Yet, these black immigrants are subjected to the most basal and degrading of
undertakings to earn a living in London:
in this city of many navels and absent centres
see my countrymen sing owambe^58 to the garbage can
knowing that the pound yields no stink at dusk
after the sweat of day returns to Thames. (19)The said situation of “my countrymen [who] sing owambe to the garbage can” is
consistent with the telling revelation made by Jon May et al (2007: 151) about the new
forms of labour dynamics in London from the late 1990s. For prior to this time the
London welfare package for immigrants was “relatively generous”, making the situation
a lot better than what obtained in other western cities, say New York and Los Angeles.
Again also because the formerly controlled labour immigration into London has given
way from this period to a more relaxed influx, possibly to allow a commensurate flow of
both capital and labour into the global city, labour survey dynamics have changed
significantly to the extent that the high demand for labour at the bottom end of the
spectrum can now absolve, more than any other level, immigrants whose high formal
trainings in their countries of origin can no longer receive cognate/commensurate labour
recognition.
To that extent, although London falls into the category of those worlds cities that “are
understood to have emerged as key sites of ‘command and control’ (ibid.:152), it can
hardly meet the expectations of labour migrants from the cities of the South. So
downgraded and consigned to eking out living via refuse clearance as in the poem under
discussion, the situation of the migrants speaks to the condition of many who in spite of
their high qualifications have the same misfortune of Kobena, a Ghanaian who lives
behind his state housing job as an honours degree holder only to take up a job in the UK
where he works as a cleaner and takes home a miserable amount of pounds per week
(ibid.:151). The situation thus compels us to challenge Hannerz’s view which argues that
because cosmopolitans “came equipped with special knowledge, and they could leave
58
Owambe refers to the musical pop brand played and enjoyed mostly among the Yoruba-speaking people
of Nigeria, South-West.