The Refugee Experience Theme Analysis

Little Bee tells the intertwined stories of a Nigerian undocumented refugee in England named Little Bee, and an upper-class magazine editor living in London named Sarah, who form an unlikely bond with each other as Sarah copes with her husband Andrew’s suicide. As a refugee, Little Bee seeks asylum in England after she sees her family murdered and witnesses the genocidal atrocities of an oil war in Nigeria. Despite Little Bee’s desperate need for shelter and safety, both the United Kingdom’s government and citizens treat her with disdain, skepticism, or outright cruelty. Little Bee’s experience with England’s immigration system and racism highlights the plight of modern global refugees who, though fleeing for their lives, are often demeaned, harassed, or simply ignored instead of treated with compassion.

Little Bee flees Nigeria for her life in the midst of an oil war and fears that if she is deported back to Nigeria, she will be killed—a situation, the novel implies, that is true for many refugees. Little Bee and her sister Nkiruka witness the government-sanctioned slaughter of her family village and many others by mercenaries working for oil companies who want the territory for oil. Little Bee ultimately escapes, stowing away on a boat to England, but not before witnessing mercenaries rape and beat Nkiruka to death. The horrific events that Little Bee flees makes it clear that her hope to immigrate to England is a life-or-death affair and the novel suggests that such is the experience of many refugees seeking asylum.

The Nigerian government wants to keep all testimonies of the oil war suppressed, and Little Bee knows that if she returns to Nigeria she will be immediately arrested and probably murdered by her own government. When Little Bee is about to be arrested by a British policeman who suspects her of being an illegal immigrant, she thinks that if she is deported, “I would be dead, but no one would have fired any bullets.” Once again, the fact that Little Bee’s deportation carries the likely threat of death suggests that refugees often face life-and-death consequences; returning to their home country is not a safe or feasible option. In spite of the horror and danger Little Bee flees, Sarah’s lover Lawrence assumes that the girl simply wanted to live in a wealthier country. He asks, “Is it really death you’re running from? I mean, honestly? A lot of people who come here, they’re after a comfortable life.” Lawrence’s near-sighted misperception of Little Bee demonstrates the manner in which many people born in safe countries do not understand or believe the life-and-death stakes that refugees face.

While Little Bee applies for legal asylum, she is effectively locked in prison for two years and finds the legal immigration system inept and corrupt. Through Little Bee, the novel depicts how refugees often have great difficulty in getting processed for asylum or sticking to the legal route of immigration. When Little Bee arrives in England as a teenage girl trying to file for asylum, she is trapped in Black Hill Immigration Detention Center for two years—during which time she never once sees the sun—an underground immigrant holding center that operates like a prison, with jail cells, barbed wire, and guards. In the detention center, Little Bee and the other migrants are given no support or protection, and are simply stored away until the government decides to deport them. The refugees fleeing violence are treated inhumanly, like prisoners, by the very countries they seek protection in.

When Little Bee is deported back to Nigeria, one of the officers explains to her that England’s immigration system is a for-profit business operated by “Dutch firms” who make money regardless of whether they detain immigrants or deport them. With this, the novel bleakly suggests that many immigration and asylum systems are not committed to helping refugees, but simply making a profit off of others’ circumstances and pain. With all of the corruption involved in the legal immigration system, Little Bee knows that her chances of being accepted as a legal refugee are slim, and she only inadvertently enters the country illegally after a refugee woman from Jamaica has sex with a guard several times to bribe him to illegally release her and several other women. The novel highlights how even though there are plenty of refugees like Little Bee, who want to follow the law and get proper documentation, the immigration system is so slow and corrupt that it pushes desperate people to enter the country illegally, just for the chance to survive.

After Little Bee is illegally released into England—against her will, since she wanted to enter legally—British citizens treat her with suspicion, racism, and generally dehumanizing behavior, suggesting that along with the government’s inhumane treatment of refugees, refugees also suffer from the ill treatment of native citizens. Little Bee faces constant skepticism that she is somehow a criminal: Lawrence thinks she must have done something to be locked away in the detention center and infers that Africans are less civilized than Europeans, cab drivers won’t pick Little Bee up and refer to refugees as “scum,” tabloid headlines in the newspaper warn of invading immigrants eating all of England’s swans, all of which demonstrate and propagate a nativist, anti-immigrant sentiment among the general population, who have no sympathy for the dangers refugees face. Even citizens who privately give aid to refugees like Sarah or Mr. Ayres, a farmer who lets Little Bee and three other illegal refugee women hide in his barn, face criminal and financial penalties if they are caught, suggesting that the government discourages compassionate and sympathetic people from giving aid to refugees either.

Little Bee’s depiction of the plight facing refugees suggest that refugees are merely ordinary people fleeing for their lives, faced additionally with unjust immigration systems, racism, and skepticism from the people they are asking to shelter them.