African women on the move : exploring female migration in contemporary African fiction

Uwandu-Mordi, Esther Chioma

Thesis

African women on the move : exploring female migration in contemporary African fiction

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Creator

Uwandu-Mordi, Esther Chioma

Rights statement

Strathclyde Thesis Copyright

Awarding institution

University of Strathclyde

Date of award

2026

Thesis identifier

T18139

Person Identifier (Local)

202269586

Qualification Level

Doctoral (Postgraduate)

Qualification Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department, School or Faculty

Abstract

This thesis examines the representation of female African migrants in novels by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, NoViolet Bulawayo, Chika Unigwe, Amma Darko, Zoe Wicomb, and Leila Aboulela. Essentially, the thesis explores the intersection of gender, feminism, and migration. African women’s migration is often shaped by intersecting forces of patriarchy, economic precarity, cultural expectations, and racialisation in host societies. Through a feminist literary analysis, this research examines how these novels portray the lived experiences of female African migrants, exploring issues of identity negotiation, cultural hybridity, gendered violence, female solidarity and empowerment. It also highlights themes of displacement, identity, agency, and resistance, highlighting the nuanced ways in which gendered experiences shape migration narratives. This study argues that these novels not only challenge Eurocentric feminist discourse but also foreground the specific struggles of African women in transnational spaces. This study also examines how African feminist narratives challenge dominant migration discourses and offer alternative frameworks for understanding mobility, belonging, and the negotiation of self-identity. By centring the voices of migrant women in literature, this thesis contributes to feminist literary criticism and migration studies, offering insights into the complexities of gendered migration experiences within African and global contexts. Also significant is the exploration of home and unhomeliness, as well as the possibility of return-migration. The selected novels reveal the complexities of migrant subjectivity, highlighting how female characters navigate cultural dislocation, racialised othering, and gendered precarity in transnational spaces. Drawing on transnational and postcolonial black feminist theories, this research argues that the notion of “home” becomes both a site of nostalgia and a site of contestation as the represented women struggle to belong in host societies while maintaining relationships with their homelands. The study also examines return-migration as a transformative yet fraught process, in which return is not only physical (voluntary or forced) but also psychological or imagined (as not all female migrants in the novels explored can return home even when they wish to, because of their legal status). By employing a comparative literary analysis, this thesis highlights the significance of literature in shaping and redefining African feminist perspectives within the context of migration discourses. The findings of this study centre on African women’s voices in migration literature, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on feminism, mobility, and the (re)construction of African women’s identities in diasporic contexts.

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