Struggle For Survival

In the general backdrop of globalization, the migration took place everywhere and every minute. Diaspora, as the result of cross-cultural communications, originally referred to the Jewish, Greek, and Armenian dispersion. Diaspora nowadays refers to migration, exile and refugee of the individual and community in a larger domain. The Black diasporas constituted the second largest population of British immigrant groups. The study of the Black diasporas has laid a foundation of Diaspora Studies in Britain.In White Teeth, Zadie Smith had described a vista of the struggling experiences of the Black diasporic community, who moved from Jamaica or Bengal to London, and their descendants as well. This study aims to dredge up the main causes of their diasporic experiences and to explore the possible way of survival by analyzing their social dilemmas and cultural dilemmas in contemporary Britain. Confronted with various conflicts, the characters in the story were making great efforts to seek for their identities through different strategies in order to survive in the cultural integration. By applying the concept of the “third space” by Homi Bhabha, this essay analyzes the identity issues. It concludes that, in spite of the ethnic difference between the white and the colored people, Smith holds an optimistic attitude towards the future of the Black diasporic community in Britain. And by negotiating in the third space, the community construct the hybrid identity in multi-cultural British society.Diaspora was an inevitable phenomenon of modern society as well as cultural hybridity. The significance of this study was to manifest the irresistible trend of multi-culturalism and to reveal the feasible strategies for the diasporic community to earn a position in the host countries.