Navigating Liability of Foreignness: A Bourdieuian Analysis of Immigrant Entrepreneurship in V.S. Naipaul’s a Bend in the River

This paper is one of the pioneering academic studies which has used fiction (novel) as a context to analyse liability of foreignness (LOF); a concept which has been significantly studied and analysed so far in the extant literature. The paper presents arguments concerning how use of fiction has potential to enrich understanding of such a multifaceted concept. The current work-in-process paper uses the novel “A Bend in the River” by Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul as a setting to present the immigrant entrepreneurs navigation of individual, structural and contextual factors by analysing their journey through Boudieu’s social capital theory. Specifically, Bourdieu’s arguments concerning field, capital and habitus are used to analyse navigation of LOF by immigrant entrepreneurs in the chosen novel.