Migration as an Intensifier of Assimilative and Retentive Dispositions in Leila Aboulela's “Missing Out”

Abstract

This article examines Leila Aboulela’s “Missing Out” as a literary exploration of migration, assimilation and cultural retention. It argues that the story represents migration not as a sudden transformation of identity, but as an intensifying condition that magnifies dispositions already present before displacement. Majdy’s pre-migratory orientation towards academic mobility, Western institutional order and his emotional distance from Sudanese collective life hardens in London into an intensified assimilative logic marked by cultural rejection and disidentification from his origins. By contrast, Samra’s embeddedness in communal experience and the rhythms of Sudanese social life becomes, after migration, a rigid form of cultural retention paralysed by nostalgia and psychological stasis. Drawing on John Berry’s acculturation theory, as well as Stuart Hall’s and Avtar Brah’s accounts of identity, diaspora and belonging, the article shows that Aboulela does not simply oppose assimilation to cultural retention, but reveals the limitations of both when they become absolute. Majdy gains mobility but loses rootedness while Samra preserves cultural memory but loses the capacity for adaptation. The article, therefore, proposes anchored integration as a possible third position between self-erasing assimilation and immobilising cultural retention.