At home in Britain? Second Generation Migrants in Contemporary Diasporic Fiction

Abstract

This paper intends to examine the depiction of second-generation migrants and their identity conflicts in contemporary diasporic fiction by focusing on the struggle to belong of several characters in three British novels by Andrea Levy, Zadie Smith, and Meera Syal. Recent theorizations on the concepts of hybridity and belonging from the fields of postcolonial, cultural, and diaspora studies will be central in my analysis, which will provide interesting insights about the way second-generation migrants negotiate their identities and how this is articulated by the authors in the selected texts.