Doublespeaking American Immigration: The Language and Politics of Asylum-Seeking in Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers

Abstract

Drawing illustration from Imbolo MBue’s Behold the Dreamers, this paper demonstrates that postindependence socioeconomic and politico-cultural disillusionment caused by the rise in a crop of populist or strongmen African leaders, conflicts, dictatorship and the general failure of governance have exacerbated poverty and African youths have been “dying to reach Europe” by hazardously crossing the Libyan Desert, the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The paper argues that once in Europe or the US, African immigrants encounter convoluted immigration laws and nonchalant employers that doublethink and doublespeak them into disenfranchisement and marginalization thereby rendering their asylum seeking difficult and in most cases, impossible. The paper concludes that immigration to Europe or the US both kindles and kills hope and (re)builds and destroys lives and that the coming to power of leaders such as Donald Trump (with very strong anti-immigration policies) has proven that the US border is gradually becoming as unsafe as the sweltering heat of the Libyan Desert and the tempests of the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.