The invisible flâneuse: European cities and the African sex worker in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

Abstract

Recent migration to Europe has become the focus of some interesting fiction produced in the last decade. One such narrative is On Black Sisters’ Street (2009) by Nigerian-born Belgian writer Chika Unigwe, which deals with the experiences of undocumented African immigrants in the Flemish city of Antwerp who must survive as sex workers in order to pay the human trafficking networks that brought them to Europe. However, the novel does not only stand as a testimony of a sad social reality but also as an exploration of urban space, urban movement, and subjectivity in contemporary European cities. This article examines the intersections between the protagonists’ use of urban space, their social status as prostitutes, and the emotions circulating about them in the city, since they will lead to relevant insights about contemporary urban movement and its literary representation.