Melancholy and survivors guilt - the "better life"

[leenah_qasrawi]

Sara Ahmed’s exploration of “freedom to be happy” describes how happiness can be used to enforce conformity in multicultural societies. She introduces the concept of the “melancholic migrant” who is someone perceived as being stuck in past injustices or cultural attachments. Rather than being seen as a valid emotional response to ongoing inequalities, this state is often misinterpreted as an inability to integrate (or even stubbornness against doing so), labeling these individuals as “killjoys.” Sara Ahmed argues that such a framing overlooks genuine grievances and pressures migrants to fit into a “happy” narrative that glosses over their struggles.

One form of this melancholia that I know all too well is survivor’s guilt, which is experienced by many migrants who have escaped conflict zones or oppressive regimes. This emotional state is characterized by a deep sense of guilt and a persistent questioning of why they were spared when others suffered. Survivor’s guilt is often intertwined with a melancholic attachment to a lost homeland, manifesting as a reluctance to fully embrace or express happiness because it can feel like a betrayal of those left behind. This guilt is further intensified by societal expectations that immigrants should be “grateful” and successful, which can create additional pressure to conform to a narrative of overcoming adversity without really acknowledging the emotional aspect and loss behind it.

I feel like this emotion is very well captured in Nitin Sawhney’s song, because the migrant parents in the beginning of the song (I assume?) express a sense of nostalgia and a complex attachment to their homeland. The mother speaks of going back to show her children what she sacrificed, while the father reflects on the struggle of migration but is still ‘grateful’ for the current life he has. The lyric “I can touch your memories, but I can’t hear you” expresses how the children of migrants often inherit their memories but can struggle to fully hear and understand why their parents find it harder to integrate. Over time, this disconnect between generations can deepen, making the melancholic attachment to a lost homeland less and less understood. The line, “I can almost feel the hopes you left behind,” highlights how sacrifice is a significant source of this melancholia that migrants experience. Sara Ahmed’s chapter also supports this point, as she suggests that melancholia in migrants is a legitimate response to loss and displacement and not merely a refusal to move on. The pressure to give a whole life up for another “better life” is an extension of this melancholia, and the pressure manifests in the children of migrants too, as they often have to bear the weight of fulfilling the dream of a “better life” that their parents gave up everything for as well.