&quot;Little Lagos&quot;: taking agency over own imagination: How the Nigerian Diaspora navigates their identity whilst countering imposed representation in Peckham, London.

Peckham, also known as “Little Lagos”, is home to one of the most visible Nigerian enclaves in the UK. It is a space where diasporic life is lived in full colour, yet this visibility exists within a wider British society that continues to racialise and misrecognise Black British communities, as African identities’ representation oscillates between flattened singular, exoticised or criminalised categories. The Nigerian diaspora in Peckham lives and exists within a state of tension, so they resist through their entitlement to reimagine who they are. Within cultural and diaspora studies, considerable attention has been paid to questions of identity, hybridity and postcolonial belonging. However, significant gaps exist as the literature remains overly broad in its analysis of diaspora, under-theorised in its analysis of cultural production and inattentive to the specificities of place or generation. This thesis aims to address these gaps by demonstrating that the Nigerian diaspora in...Show morePeckham, also known as “Little Lagos”, is home to one of the most visible Nigerian enclaves in the UK. It is a space where diasporic life is lived in full colour, yet this visibility exists within a wider British society that continues to racialise and misrecognise Black British communities, as African identities’ representation oscillates between flattened singular, exoticised or criminalised categories. The Nigerian diaspora in Peckham lives and exists within a state of tension, so they resist through their entitlement to reimagine who they are. Within cultural and diaspora studies, considerable attention has been paid to questions of identity, hybridity and postcolonial belonging. However, significant gaps exist as the literature remains overly broad in its analysis of diaspora, under-theorised in its analysis of cultural production and inattentive to the specificities of place or generation. This thesis aims to address these gaps by demonstrating that the Nigerian diaspora in Peckham does not merely adapt to their host country or yearn for home, they transform where they’ve settled into “Little Lagos”. By taking agency over their image and imagination, this community rewrites the terms of belonging on its own terms, away from repressive and colonial narratives. It asks: How does the Nigerian diaspora in Peckham, London, navigate their identity and take agency over their own image? In doing so, this paper examines cultural production not just as expression, but as a political tool, interrogating representation as a contested field, foregrounding the experiences of Nigerian-British individuals (implicitly second-generation) as distinct and transformative. I argue that the Nigerian diaspora in Peckham asserts agency through everyday cultural practices and artistic interventions that reclaim representation and challenge dominant British narratives. Through food, music, fashion, film, art, religious practice and public space, this community negotiates and performs a hybrid identity that resists both erasure and essentialism.Show less

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"Little Lagos": taking agency over own imagination: How the Nigerian Diaspora navigates their identity whilst countering imposed representation in Peckham, London.