Migration and Alienation

In this study, George Lamming's The Emigrants is read as a critique of colonial and capitalist ideological formations. The study contends that the alienation of West Indian migrants in 1950s Britain is not just psychological but materially produced by the economic exploitation of colonial Caribbean societies and the ideological hold of colonial education and culture. Most readings of the novel have seen it as a story of immigrant disappointment, of the loss of home, or of the failure of the colonial dream. Such readings do not provide an understanding of the material and ideological conditions that create the psychological and moral dilemmas of Caribbean migrants. This study has asked three questions: How does The Emigrants portray the way the economic structures of colonialism influence and distort the consciousness of Caribbean migrants? How does Collis's crisis of identity exemplify the ideological contradictions produced by colonial and class hegemony? Why does the novel represent alienation as a systemic rather than individual condition? For this reason the Neo-Marxist approach is used as an analytical tool. This study includes some of the most important theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and Raymond Williams. As textual analysis of the novel shows, the emigrants' investment in English culture and their estrangement from their own Caribbean identities render them figures of compromised consciousness. The ship voyage represents the rituals of a displaced people caught between colonial subordination and the illusion of cultural superiority. Ultimately, Collis will face his own ideological failure, personified by a personification of the total disintegration of collective identity wrought by the colonial system.