ARTICLE
TITLE

Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West: Co-Opting Refugees into Global Capitalism

SUMMARY

In Exit West, Mohsin Hamid fictionally reimagines and universalises migrant/refugee experience by providing a realistic snapshot of the social, cultural, economic and political circumstances in their specific historical forms and reveals the psychology of loss, displacement and unbelonging leading to the victimisation of the protagonists in a foreign land. In order to critically analyse the victimisation of the refugee characters at a linguistic level in relation to the narrative of the West about migration and refugees in the twenty-first century, this study will focus on Exit West and explore the development of the central bias against migrants and refugees construed through metaphorical delegitimisation and discursive stigmatisation within the framework of the dichotomous construction of “them” and “us”. Over the course of the study, through a critical reading of the novel, this study will also discuss that the social, cultural and economic interpellation of the refugee characters into the dominant system in a western country should be taken into account within the context of the depoliticisation process of the refugee “crisis” in the world since apolitical humanist arguments, unable to materialistically articulate the problems, reproduce the binary paradigms of the orientalist mind-set and practically perpetuate the cultural, social, ideological and economic domination of global capitalism.

 Articles related

Giovanna Campani    

El artículo explora cómo la migración y las recientes llegadas de miles de refugiados en Europa han provocado una gran crisis política dentro de los miembros de la Unión, en un momento de crisis económica e insurgencia populista. Las dificultades para pr... see more


Abdelmajid Ridouane    

The category of “Illegal” immigrants, in which the present article is interested, is conventionally referred to in the discourse of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a ‘large scale influx’. To differentiate it from the UNHCR co... see more


Lukman Lukman,Arsyad Abd Gani,Hijril Ismail,Asbah Asbah,Junaidin Junaidin,Raden Sudarwo,Edi Edi    

Role of ALIT in handling EARTHQUAKE LOMBOK, in general, during times of earthquakes, the situation that occurs in children must stay in displacement. By looking at the conditions in refugee camps that are dense, hot, the difficulty of water supply and th... see more


Antonino Giambrone    

Given the complexities of education in the 21st century, how might transformative approaches to literacy, a critical literacy embedded in social justice, offer one way of responding to current issues? My interest in this question emerges from my work as ... see more


Caroline Fleay, Anita Lumbus, Lisa Hartley    

Public and political claims about the employment of people from a refugee background in Australia do not always reflect the research findings in this area. For example, recent claims by a senior Coalition Government Minister about people seeking asylum w... see more