Shifting Borderscapes of London in Monica Ali’s Narrative

The chapter highlights how contemporary British fiction contributes to the conceptualisation and representation of new borderscapes in the global city of London. Relying on a cultural studies approach enriched with a sociological bent, the paper concentrates on the theme of border-crossing through an analysis of In the Kitchen (2009), the third novel by the black British writer Monica Ali. Unlike her first novel Brick Lane (2003), In the Kitchen deals with migration issues affecting subjects outside the familiar scope of the Bangladeshi community, while playing with the narrative conventions of crime fiction. Among asylum seekers, economic migrants and illegal workers coming from geopolitical contexts other than former British colonies, Ali’s novel maps the emergence of new forms of exclusion (i.e. xeno-racism) within Fortress Europe itself, describing the social impact of immigration policies under the last phase of New Labour and somehow anticipating what can be described as the stricter border controlenforced by the Cameron agenda. The novel’s setting revolves around two main spatial poles, the big cosmopolitan hotel in London where the main character works as a chef, and the post-industrial city in Northern England where he was born. While these two universes could once emblematise the centre and the periphery, anchoring life geographies to stable points of reference and to communities with an apparently coherent identity, the unpredictable flows of globalisation no longer respect recognisable borders, thus urging a radical rethinking of the notions of belonging and citizenship which lie at the heart of In the Kitchen.