Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe


Book Description

Over the past few years, increased ‘unauthorised’ migrations into the territories of Europe have resulted in one of the most severe crises in the history of the European Union. Stierl explores migration and border struggles in contemporary Europe and the ways in which they animate, problematise, and transform the region and its political formation. This volume follows public protests of migrant activists, less visible attempts of those on the move to ‘irregularly’ subvert borders, as well as new solidarities and communities that emerge in interwoven struggles for the freedom of movement. Stierl offers a conceptualisation of migrant resistances as forces of animation through which European forms of border governance can be productively explored. As catalysts that set socio-political processes into frictional motion, they are developed as modes of critical investigation, indeed, as method. By ethnographically following and being implicated in different migration struggles that contest the ways in which Europe decides over and enacts who does, and does not, belong, the author probes what they reveal about the condition of Europe in the contemporary moment. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of Migration, Border, Security and Citizenship Studies, as well as the Political Sciences more generally.




Negotiations of Migration


Book Description

At a time when migration is mostly discussed in terms of “conflict” and “crisis”, it is decidedly important to acknowledge the discursive traditions, narrative patterns, and conceptual categories that continue to inform how migration is represented, analyzed and theorized in contemporary Europe. This volume focuses on the potential of artistic and critical practices to challenge hegemonic framings of migration and embrace the ambivalence inherent in migration as a conflictual, often violent, yet also liberating uprooting. By placing special emphasis on “peripheral” perspectives and subject positions, the volume provides new insights into topics such as belonging and exclusion, the “migrant crisis”, and memory. By bringing into dialogue creative practices and academic discourses, it explores how new modes of seeing and theorizing may emerge through experiences and representations of migration. Situated within the field of literary and cultural studies, it complements historical and social analyses in the emerging interdisciplinary field of migration studies.




Migration and Literature in Contemporary Europe


Book Description

Migration literature : Europe in transition / Mirjam Gabauer & Pia Schwarz Lausten -- Unfinished modernism : European destinations of transnational writing / Azade Seyhan -- Elsewhere : tracing the evidence / Charles Lock -- Four theses on migration and literature / Søren Frank -- Nostalgia : the longing for sameness / Jørn Boisen -- The voice of the 'real migrant' : contemporary migration literature in Sweden / Wolfgang Behschnitt -- Living in a language / Pia Schwarz Lausten -- Network and movement : two tropes in recent German migration literature and film / Mirjam Gebauer -- After the 'cartoons' : the rise of a new Danish migration literature? / Moritz Schramm -- Migrant writing as a strategy of legacy hunting in the French literary field / Christina Horvath -- Migration el parole littéraire déplacée, entre France et Maghreb / Charles Bonn -- Migrants, or living the postcolonial? : Greenlandic authors in transnational space / Kirsten Thisted -- 'Missioni' : double identity and plurilingualism in the works of three female migrant writers in Italy / Daniele Comberiati -- The theme of labor in contemporary Volga German literature / Anna Rodzevich -- Migrant literature in Italy and Europe : patterns compared / Nora Moll -- 'Kanak Sprak' and Union Suspecte : scandals around hybrid and multilingual literature in Germany and Belgium / Thomas Ernst -- 'Fed with the same food' : Dutch authors Hafid Bouazza and Abdelkader Benali act on Shakespeare / Henriette Louwerse -- Stereotypes of China and Europe in the writings of Chinese migrant writers in Germany and France / Heidrun Hörner -- Danish identity and the migrant hero's hybridising gaze in Jamal Mahjoub's The carrier / Sten Pultz Moslund -- 'Back to London' : subject and city in Bernardine Evaristo's Lara / Marie Lauritzen -- Among and between : alterity in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn / Maria Mayr -- Irony, hybridity and agency in Meera Syal's Anita and me / Katja Lehnert -- Moving Moroccan memories : Hafid Bouazza's critical re-vision of De voeten van Abdullah / Liesbeth Minnaard.




The Irregularization of Migration in Contemporary Europe


Book Description

Working from an interdisciplinary perspective that draws on the social sciences, legal studies, and the humanities, this book investigates the causes and effects of the extremities experienced by migrants. Firstly, the volume analyses the development and political-cultural conditions of current practices and discourses of “bordering,” “illegality,” and “irregularization.” Secondly, it focuses on the varieties of irregularization and on the diversity of the fields, techniques and effects involved in this variegation. Thirdly, the book examines examples of resistance that migrants and migratory cultures have developed in order to deal with the predicaments they face. The book uses the European Union as its case study, exploring practices and discourses of bordering, border control, and migration regulation. But the significance of this field extends well beyond the European context as the monitoring of Europe’s borders increasingly takes place on a global scale and reflects an internationally increasing trend.




Representing 21st-Century Migration in Europe


Book Description

The 21st century has witnessed some of the largest human migrations in history. Europe in particular has seen a major influx of refugees, redefining notions of borders and national identity. This interdisciplinary volume brings together leading international scholars of migration from perspectives as varied as literature, linguistics, area and cultural studies, media and communication, visual arts, and film studies. Together, they offer innovative interpretations of migrants and contemporary migration to Europe, enriching today’s political and media landscape, and engaging with the ongoing debate on forced mobility and rights of both extra-European migrants and European citizens.




Identity and Migration in Europe: Multidisciplinary Perspectives


Book Description

This book addresses the impact of migration on the formation and transformation of identity and its continuous negotiations. Its ground is the understanding of identity as a complex social phenomenon resulting from constant negotiations between personal conditions, social relationships, and institutional frameworks. Migrations, understood as dynamic processes that do not end when landing in the host country, offer the best conditions to analyze the construction and transformation of social identities in the postcolonial and globalized societies. Searching for novel epistemologies and methodologies, the research questions here addressed are how identity is negotiated in migration processes, and how these negotiations work in contemporary multiethnic Europe. This edited volume brings to the field a novel convergence of theoretical and empirical approaches by gathering together scholars from different countries of Europe and the Mediterranean area, from different disciplines and backgrounds, challenging the traditional discipline division.




Postmigration


Book Description

The concept of »postmigration« has recently gained importance in the context of European societies' obsession with migration and integration along with emerging new forms of exclusion and nationalisms. This book introduces ongoing debates on the developing concept of »postmigration« and how it can be applied to arts and culture. While the concept has mainly gained traction in the cultural scene in Berlin, Germany, the contributions expand the field of study by attending to cultural expressions in literature, theatre, film, and art across various European societies, such as the United Kingdom, France, Finland, Denmark, and Germany. By doing so, the contributions highlight this concept's potential and show how it can offer new perspectives on transformations caused by migration.




Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture


Book Description

Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Imagining New Europe provides a comprehensive study of the way in which contemporary writers, filmmakers, and the media have represented the recent phenomenon of Eastern European migration to the UK and Western Europe following the enlargement of the EU in the 21st century, the social and political changes after the fall of communism, and the Brexit vote. Exploring the recurring figures of Eastern Europeans as a new reservoir of cheap labour, the author engages with a wide range of both mainstream and neglected authors, films, and programmes, including Rose Tremain, John Lanchester, Marina Lewycka, Polly Courtney, Dubravka Ugrešić, Kapka Kassabova, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Mike Phillips, It’s a Free World, Gypo, Britain’s Hardest Workers, The Poles are Coming, and Czech Dream. Analyzing the treatment of Eastern Europeans as builders, fruit pickers, nannies, and victims of sex trafficking, and ways of resisting the stereotypes, this is an important intervention into debates about Europe, migration, and postcommunist transition to capitalism, as represented in multiple contemporary cultural texts.




The Many Voices of Europe


Book Description

This volume explores the rich, evolving body of contemporary cultural practices that reflect on a European project of diversity, new dynamics between and across cultures in Europe, and its interactions with the world. There have been calls across Europe for both traditional national identities and new forms of identity and community, assertions of regionalized identity and declarations of multiculturalism and multilingualism. These essays respond to this critical moment by analyzing the literature of migration as a (re)writing of European subjects. They ask fundamental questions from a variety of theoretical and critical standpoints: How do migrants write new identities into and against old national (meta)narratives? How do they interrogate constructions of identity? What kinds of literary experiments are emerging in this unstable context, e.g. in the graphic novel and avant-garde film? This collection makes a unique contribution to contemporary European literary studies by taking an interdisciplinary, transnational and comparative perspective, thereby addressing readers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and stimulating new research on the ambitious writing and thinking taking place across the borders of Europe today.




Contemporary Migration Literature in German and English


Book Description

Up until now, ‘migration literature’ has primarily been defined as ‘texts written by migrant authors’, a definition that has been discussed, criticised, and even rejected by critics and authors alike. Very rarely has ‘migration literature’ been understood as ‘literature on the topic of migration’, which is an approach this book adopts by presenting a comparative analysis of contemporary texts on experiences of migration. By focusing on specific themes and motifs in selected texts, this study suggests that migration literature is a sub-genre that exists in both various bodies of literature as well as various languages. This book analyses English and German texts by authors such as Monica Ali, Dimitré Dinev, Anna Kim, Timothy Mo, Preethi Nair, Caryl Phillips, Hamid Sadr, and Vladimir Vertlib, among others.