ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the specific strategy of ‘passing’ used by certain immigrant communities or individuals in their efforts to survive in the UK. It will focus on immigrants from parts of Africa and their use of ‘passing’, which is a term derived from the period of slavery and the era of racial segregation that followed in the USA when numbers of people of Black-white ancestry would ‘pass’ as white to be accepted and avoid discrimination in white society. The chapter explores the process of sections of African immigrants in Britain passing as ‘Black British’ or of ‘Caribbean’ heritage, to avoid the pain of being stigmatised and stereotyped as an African immigrant. With reference to Donald Winnicott’s false self and Lennox Thomas’ (1998) proxy self, it examines what happens to the sense of self of such Africans who pass, and the impact of passing on their mental health and wellbeing.
