What are some examples of repetition in the novel White Teeth?

Repetition is a term that is used by the author to talk
about the struggles that migrants face coming into a new country and trying to process
their past and assimilate. This is shown most clearly in the characters of the Iqbal
family, who, Smith argues, are doomed to endlessly repeat their migration in their minds
and they struggle to adapt to their lives in a country that is so different from their
native Bangladesh:

readability="12">

A trauma is something one repeats and repeats,
after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the
dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown
mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial
sovereign.

For the Iqbals,
their migration meant a change of land, religion and ethnicity, and the resulting trauma
they suffer is something that is repeated again and again with each passing day as they
struggle to assimilate and to accept and to be accepted in their new "home." Note how
Smith refers to this repetition exclusively in the context of migration later on in the
text:

Because
immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition--it's something to do with
that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island.
Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round
and round. There's no proper term for it--original sin seems too harsh; maybe original
trauma would be better.

Even
though a migrant may be fixed geographically in their new country, they are endlessly
returning back to their old "home" in their minds as they mentally find themselves
struggling to adapt and thinking of their homeland. Repetition is a word therefore that
Smith uses to capture the experience of a migrant and the particular struggles they have
as they try to adapt and conform in a new, alien environment. The greatest tragedy,
Smith suggests, is that true assimilation is impossible. As a migrant, and even as a
second generation migrant, you still do not entirely "fit."