an analysis of established ‘Windrush’ literary narratives to argue that narratives of Caribbean migration are competing, complex and multifaced when framed within a wider, more transnational field. She bridges her analysis with her own poetry and demonstrates, through the work of the David Oluwale Memorial Association in Leeds, how inroads can been made into so-called hostile environments, past and present, by communities standing together.