Film short abstract:

I am concerned about the identity crises that I assume migrants face and the various methods employed in resolving them. Using the Yorùbá diaspora in Peckham (in South London) as a study lens, I explored W.E.B Du Bois’ double-consciousness theory.

Film long abstract:

I am concerned about the identity crises that I assume migrants face and the various methods employed in resolving them. Using the Yorùbá diaspora in Peckham (a South London district within the London Borough of

Southwark) as a study lens, I explored W.E.B Du Bois’ double-consciousness theory as a panacea and corrective lens to understanding the problems of a multicultural world.

During my fieldwork, the stories of second and third-generation Yorùbá British-Nigerians spoke of struggles and victories, losses and gains, letting go and moving on, and how London’s hybridised environment shaped their

identities. In this third space, they found ways to hierarchise parts of their identities in moments or situations that demanded it, and these different parts were not in conflict. To my interlocutors, identity is seen as a performance. I was astounded.

My astonishment led me to find the principle of elasticity in the Yorùbá philosophy. A philosophy that I found serviceable enough to strive to develop an ethnography that focuses on Yorùbá consciousness – one that embraces the views of Yorùbáness as a creative process of becoming. As a consciousness, its plastic nature allows for opposition to Yorùbáness as a race rooted in a place. Culture is then seen as a consciousness that is simultaneously closed and open, allowing for additions and modifications.

My experience at Peckham instilled the notion that recreating home or finding oneself, although a herculean job, is possible and that the double consciousness lens is a serviceable heuristic in identity studies.