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One of the tropes that have often been glossed over in African American literature is the concept of Stockholm Syndrome. The syndrome emphasises irrationality and abnormal psychological or mental disposition of Stockholm Syndrome sufferers towards individuals responsible for their pitiable conditions. This article examines the conception and its nexus with slavery and the use of religion (Christianity) as an ideological tool for the indoctrination or brainwashing of African slaves and their descendants in the United States of America. I argue that the syndrome, though conceived as a correlate of Freudian ego-defence mechanism, operates like a psychedelic or hallucinogenic drug which, according to Karl Marx, dulls the reasoning capacity and cerebration of the sufferers and prevents them from thinking rationally. Besides, it alters their perception of reality forcing them to accept abnormality as normality in a bid to create an escapist route for their fears, hurt feelings and pent-up wounds.

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This article discusses the tragic deaths of African migrants on the Mediterranean Sea, especially the 2013 Lampedusa migrant shipwreck where close to 400 African migrants drowned. Apart from the Lampedusa tragedy, other migrant shipwrecks occurred in Malta in 2007 and 2014; Mediterranean in 2009, 2011, and 2015; Libya in 2009, 2014, and 2015; Catania in 2015 as well as Crotone in 2015, leaving thousands of Africans fleeing privation, violence and wars in their respective countries dead. The article uses Everett Lee’s push-pull and Chris Brown’s centre-periphery models to expound the hypothesis that migration from developing countries is primarily induced by their enforced integration into the capitalist world market economy and the dependency roles assigned to their population. It argues that the capitalist world system is skewed to engender inequality among countries of the world, thus creating a dominant, wealthy core and a subservient, impoverished periphery. Using selected poems of established and up-and-coming African poets, it interrogates literary representation of African migrant crisis, the politics of European border control, complicity of family remittances and the role of effete leadership in African migration crisis.