Male Vulnerability and Victimization: Examining Vassanji’s No New Land

Abstract

This study examines how male vulnerability and victimization manifest in M.G. Vassanji’s novel No New Land as systemic outcomes of racial capitalism, neoliberal labor regimes, and intersectional precarity. It also analyses how Tanzanian masculinities undergo shift in M.G. Vassanji’s No New Land. The migration to Toronto exposes diasporic men to intersectional precarity specifically the collapse of patriarchal authority under racial capitalism and neoliberal labor regimes. Through Fanonian and Bourdieusian lenses, this paper studies Nurdin Lalani’s systemic disempowerment as a breadwinner to menial laborer epitomizes structural vulnerability, Jamal’s compensatory hypermasculinity in response to systemic emasculation, Nanji’s academic identity negotiation within a racialised job market, and Esmail’s direct confrontation with racial violence and its institutional consequences. It reveals how Vassanji’s Toronto, a space of symbolic violence brings down migrant men’s labor to feminized, racialised servitude, fragmenting static ideals of masculinity inherited from Dar es Salaam. The paper reconceptualizes diasporic masculinity as both a site of trauma and adaptive resistance, challenging narratives of patriarchal resilience in diaspora writing. Drawing on recent research, this paper synthesizes contemporary migrant mental health study to derive policy recommendations for tackling the mental health burden of intersectional erasure on migrant men in Western host countries. This paper contributes to discussions on non-Western masculinities in global migration studies. Furthermore, the argument challenges singular narrative accounts of patriarchal resilience in diaspora literature.