Legal and illegal immigrants in John Lanchester's Capital

The new book by John Lanchester - Capital - in the project has inspired me to look closely at one of the numerous issues raised in it - the fundamental goodness of the immigrants.

The novel contains a great number of characters with the emphasis on the differences in their backgrounds, banks on the edge of the crisis and one thing that unites the plot, which is Pepys Road where the characters either live or work, or both. It is structured by the chapters in such a way that while reading it for the first time the reader may get an impression that there are several totally different stories which the author has artificially brought together. However, the second reading shows that the first impression was misleading. The whole immigrant plot line is written with great care and creates a very positive attitude to the legal immigrants like the Kamals, Zbigniew, Petr, Patrick and Freddy, Maty a who come from different cultures and have

different religious views and are of Asian, African or Eastern European origin. Illegal immigrants like Quentina and Kwame Lyons are also presented in the novel.

Fighting against Mugabe, Quentina finished up beaten and threatened to be killed unless she left the country, and the readers feel sorry for her. With the help of the missionaries she had managed to come to Great Britain officially on a student visa, and we learn that she had always intended to overstay it. The authorities in Great Britain studied her case and decided against giving her the official status. Fortunately, she again was treated nicely by the people from the charity and sent to the Refuge. Feeling desperate in her ‘incredible temptation of having something to do’ she started to work illegally for a crook Kwame Lyons who was ‘happy to take this risk’ for her [Lanchester 2013: 131] in exchange for a modest sum of money. Even though she considered herself to be ‘temperamentally lawabiding’ she had to use the faked ID papers. John Lanchester presents her as one of the most admirable characters and shows the controversial situation in which she had found herself: the law does not recognize her as a refugee, but it recognizes ‘that she could not be sent back to Zimbabwe’ [Ibid], Her story might be one of many but it looks like being chosen on purpose. The author sympathizes with this deserving refugee with the master’s degree in Political Science, who becomes the victim of circumstances.

The legal immigrants seem to be the main characters of the novel and all of them are serious and good-natured people who are either planning to settle in Great Britain and become good citizens or have already done so. They disapprove of the people like Igbar who could turn out to be ‘up to something’ as Rohinka had put it.

Most main characters - Zbigniew, Matya, Petr, the Kamals, Patrick and Freddy - came to London willingly and they have more or less clear plans for the future although most of them are quite young people in their thirties and even younger. Do they like their new place of living? We can state that the author does not give us any definite answer, but we understand that he is rather positive about it. It goes without saying that the immigrants are sometimes irritated by British people, their way of life, their tastes and behaviour: Ahmed does not approve of the food which English people eat, calling the things inedible, and his youngest brother Usman is angry with the ‘unbelievers’ because they drink a lot (here we can mention that Zbigniew has a much stronger expression for this: ‘they drank like mad people’) and their attitude to women is shameless, Zbigniew thinks a lot about British builders who have a lot of drawbacks which let him show off his own professional skills, Usman and Shahid blame the British for the fact that they keep talking about property prices. The readers can understand and forgive them because the immigrants are sure to be more irritated by several things in the countries they had come from, otherwise, they would not have come to this ‘absurdly rich, absurdly comfortable country’ [Lanchester 2013: 212]. However, the longer the immigrants live in London, the more tolerant to such things they become.

What is more difficult to get used to is the weather, and the immigrants cannot help complaining about it. In their countries the weather is either colder or hotter, but in any case they agree that it is better than in London: ‘yet another lousy summer’, ‘cold and disconnected’, ‘the weather predictably rubbish’. There is not anything to be surprised at - British people use the same expressions to describe their weather! It is amazing that the author can reveal the feelings of his characters who came from different parts of the world so truthfully as if he had been everywhere. We live closer to Poland and we can imagine what it feels like in winter, but we do not know the feelings of people who come from Africa. We trust the author when he is telling us about them.

Coming back to the compromises from both sides, we realize that British people have to make their own decisions about their attitude to immigrants, and they do. Some characters, like Robyn Penrose in Nice Work, ‘(at least consciously) developed empathy to the Other’ [Kislyakova 2012: 15]. For example, being sensitive to British people’s attitude to the people of a different nationality, Zbigniew noticed that an old lady, seeing a group of noisy black kids in the underground, wanted to walk off down the platform but ‘was probably also worrying about that looking so rude. She wouldn’t want to seem racist’ [Lanchester 2013: 74]. However, for Zbigniew people in Great Britain ‘made too much fuss’ trying not to seem racist [Ibid: 74]. Zbigniew’s words about people who are not like him most probably are meant by the author:

People did not like people who were not like them, that was a plain fact of life. You had to get on with things anyway. Who cares if people don’t like each other because of the colour of their skin? [Lanchester 2013: 74].

The author clearly disapproves of British white people for their unwelcome behaviour as well as for differentiating the immigrants according to the country they have come from: one of Zbigniew’s old and white neighbours told him that they were ‘just grateful you aren’t Pakis’ [Lanchester 2013: 73], and Quentina’s hostel for asylum-seekers from the locals’ point of view ‘had a suppressing effect on house prices’ [Ibid: 205]. Trying to seem tolerant, people conceal their real feelings, but inside their heads not much can be done about the differences. Zbigniew notices that ‘after three years in England he had not yet got to the point where he did not even register’ the presence of black people [Ibid: 73].

Immigrants either prefer or have to live in London in their national communities: the Kamals attend mosques and teach children to read Urdu, Rohinka cooks traditional Pakistani dishes, Zbigniew used to live with his Polish co-workers and spend his leisure time with them, Petr was going out with Eastern European girls (a Czech girl, a girl from Krakow), Hungarian friends helped Matya greatly in job-hunting and flathunting, and Quentina spent her time in the African Anglican church. It is amazing that all these people find a community for them in London which is so comfortable for everyone from this point of view. The authorities seem to provide all the legal immigrants with whatever they need, but the policy in relation to the illegal immigrants shown in the novel is very different. In the Refuge:

The charity split nationalities up because it didn’t like the idea of national cliques developing in the different houses and it thought that refugees learned English more quickly if they weren’t with their own language group. That was a mistake in Quentina’s view, but it was their charity, not hers, so she shared the house with a Sudanese woman, a Kurd, a Chinese woman who had arrived the day before and so far had not spoken, an Algerian, and two Eastern European women whose precise nationalities Quentina did not know [Lanchester 2013: 132].

Most of the legal immigrants in the novel have tight connections with their families back in the countries they had come from. However, going back forever is not the point for any them by the end of the book, with the exception of Patrick and, regretfully, Freddy Kamo. This thought is perfectly formulated by Usman, ‘your roots were not necessarily the same thing as your home’ [Lanchester 2013: 553]. At the same time, the ‘clients’ of the Refuge ‘were simply possessed by a feeling that they had made a catastrophic mistake. They had made an irreversible error in coming to England’ [Lanchester 2012: 206]. Still, speaking about differences and difficult choices which both sides face in their everyday life, John Lanchester gives us some vivid examples of genuine warm and strong feelings which can be established between British people and the immigrants. One of them is Davina’s passion for Zbigniew (‘they somehow worked together’), the second is Joshua’s love for Matya, which in this case was mutual (‘they fitted each other’, ‘who could resist a three-year-old, bursting with love’), as well as mutual respect and friendship between Mickey and

Patrick and Freddy Kamo (‘Perhaps he could have talked to Mickey, who had become so fond of Freddy that Patrick had started to trust him’ [Ibid: 56]). Mickey was not the best husband and we may criticize his attitude to women when at the beginning of the novel he was ‘amazed’ that more of goodlooking young women ‘did not sell their bodies for sex’ and instead cleaned the houses for £4.50 [Ibid: 56], but the author leaves no doubt that Mickey is absolutely honest in his attitude to the African boy and his strict and reserved father.

Money issue is one of the most important in the novel, judging by the critics, but how much did the bank crisis hit the immigrants in the book? John Lanchester gives us a rather detailed survey of the sums of money the immigrants deal with and how they treat such matters talking to each other or, more often, thinking. The richest of them is, of course, Freddy Kamo, because he has some unique football skills which made him an extremely desirable immigrant. In the end of the novel he gets a really big sum of five million pounds which can be called ‘a capital’, but there is no one to envy him now. All the characters in the novel - no matter what nationality they are - are shocked that the boy they loved so much was so severely injured. So, this kind of capital has made a bitter impact on the readers. The other rather big sum of money - half a million pounds! - is discussed with more irony, but in fact, the whole suitcase of 10-pound notes found in the wall by Zbigniew is almost useless for Mary but could lead Zbigniew to prison. For several months the ‘capital’ caused him moral troubles but in the end it turned out to be an extremely lucky thing in his relationship with Matya. The author shows us how relieved and happy Zbigniew had become after returning the money to the heiress which is just another proof of his honesty and integrity. In both cases the ‘capital’ itself did not bring any happiness to the immigrants.

It was the two of them, Zbigniew and Matya, who felt the effect of the crisis on their work. The Polish builder ‘could see that work was beginning to dry up’ [Lanchester 2013: 551], and the Hungarian nanny was given her notice by the Younts because Roger had lost his job. No doubt, later on the crisis would affect more people because not so many immigrants will be needed to do less work. As Jeremy Harding writes,

‘Much has happened since then: the banking crash of 2008, rising inequality, the re-framing of old race issues in terms of fierce opposition to new immigrants. The contradictions of the Middle East have been sharpened by the destructive force of new colonial wars and the apocalyptic violence of jihadism. There are shadows in the room now and the playful tone of White Teeth belongs to a moment that’s passing’ [Harding 2012: 29].

And what do we know about the legal immigrants in the end of the novel? Ahmed is hard-working, kind, and reasonable, Usman is studying for an engineering doctorate, Shahid feels full of potential, Rohinka feels that ‘life with children is life of colour’, Zbigniew is proud of his professionalism and can give his ‘personal guarantee’, Maty a is very scrupulous and she seems to be ‘from a more honorable place’, Freddy ‘was touched with something a long way beyond mere talent’. This list of good qualities of the legal immigrants in John Lanchester’s Capital may be very long. It has brought me to the thought that the title of the novel probably suggests that the good, reliable, obedient to law immigrants are in a way the real capital of the nation.