Immigrants’ Vulnerability In Zadie Smith’s NW

NW is one of the most acclaimed novels of Zadie Smith who occupies a significant position in current British literature.Set in northwest London in the early 21^st century,the novel demonstrates British immigrants’predicament in social marginalization,emotional alienation and identity assimilation in neoliberal globalization.Based on academic discussions of vulnerability,this thesis illustrates the inevitable vulnerability of immigrants in NW as it is manifested in the following three aspects:situational vulnerability in urban landscape,pathogenic vulnerability in human relations and corporeal vulnerability in individual survival.Firstly,the xenophobic and hierarchical London in the novel is characterized by sociopolitical closure,disparity and fragmentation,which results in immigrants’situational vulnerability to marginalization,discrimination and lack of a sense of belonging.Secondly,immigrants are made further vulnerable in pathogenic interpersonal relations.The dominant neoliberal ideologies in London lead to instrumentalized marriages,estranged friendship and deteriorated ethnic relations that further exacerbate anxiety,antagonism and mutual harming among immigrants.Thirdly,immigrants present prominent corporeal vulnerability in neoliberal and postcolonial gender and race discourses featured by homogenization and exclusion.With their individuality dissolved in discourse and physical violence,immigrants fall into identity anxiety and even fall prey to drugs and violence.This writing on vulnerability by Zadie Smith exposes the traumas of immigrants that are deeply rooted in British neoliberal and postcolonial discourses from situational,relational and individual perspectives.In British society with increasingly prominent ethnic and class conflicts,the empathy with others’vulnerability may build a community of shared future and ameliorate social inequalities to help vulnerable immigrants out of predicament.