British New Slaveries in Chris Cleave's "The Other Hand" and Caryl Phillips's "In the Falling Snow": Diachronic and Synchronic Reflections

This article examines the analogies and points of divergence between my recent area of research, British new slaveries, and the concept(s) of diaspora. In today's Britain, new slaves include a wide range of migrants (documented, undocumented, refugees, asylum seekers) from a great number of countries; they are subjected to dynamic and dispersed forms of coercive labour, from agricultural work to sexual exploitation. Extensively discussed in both fictional and non-fictional literature, their existence is marked by spectrality and imprisonment, often leading to the emergence of tropes such as the ghost and the concentration camp (Deandrea). How far can diaspora, as a critical category, be applied to a multifarious phenomenon such as British new slaveries resulting from globalization? Being the product of the intersections and overlappings among many different migratory phenomena that are constantly being scattered throughout the country, British new slaveries might tentatively be envisioned as a constantly-changing coexistence of multiple diasporas that certainly question any rigid classification of diasporas into separate types (see Cohen). Starting from Tölölyan’s widely inclusive definition of diaspora, I espouse the need to escape “generalist paradigms in favour of an interrogative specificity (…) an archaeology of specific diasporas” (Mishra) towards a “site-specific understanding of (…) particularized geographical contexts” (Walsh). On these theoretical premises, I then problematize the complex relationship between diasporas and new slaveries in Britain through two key themes: the concept of community and diasporic Black Britain. Some of Safran’s criteria for identifying a diasporic phenomenon place a marked emphasis on group identity, community, ‘they’ – a collective vision that is shared by most diaspora scholars. British new slaveries, though, are characterized by a tendency to fragmentation and isolation of individuals, where both external and psychological factors contribute to undermine the very possibility of collective bonds (Deandrea). I discuss this through an analysis of Cleave’s novel The Other Hand, founded on an extreme atomization that explodes all possibilities for interpersonal connections. My second fictional case-study, Phillips’s In the Falling Snow, both confirms and negates the idea of a neat separation between the diasporic migrations of Black Britain and the ones of British new slaveries. In the novel’s plot, second-generation Afro-Caribbean Briton Keith Gordon negotiates the problems related to previous and later diasporic generations (his ageing father and his troublesome teenage son), while developing a fascination for young Polish girl Danuta. This encounter with globalization’s diaspora, though, is extremely difficult, short-lived and soon interrupted, allowing Keith to concentrate on his family, Black-Britain-related problems for most of the novel. Many critics consequently neglected that side of the novel, whereas I argue that Phillips’s subtext suggests deep and pervasive analogies between today’s British new slaveries and Black British migrations from the post-war period, showing how they may shed light on each other. Phillips’s novel, then, both embodies the divide between these two apparently different phenomena and shows illuminating glimpses about what they have in common, offering suggestions for both diachronic and synchronic reflections on diasporas in contemporary Britain.