False Promise of Happiness

[benjamin_val]

Nitin Sawhney’s song and Sara Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness both delve into the emotional toll of migration, focusing on the concept of migrant melancholia. Sawhney’s parents reflect on the sacrifices they made for their children, expressing love but also a sense of loss. This melancholia, rooted in leaving behind home and identity, parallels Ahmed’s argument that migrants are pressured to forget their past and emotional attachments in order to integrate into society. For these migrants, happiness becomes a false promise, tied to assimilation and the suppression of personal and cultural grief.
In Bend It Like Beckham, Mr. Bhamra’s reluctance to let Jess play football is rooted in his own experience of racism in cricket. His fear that Jess will suffer similarly reflects the melancholia Ahmed describes—an attachment to past trauma that society expects him to "get over." This refusal to let go of the past positions him as a melancholic migrant, someone who disrupts the national narrative of happiness by refusing to assimilate completely. Ahmed argues that when migrants hold onto their memories of pain and exclusion, they become viewed as threats, even potential "could-be terrorists," because their melancholia is seen as disruptive to the collective sense of national unity.

Ahmed also critiques how British society frames happiness and integration through activities like football. The sport is seen as a means of unifying people and forgetting racial or cultural differences, but this narrative ignores the ongoing racism and exclusion that migrants face. Football, much like the broader promise of national happiness, asks migrants to put aside their emotional struggles and simply conform, promoting a shallow form of happiness based on forgetting rather than genuine inclusion.
In this context, symbols like the turban and burqa take on added significance. For Ahmed, these cultural markers are tolerated only when they do not challenge the happy narrative of integration. They represent both cultural pride and a refusal to fully assimilate, which unsettles the idea of a harmonious, unified nation. This demand for migrants to assimilate for the sake of happiness is ultimately unfulfilling, as seen in Bend It Like Beckham and Yasmin Hai’s memoir. Even when migrants strive for integration, the promise of happiness often remains out of reach due to enduring racism and the impossibility of fully erasing their past.

Ahmed’s critique extends to the colonial legacy of happiness itself, where Western nations justified imperialism as a "happiness mission." This civilizing narrative continues today, both in national politics and global actions, as seen in examples like George Bush’s justification of the Iraq War. The memory of empire as a source of pride and happiness persists, while migrants are expected to forget the pain that empire caused. For Ahmed, this dynamic places an unfair burden on migrants, asking them to let go of their trauma for the sake of national cohesion, even when true happiness remains elusive.