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Literature and migration

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Literature and migration is an academic field that examines the interplay between literary texts and the experiences of migration, exploring how narratives reflect, shape, and critique the complexities of displacement, identity, and cultural exchange in the context of global movement and transnationalism.
lightbulbAbout this topic
Literature and migration is an academic field that examines the interplay between literary texts and the experiences of migration, exploring how narratives reflect, shape, and critique the complexities of displacement, identity, and cultural exchange in the context of global movement and transnationalism.

Key research themes

1. How do literary texts and artistic forms function as sites for negotiating migrant identities and cultural change?

This theme explores the role of literature and other cultural activities in representing migrant experiences and contributing to social and cultural transformations within host societies. It focuses on how migrant writing challenges exclusionary national narratives and offers alternative imaginaries of belonging, identity, and community. The theme also engages with the poetics and genre formations specific to migration literature, examining its capacity to reflect complex transcultural realities and to enable migrants' self-expression and political participation.

Key finding: The study emphasizes the necessity to interpret literature and arts as dynamic mediators of cultural change in post-migrant societies, highlighting that immigrant writers historically shifted from marginal roles into agents... Read more
Key finding: This work delineates migration literature as a distinct corpus with specific genres and poetics reflecting shared migratory experiences shaped by globalization since 1989. It underlines that migration literature transcends... Read more
Key finding: The paper foregrounds creative writing by Indonesian female migrant domestic workers as an invaluable ethnographic source that richly captures migrants’ lived experiences, social imaginaries, and identity negotiations,... Read more
Key finding: This article critiques prevailing migration scholarship’s neglect of culture and urges the integration of culturally infused categories and institutions in analyses. It illustrates how migration literature and humanities... Read more
Key finding: The introduction positions displacement—both forced movement and suspension of movement—as a critical lens for humanities scholarship to interrogate narratives around migration. It argues that humanities, through varied... Read more

2. In what ways does migration literature conceptualize transnational and oceanic circulations beyond nation-state frameworks?

This theme investigates literary representations that articulate migration as fluid, multi-scalar, and connected across maritime and translocal spaces, particularly focusing on Indian Ocean diasporas and other global South geographies. It examines narrative devices and material tropes that evoke migratory circulations and liminal identities, challenging static territorial belonging and colonial-national binaries.

Key finding: Analyzing M.G. Vassanji’s The Gunny Sack and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, the paper identifies how circulatory objects like the gunny sack and ship function as narrative devices embodying transoceanic migration histories... Read more
Key finding: Focusing on Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, this chapter foregrounds indentured laborers’ migration and maritime journeys as sites of subject formation and sociohistorical discontents. It connects literary narratives to... Read more
Key finding: This edited collection extensively analyzes Abdulrazak Gurnah’s oeuvre, highlighting his exploration of migration, displacement, and Indian Ocean identities through complex narrative cartographies. The critical essays reveal... Read more
Key finding: Though focused on East Central Europe, this study connects regional experiences to broader imperial and colonial histories, highlighting migratory patterns within and beyond Europe’s margins. It situates migration within... Read more
Key finding: The study critically examines the novel Taytānīkāt afrīqiyya as a post-nomadic epic that rewrites the dominant ‘migration myth’ through allegorical and counter-narrative strategies. It shows how migration literature from the... Read more

3. How do migrant literatures emerge from and shape specific regional and translocal literary publics?

This theme investigates the formation of literary publics that are geographically dispersed yet connected through migratory flows, focusing on migrant writers’ literary production as a means of constituting audiences and communities across homeland and diaspora. It explores how migrant literature negotiates visibility, cultural representation, and social critique within complex hegemonies, especially in contexts such as the Gulf-Kerala migration corridor and Indigenous/migrant articulation of citizenship.

Key finding: The editorial constructs the Gulf-Kerala literary public as an empirically distributed and rhetorically constituted space bridging Kerala and Gulf countries. It reveals how literature by Malayali migrants articulates shared... Read more
Key finding: This study critiques the dominant individualizing migrant narratives in Malayalam literature that render migrants as isolated victims disconnected from their home communities. It shows how remittance economies and collective... Read more
Key finding: Curated as a poetic portfolio marking the centenary of the 1924 American Indian Citizenship Act and Immigration Act, this work foregrounds Indigenous and migrant refusals of settler colonial citizenship frameworks. The poems... Read more
Key finding: The article offers a comprehensive multi-perspective definition of migration writing and situates it within related literary categories, stressing its broad inclusiveness and interdisciplinary character. It positions... Read more
Key finding: This study empirically investigates literature’s influence on migratory decision-making through the Push-Pull theory lens. It finds that literature functions as both an exposé and propagator of societal attributes that shape... Read more

All papers in Literature and migration

This paper examines the plays of Mahesh Dattani, renowned contemporary Indian dramatist, through the lens of psychological androgyny, with special focus on the conflict between dharma defined as duty and collective ethical code-and... more
Eine Fotografie, die eine Frau mit Elefanten im Münchener Zoo abbildet wird zur Spur einer kolonialen Vergangenheit in der Gegenwart: Sinthujan Varatharajah, deren Eltern, als Tamilen von der senegalesischen Armee in Sri Lanka verfolgt,... more
Simposio LITERATURA SIN RESIDENCIA FIJA. Organizado por la Maestría DaF: Estudios interculturales de lengua, literatura y cultura alemanas en el contexto de la Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara. En este simposio se discutió la... more
First and foremost, I acknowledge my sincere gratitude to Almighty Allah, for giving me the patience to do the research. I can only hope that my dissertation will live up to the expectations of my supervisor, family, and friends. I would... more
Thomas Bernhard gehört zu den renommierten Persönlichkeiten der deutsch- sprachigen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts und bietet in seinen Werken eine Perspektive auf die Komplexität der menschlichen Natur und die Tiefe hinter ihrer... more
The purpose of this essay is to read Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West as a narrative “of(f) the limit” since it illustrates the transmodern sensibility of conceptualising limits as spaces of both negotiation and exclusion. The main narrative... more
Die jüdische Traditionsliteratur ist reich an Diskurs, Inspiration und intellektueller Auseinandersetzung. Bis heute entwickelt sich diese Literatur weiter-neue Fragen tauchen auf, neue Interpretationen werden geschrieben. Frauen und... more
Dai migranti e dalla migrazione, che da più di qualche decennio attraversa Lampedusa, può giungere una parola alla teologia e al suo farsi nel Mediterraneo? È questa inquietudine, provocata dai "segni dei tempi", che attraversa le trame... more
roles. The traditional division between sex and gender are brought to question, so as to identify social education as the initiator of the both. Fixity of gender roles as determined by the society has proved to be oppressing for... more
The aim of this work is a in-depth analysis of the use, in the Italian public discourse, of one of the most widespread conceptual metaphors in the representation of migrants, i.e. MIGRANTS ARE WATERFLOWS. The analysis is based on an... more
Auf der ZfL-Klausurtagung 2024 wurde Mohamed Mbougar Sarrs Roman "La plus secrète mémoire des hommes" (Die geheimste Erinnerung der Menschen) gelesen. Dieses Werk wirft einige Fragen auf, die dem ZfL-Jahresthema »Aktivismus und... more
Silke Felber legt mit ihrem Buch Travelling Gestures: Elfriede Jelineks Theater der (Tragödien-)Durchquerung ihre Habilitationsschrift als Ergebnis mehrjähriger Forschungsarbeit vor, und die Resultate lassen sich sehen. Felber bietet eine... more
This essay explores how Roddy Doyle’s 2004 novel, Oh, Play that Thing, utilises the jazz aesthetic, both formally and thematically, to demythologise some of the most pernicious and persistent misconceptions around historical migration;... more
The paper elucidates Mahesh Dattani's attempt to create a living theatre through the use of language in his plays Final Solutions and Tara. In these two plays, he uses English as the linklanguage and the language of communication in order... more
In May 2023, a workshop took place at Hacettepe University featuring Austrian author Alois Hotschnig. The event focused on Hotschnig's work titled „Der Silberfuchs meiner Mutter“. Participants directed questions to the author that... more
Representations of urban environments are not very common in Norwegian picturebooks, yet they allow for a nuanced understanding of how nature functions in picturebook iconotexts. This article aims to examine the relationship between... more
This article offers a comparative analysis of the work by the German-Romanian author Herta Müller and the Dutch-Moroccan writer Hafid Bouazza and addresses it from a transnational perspective. The research focus lies on their persistent... more
Ursula A. Schneider, Annette Steinsiek: Christine Lavant. Eine biographische Skizze. In englischer Sprache als Vorwort veröffentlicht in: Christine Lavant: Memoirs from a Madhouse. Preface and Afterword by Ursula Schneider and Annette... more
Cette contribution s’intéresse principalement à la thématique de la «xénogra- phie féminine» (Alfaro Amieiro/Sawas/Soto Cano 2020), en particulier à la production littéraire de l’auteure translingue (Ausoni 2018) Elsa Triolet, écrivaine... more
Numerous studies have looked at the literary depiction of the crisis period of the 2000s in Zimbabwe particularly through the lens of the land redistribution programme. Nonetheless, there is little scholarship of how traveling through... more
Ich sehe im leichten Dunkel hier, daß einige unter ihnen ein wenig verrätselt sind. Keine Angst, ich habe nicht vor, diese ganze Rede auf Latein zu halten, obwohl es ja einer Akademie wie der unseren, zumal in der letzten Rede in diesem... more
While reading Toni Morrison’s works, geography and history are defining factors that foreground the writer’s fictional and critical writings. The spatial and temporal settings play a significant role in the portrayal of the painful... more
"Settler Citizenship No More" is a portfolio curated and introduced by Alan Pelaez Lopez to mark the 100th anniversary of both the 1924 American Indian Citizenship Act and the Immigration Act of 1924. The portfolio "rejects the notion... more
Der Artikel beleuchtet den fernöstlich-deutschen Literaturtransfer vor dem Hintergrund des andauernden Ukraine-Krieges. Im Mittelpunkt steht eine analytische Betrachtung der Jubiläumsausgabe Nr. 74 der Hefte für ostasiatische Literatur... more
After 30 years from the publication of the first migrant novel written in Italian by Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun’s, "Dove lo stato non c’è" (1991), the curriculum of Italian literature taught in upper secondary school is still... more
At the beginning of the 18th century, with the act of the parliaments of England and Scotland, the four countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland were formed the Great Britain, and the British identity was added to the people of... more
On migration literature and the contrast between writing on paper—by people who stay at home and have access to texts that move—and writing on fixed surfaces, available only to those who pass by.
Circulatory Objects, Migratory Subjects, and the Limits of Form in Indian Ocean Fiction The Indian Ocean is a world of movement and circulation. Its system of monsoon winds that reverse their direction twice a year has long enabled ships... more
Wir haben gesehen, dass es den Romanen gelingt, verschiedene Leerstellen im literarischen System zu besetzen. An die Stelle der nicht mehr glaubwürdigen Utopie tritt im Werk von Kim Stanley Robinson die als Zukunftsvision verkleidete,... more
Als Joanne Rowling im Jahr 2013 Der Ruf des Kuckucks ver öffentlichte, ihren ersten Kriminalroman und ihre zweite Buchver öffentlichung nach der Harry Potter Reihe, verwendete sie ein Pseudonym. Die Aufmerksamkeit sollte allein dem ver... more
In contrast to the popularity of working-class issues among mainstream Victorian writers, the voices of working-class writers who deal with the problems of their own social groups are not sufficiently heard and noticed in the 19th century... more
Este libro analiza la obra y el legado de siete intelectuales del exilio republicano español en México: Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, Angelina Muñiz Huberman, Ramón Xirau, Ramón Iglesia, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, Pedro Armillas y Ángel Palerm. A... more
Este artículo analiza la poesía de Ramón Xirau, integrante de la generación Nepantla, considerada la segunda generación del exilio español en México. A partir de la teoría de José Gaos, se examina cómo su imaginario poético se configura... more
Questo saggio si concentra sul leitmotiv transmediale-crossover di Guerra e Pace come rappresentato dal cinema transculturale emergente in Italia, sottolineando gli aspetti etici ed estetici del trauma e della sofferenza derivanti dalle... more
"Deutsch" ist, über andere Menschen und Völker herzuziehen: Das aber gibt es von "links" und von "rechts." Brecht war einer, der von "links" kam.
The high school drama is a popular genre in France and Germany that often portrays the integration of young migrants into society. This essay compares the French film La journée de la jupe (Skirt Day, 2009) and its German adaptation for... more
Birbirine benzer / aynı sömürge siyasi sistemleri ile yönetilen ve aynı dönemde bağımsızlıklarını kazanan ve birbirleriyle akraba olan Orta Asya Türk halklarının bağımsızlık dönemindeki edebî ilişkilerini geliştirmedeki basın... more
The aim is to analyse the (self)criticism of the French-Moroccan geographer Yves Lacoste in relation to his book Geography of Underdevelopment, originally published in 1965, present in the third edition in 1976 – both by Presses... more
Scopo del lavoro di ricerca è ridefinire lo spazio come strategia rappresentativa non soltanto letteraria, ma anche culturale. Ripercorrendo l’evoluzione del pensiero spaziale dall’antichità allo “spatial turn” di fine Novecento emerge... more
This paper explores The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019) by Christy Lefteri as a work of historical fiction that shifts the focus from general informative narratives to universal humanitarian experiences, emphasizing the individual lives of... more
Esta investigación se centra en la contextualización y el estudio de la obra poética de William González Guevara (Managua, 2000) entre el reciente auge de las narrativas obreras y la emergencia de la actual poesía joven de la precariedad... more
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