The Other Side of Citizenship? Narrating Flight and Refugeeism in Sharon Bala’s The Boat People

In his most recent novel The Illegal (2015), Canadian writer Lawrence Hill creates the fictional setting of Freedom State and Zantoroland to stage a story of economic despair, political persecution and ethnic cleansing that leads Zantorolanders to try their luck and seek to reach Freedom State in leaky boats. Many of them die of starvation or dehydration on the way; many drown. Those who make it to the shores of Freedom State are incarcerated and eventually deported to Zantoroland. Freedom State regards the refugees as economic migrants who, by crossing the border without the necessary papers and permits, become illegals and thereby criminals. Zantoroland is poor, its population consists of different African-descended ethnicities; Freedom State is wealthy and ruled by the white supremacist Family Party which promises ‘that people of traditional European stock weren’t overrun in their own country’. In Freedom State, citizenship is tied to race; keeping Zantorolanders out is meant to secure the economic and racial status quo.