Migrant and Diasporic Literature

This chapter examines the contribution of the diasporic economy, trade and entrepreneurship to the Caribbean region with a focus on the economic impact of remittances as well as diaspora savings and income. The study then goes beyond a focus on the remitters and recipients to look at the role of intermediaries such as money transfer operators (MTOs). The goal is to examine the trade in services and the role of Caribbean-owned MTOs in the remittance market.

Communiqué de presse relations presse : Atlas des migrations en Méditerranée de l'antiquité à nous jours
Cet ouvrage propose un panorama original des migrations en Méditerranée depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours.
Plus de 70 spécialistes, historiens, géographes, anthropologues, politologues, se sont donné comme objectif de montrer comment les migrations ont façonné les sociétés et les cultures méditerranéennes au cours de l’histoire. Ils rendent accessibles grâce à des textes courts, des phénomènes complexes, en mettant en lumière leurs particularités ou leur banalité ou en remettant en perspective les conditions de leur émergence. En regard, des extraits de sources historiques et des illustrations permettent de saisir les espoirs, les inquiétudes, parfois les drames qui accompagnent les mobilités d’hommes et de femmes de tous horizons.
Les 200 cartes produites jouent sur les échelles de représentation et varient les angles d’approche thématique : de l’observation des mouvements dans un port aux mobilités qui sillonnent l’ensemble des rivages méditerranéens, jusqu’aux projections mondiales des diasporas méditerranéennes, ou les mutations d’une métropole cosmopolite sous l’effet des arrivées successives de migrants.
L’atlas se structure en trois parties composées chacune de chapitres au sein desquels se succèdent, après une introduction, des doubles- pages thématiques, laissant ainsi le choix d’une lecture continue ou fractionnée. Il évoque d’abord les structures qui encadrent, contrôlent ou accompagnent les migrations (routes, frontières, lieux d’accueil, cadres politiques et juridiques, puis les différents acteurs (marchands, travailleurs, esclaves, religieux, intellectuels ou artistes) avant de porter attention aux modalités de contacts entre les migrants et les sociétés d’accueil (invasions, colonisations, transferts, cosmopolitisme, xénophobie).
Cet atlas s’adresse à un lectorat qui cherche à mieux connaître et comprendre une question qui, sous les feux de l’actualité, suscite des discours aux formules lapidaires et parfois outrancières.
ISBN : 978-2-330-14501-9
Prix indicatif : 35.00€

Although the first world, as seen through the lens of academia, seems to be prospering, and the third world has found its own place in the postcolonial intellectual order, the post-cold war world of semi-peripheries in East and Central Europe (ECE) has largely disappeared from the discourse of Comparative Literature. It sometimes appears as a convenient intellectual counterpoint or is included in postmodernist or postcolonial narratives; in both cases, however, it doesn’t convey regional specificity or allow local voices to speak. Both strategies – core and postcolonial – expropriate the semi-peripheral realm of second-world non-places.

This article examines the representation of home among members of the Lebanese diaspora in New York, Montreal and Paris. Lebanese immigrants view home as both a concrete reality that is achieved physically or in relation with others and a symbolic reference point that ...

This paper argues that the diasporic writings deal with the paradox of separation and connection with the homeland. While the diasporic connection with ‘past-home’ is revived by audio, visual, and verbal memories through photographs, albums, letters, videos, audios, and recordings, the connection with the ‘present-home’ is retained by a global communication network. Thus, modern communication and technology seem to bring diaspora nearer to home because of which they can retain their connections with the homeland in the host-land. However, it can be seen that modern technology and communication itself allure individuals in envisioning the idea of “would-be-homeland” resulting in their diasporic psychology. Consequently, the diasporic narrative can be divided into parts: In the first part, it is the ‘would-be host-land’ which becomes a place of attraction as it is represented in various media like television, cinema, magazines, internet, books, and anecdotes. An image of prosperity is created of “would-be-host land” which is filled with hope and opportunities for progress. The protagonist is thus already inclined to make a move to this new ‘host-land.’ The second half of the narrative deals with the experience of ‘the moved body.’ The person who migrates to a new place finds it difficult to adjust to a new identity and fails to assimilate in a new environment resulting in a nostalgia for the lost place. This paper attempts to deconstruct the causal aspect of media and means of communication.

The book offers a comparative study of resettlement and integration of former Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel, USA, Canada, and Germany over the last 20 years. Based on both survey data and ethnographic materials collected by the author, this is a rare account of the major immigration saga of the post-communist period and a seminal event in contemporary Jewish history.

In this working paper we will present a research methodology for describing and comparing corpus of video productions diffused and shared on social media platforms (here: You Tube). The objective of this research is: 1. to study and interpret the cultural representations of the figure of the migrant/immigrant and refugee in virtual local and global communities viewing, commenting and remediating (rewriting) such video productions and 2. to interpret these cultural representations as belonging to a diversity of (new) folk cultures offering especially people from the younger generations (the so-called Millennials and Post-Millennials also sometimes called Homelanders) an epistemic framework for thematizing and narrating the (social) Other (here: the migrant, the immigrant and the refugee). This paper constitutes the principal support of our course entitled “Cultural visions of (im)migrants and (im)migration in the digital social mediasphere”. This course is part of the EMICC (European Master in InterCultural Communication) program offered by a network of European universities and coordinated by the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano . The methodology and results discussed in this paper will also be presented in the First Eurocampus Conference “Advances in Intercultural Communication” in January 2018 and hosted by the Universidade Aberta in Coimbra (Portugal). Finally, we would also like to stress that this is a first uncorrected version of a research article to be published in the Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication, edited by Guido Rings and Sebastian Rasinger (expected publication date: end of 2018/first half of 2019).

Lime for Chest Congestion, Bitter Orange for Diabetes: Foods as Medicines in the Dominican Community in New York City. Several plants serve a dual purpose as foods and medicines in the Dominican immigrant community in New York City. Data show that foods used for self–medication by this community are plants that are well known and readily available in an urban environment, such as lime, bitter orange, garlic, cinnamon, onion and shallot, coconut, watercress, ginger, soursop, and
radish. These plants are significant for Dominicans in New York City for treatment of non–communicable diseases, colloquially called “lifestyle diseases” (such as diabetes, obesity, high
cholesterol, hypertension, and asthma/chest congestion), self–limiting diseases (including common cold, flu, cough, acute bronchitis), and female reproductive health (such as vaginal infections and infertility).Our findings emphasize the contemporary role of traditional medicine as an alternative and
parallel healthcare system that dynamically adapts to current urban epidemiological trends. The double use of foods as medicines has important implications for urban outreach projects, such as Green Carts and community gardens, that play a role in disease prevention of vulnerable populations, especially those living in areas identified as food deserts.

At the close of his recently discovered 1937 essay on graphic artist and fellow Drohobyczan Ephraim Moses Lilien, Galician short-story writer Bruno Schulz spoke of Lilien's early graphic works Juda and Lieder des Ghetto, and at the same time of his own writing, as a “creation born of the longing of golus.” This article considers Schulz's artistic engagement with the concept of golus—understood as both diaspora and exile—as illustrated in his essay on Lilien and in the poet Rokhl Korn's Yiddish-language review of Schulz's Cinnamon Shops. Schulz's writing, in its polyphony and translinguality; in its rhetorical strategies of universalization and encryption; in its marriage of Jewish and universalist thematics; and in the choices that the author made about where and how to publish, represents both a reflection on and a textualization of the experience of diaspora. Schulz's work, within the context of the post–World War I Galician Jewish experience in a newly independent Poland, represents an affirmative diasporic cultural model that, though it was not easy to incorporate into the ethnonational narratives that have dominated in both Polish and Jewish literary studies since World War II, lends itself much more readily to the present scholarly context, with its renewed interest in diasporic, transnational, and cosmopolitan models of Jewish identity as well as its postsecularist attention to cultural projects that arise at the intersection of materialism and theology.

With the growth of Asian economies, reliance on the supply of migrant workers has become more important to sustain competitiveness especially in labor-intensive sectors. Malaysia, for one, is a large importer of labor in the region. An estimated 16 per cent of the country's total employed workforce is comprised of foreign workers with vital communication and information needs. The paper examines how mobile phones have become significant devices for migrant workers to adapt to new environments. The paper looks into: (1) the information and communication needs and practices specifically of Indonesian, Filipino, and Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia (2) their aspirations and interests on entertainment, local content, and media consumption; and (3) their social networks in their host environments. Through in-depth interviews and photo novellas (picture stories), the paper investigates how migrant use of mobile phones paves the way for forming and maintaining social circles that are integral in their lives away from home. The lifestyles and mobile phone culture of selected Filipino, Indonesian and Bangladeshi migrant workers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia reflect how links with their own home countries are sustained with mobile technology as a tool. The paper hopes to shed light on the role played by mobile usage in building social capital and inclusion among migrant workers in Malaysia.

"Ubico mi reflexión en el hecho de que literatura produce conocimiento histórico y sociológico debido a la forma en que despliega su escritura. Me interesa discutir cómo la literatura no corresponde únicamente al orden de la ficción, pues produce conocimiento sobre lo real, no sólo lo representa, también trata de explicarlo lo cual conlleva un ejercicio sociológico e histórico al buscar causalidades, consecuencias y las palabras adecuadas para plasmar procesos sociales."

This research questions the definition of “home” and “belonging” for the members of the “new” Indian diaspora in Romania, based on a qualitative research study. The issues of “home” and “country” are central in the diaspora research, being connected to the feeling of ‘inclusion’ or ‘exclusion’ (Cohen, 1997). As Arjun Appadurai argues, the “delocalization” and multiplication of spaces where the individual places himself / herself is a feature of modernity (1994), transnational communities existing simultaneously in two cultural spaces (Portes, 1996: 74-76). Given that individuals are creating interpersonal relationships inside their social networks, in connection to their activities (see Marinescu, V. 2009), the research focused on questioning what are the professional, social and personal trajectories of Indians living in Romania? What are their strategies of inclusion, inside and outside the Indian community? The “communication” dimension is included in this research as well, consi...

The article reflects on contemporary theatre’s representational practice of victimisation, occasionally reserved for refugees and previously immigrants, and examines the ethical and political implications entailed in these practices. It argues that the representation of a vulnerable, suffering ‘other’ depoliticizes the refugee issue, confining refugees to a disempowered category that depends on our empathy and support. Without underrating the essential role of theatre – and the arts in general – to highlight and denounce instances of injustice, discrimination or violence, this article poses the question whether a victimhood-oriented repertoire manages to go beyond short-lived compassion. How can contemporary theatre produce an aesthetic of critical, politicized encounter, while simultaneously acknowledging the agency, expertise and multifaceted identities of people with a refugee experience? The article proposes a documentary theatre approach that can challenge the aforementioned representational patterns of vulnerability and trauma by turning the stage into a self-reflective, inclusive space for critical creativity and re-invented identity placements. The proposed approach is informed by the ethical inquiries and methodological tools of contemporary ethnographic practice. It was developed in the workshop series From Field to Stage: Dramaturgies of the Other, which explores the new directions that the encounter of documentary theatre with ethnography opens in regard to the dramatisation of the ‘other’.

Most critics find Fan Liuyuan, the male protagonist in Eileen Chang's novella "Love in a Fallen City" (1943), to be a simple character. What they fail to take into account, however, is the complexity of Fan Liuyuan's identity as well as his predicament, both before and after his return to China. By adopting the concept of diaspora, the present study explores how his desire for an absent authentic Chinese culture is developed, and how his failure to come to terms with his hybrid identity in his search for pure ethnicity results in a series of fruitless attempts to construct his cultural identity in his homeland. Chang's depiction of this futile pursuit indicates that pure "Chineseness" exists only in the diasporic imagination rather than in any tangible object or place. Such a revelation negates the essentialization of pure Chineseness and allows for more diverse articulations of diasporic ethnicity.

The essay establishes a dialogue between Alessandro Leogrande's reading of Caravaggio's painting The Martyrdom of St. Matthew (La frontiera, 2015) and Des spectres hantent l'Europe (2016), a documentary video shot by Niki Giannari and Maria Kourkouta in the Idomeni refugees camp. Why are images used? How can we react in front of the pain of others? What is the value of testimony? Drawing on suggestions that range from philosophy to anthropology (Merleau-Ponty, Didi-Huberman, Viveiros de Castro) the essay investigates how these two works allow us to experience another point of view. Leogrande, Giannari and Kourkouta perform a poetic operation that achieves very convincing results. On one hand Leogrande dwells on the presence of Caravaggio's self-portrait body inside the painting; on the other, Giannari and Kourkouta's authorial choices (the use of long shots, of images that becomes fragments saved from the History, the use of images that arise from past and future) produce a particularly effective shifting of perspective.

Er(r)go…,
Kanada. Ale Kanada już nie jako mit dalekiego Edenu – ,,kraina żywicą pachnąca" – lecz jako laboratorium wielokulturowości, politycznie usankcjonowany eksperyment wzajemnego wszczepiania tkanki Innego i Tożsamego; a zatem Kanada – czy raczej TransKanada – jako kontrowersja: nie wokół banalnego politycznie problemu dwukulturowości (angielska Kanada jako Brytania Północy, a Quebec jako Nowa Francja), ale istotnego dla cywilizacji nie tylko zachodniej zjawiska współistnienia wielości kultur. Kanada jako ogromna przestrzeń: fizyczna – niezmierzone lasy, Góry Skaliste, jeziora – ale też jako przestrzeń kulturowych transakcji i translacji, przestrzeń międzykulturowego spotkania. Nigdzie chyba problematyka tożsamości kulturowej nie została tak silnie wyeksponowana i nie wywołała tak twórczej debaty wokół postkolonializmu, hybrydyczności, wielonarodowości, transkulturowości – nigdzie też nie była ta debata tak silnie zakorzeniona w praktyce codziennego, międzykulturowego współbycia. Przesunięcie do centrum grup uprzednio marginalizowanych, Pierwsze Narody, transkulturowość i obywatelstwo diasporyczne, pojęcia narodowości i państwowości, ale też postnarodowość i postpaństwowość,transnarodowość i transkulturowość, dekonstrukcja tradycyjnych narodowych ideologii i autokonstrukcja społeczności, dialog z Innymi i pomiędzy Innymi, postetniczność i tożsamość ludności rodzimej. Jednocześnie obawa i wyczulenie na zagrożenia: ,,kontroli epistemologicznej" przez kulturę dominującą czy politycznego zarządzania różnic, które nie zostawia przestrzeni dla dialogu kultur; ostrożność wobec pozornie neutralnych i nienaznaczonych innością/etnicznością kultur i literatur wywodzących się z kręgu anglo-europejskiego, ale ,,z natury" niejako nadal zajmujących pozycję uprzywilejowaną jako epistemologiczny punkt odniesienia. Pytania kanadyjskie to pytania najżywotniejsze dla współczesnego tygla cywilizacji. Czy klonować zatem kanadyjski klon, czy raczej pozostać przy syropie?

Klonowanie Kanady to numer „Er(r)go” gościnnie przygotowany przez Eugenię Sojkę, znakomitą propagatorkę kultury kanadyjskiej i problematyki wielokulturowości.

Wojciech Kalaga


Er(r)go…,
Canada. But not any longer as the embodied myth of the far-off Eden—"the land of plenty"—now a multicultural laboratory, a politically sanctioned experiment of mutual grafting of the tissues of the Self and the Other. Thus, Canada—or perhaps TransCanada—as a controversy: not of the politically banal duality of culture (English Canada as the Britannia of the North and Quebec as the New France), but of the phenomenon that remains significant not only for the western civilization—the coexistence of multiplicity of cultures. Canada as an immense physical space—unfathomable forests, The Rocky Mountains, lakes—but also as a space of cultural translations and transactions, a space of cross-cultural meeting. Probably nowhere else has the issue of cultural identity been made so apparent and evoked such creative debates over postcolonialism, hybridity, multinationalism, transculturalism—nowhere else have those debates been so strongly rooted in the practice of everyday, cross-cultural coexistence. The centralization of the groups hitherto marginalized, the First Nations, transculturalism and diasporic citizenship, the concepts of citizenship and nationality, but also post-citizenship and post-nationality, transcitizenship and transculturalism, deconstruction of traditional national ideologies and self-construction of the society, the dialogue with the Other and amongst Others, post-ethnicity and the identity of the indigenous peoples. At the same time, apprehension and watchfulness for the threat of "epistemological control" by a dominant culture or political management of differences which leaves no space for cultural dialogue; wariness for the seemingly neutral cultures, unmarked by otherness/ethnicity and literatures of the Anglo-European origin, which nevertheless still appear to hold a position privileged as the epistemological point of reference. The Canadian questions are questions of utmost significance for the contemporary melting pot of civilizations. Should we then believe in the growth of the maple leaf or just stick to the maple syrup?

Map(l)ing Canada is an issue of Er(r)go guest edited by Eugenia Sojka, a distinguished spokesperson for Canadian culture and the theme of multiculturalism.

Wojciech Kalaga

As the Philippines' largest export, the more than nine million overseas Filipino migrant workers have become the ideal target market for various products and services. On this end, ABS-CBN, the biggest local media conglomerate, treads a familiar path undertaken by transnational corporations of diversifying their interests by targeting Filipinos living/working in foreign countries as evidenced in their tagline " In the Service of the Filipino Worldwide ". This paper focuses on three films produced by Star Cinema, the film arm of ABS-CBN, dealing with the migrant workers, Milan (2004), Dubai (2005), Love Me Again (Land Down Under) (2009) and its representations of migrant stories in transnational spaces. Utilizing concepts from political economy and supported by qualitative textual analysis, this paper delves into the implicit relationship between mass media products and its accompanying ideologies of accumulation of material wealth and the government policies on the commodification of labor export through the films' representations of the plight and conditions of these migrant workers in foreign spaces.

This article brings spatial theory, diasporic culture, and media studies together in a cross-platform reading of Bosnian-American author Aleksandar Hemon's work. Addressing the underexamined spatial consciousness of diaspora through an engagement with both print and electronic sources, it argues that Hemon's novels and websites render diasporic space in terms of " time-geography, " which represents places as loci for multiple histories of migration. Diasporic time-geography produces several perspectives (local, global, national, diasporic) on shared space, which are further compounded when Hemon's novels Nowhere Man (2002) and The Lazarus Project (2008) are read comparatively with their websites. I argue that Hemon's diversiform approach to space assumes coherence when read as a critique of nationalist spatial models. In particular, his use of text, image, and interactive web design to represent the spaces of cities such as Chicago, Sarajevo, Lviv, and others contests the spatial abstraction of the nation-state as described by Henri Lefebvre. Against this abstraction, Hemon's work understands space as a concrete social production inflected by past, present, and future population movements.

"The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences explores these competing narratives and the consequences of criminalizing immigration in the United States and abroad. It examines the impact of national, state, and local legislation on the psychosocial well being of immigrants. The book explores key ways in which immigration is criminalized, and examines how the problematization of immigration becomes a political tool. The first chapters of the book explore the criminalization of immigration through the lens of pacification and the theater of cruelty. In both chapters, the authors seek to understand the process of “othering” members of the immigrant population to exact social control and to mollify the public. These front chapters set the tone for remainder of the book. They provide the impetus for why states have enacted, or have attempted to enact state level immigration laws that make it nearly impossible for the undocumented to live within the boundaries of these states. In section two, three U.S. states are highlighted: Arizona, Alabama, and Indiana. While the chapters on Arizona and Alabama summarize key aspects of state laws, author Sujey Vega highlights the life of one undocumented immigrant as she navigates life in the Heartland.

The book then turns its focus to the criminalization of immigration in a socio-political context. Here, four chapters provide explorations of the criminalization of immigration on labor standards enforcement, immigrant detention, the right wing perspective in the United States and in Europe, and white supremacy. Labor standards impact the rate by which undocumented immigrants are paid, which in turn impacts their health and safety within and outside the workplace, protections from workplace discrimination, and collective activity protections. The criminalization of immigration erodes many of the workplace and labor protections that we have come to view as essential. Similarly, the privatization of corrections has influenced the incarceration and detention of many undocumented immigrants and has even influenced the very laws described in section two of this book. If not for the possibility of profiting off of the detention of the undocumented, many of immigration related laws would not have come to fruition.

The next section of the book provides a transnational and international context to the criminalization of immigration. With chapters focusing on human rights violations, the transnational dimensions of Mexican migration, the making of the Maras, and the criminalization of immigration in the United Kingdom, these chapters ask the reader to examine the criminalization of immigration from a broader perspective. The reader learns how national issues become international and, likewise how international immigration issues influence national policy.

The final chapters of the book put the human face on the criminalization of immigration. Each chapter represents a case study of a specific aspect of the criminalization of immigration. They approach the issue from the viewpoint of a day laborer, an undocumented woman who has become a victim of domestic violence, a child whose parents are undocumented, and a detention officer who wrestles with his decisions to continue his job. Regardless of which chapters one reads, the raw emotion felt by placing oneself in each context is overwhelming.

Overall, The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences provides a complete examination of an issue that cuts through emotional value conflicts. It provides the facts and knowledge essential for a fair and balanced debate"

This chapter explores the relationship between Kazuo Ishiguro and Japan and notions of ‘Japanese-ness’. Despite having left Japan as a child, and despite his reputation as a major contemporary British writer, Ishiguro’s Japanese heritage continues to be a consideration in discussions of him and his works. Ishiguro himself has referred to his engagements with what he terms an ‘imagined Japan’ in his works. Even in texts where Japan does not figure as a discernable narrative presence, there are sometimes (seemingly insignificant) subtextual references, suggesting a lingering residue of ‘Japanese-ness’ (real or ‘imagined’) in his works. This paper focuses on these engagements with ‘Japan’ in Ishiguro’s works,  in both those texts, such as A Pale View of the Hills and An Artist of the Floating World where an ‘imagined Japan’ figure prominently and  in others (like The Remains of the Day and The Unconsoled) where this apparently is not the case. My discussion draws upon Australian literary studies scholar Mary Besemeres’ analytical framework of ‘self translation’ to look at  ‘language migrant’ authors from non-English speaking backgrounds writing in English (Besemeres 2002: 10). Besemeres’ study discusses a number of such  ‘language migrant’ authors including Vladimir Nabokov, Polish-Canadian journalist Eva Hoffman, the Asian-American activist and writer Maxine Hong-Kingston, as well as Kazuo Ishiguro. My discussion of Ishiguro, however, juxtaposes him against another ‘language migrant’ writer situated between Japan and Europe, the poet and writer Yoko Tawada, who writes in both Japanese and German.

A propos des conditions de possibilité qui caractérisent l'entrance d'un écrivain issu de l'immigration (algérienne en ce cas), son insertion dans un champ local (la Belgique francophone en ce cas) et son évolution ultérieure vers une position d'auteur migrant.
- About qualifications that are needed for a successful intrance of a new writer from an immigrant background into the local literary field. In this case, of a young woman considered as algerian, into the french-speaking belgian literary field, which later evolves to a "migrant" writer's position.

Aiming at contributing to the limited literature on migrant labor in Qatar, this project investigated the current situation of low-skilled migrant workers in Qatar through an analysis of newspaper articles and interviews. 542 articles from two Qatari local newspapers in English that depicted stories of migrant worker issues were collected and analyzed using grounded theory. In addition, interviews with migrant workers, employers, ambassadors, and community advocates offer insights about the living and working conditions of migrant workers in Qatar. In line with the limited literature on this topic, the findings indicate that migrant worker face various challenges starting in their country of origin with the use of unscrupulous recruiting agencies and constrained by the sponsorship system and the labor laws in Qatar. Specifically, challenges include falsification of work related documentation, long work hours and low salaries, unpaid wages, exploitation and abuse in the work place, unsafe working conditions, poor accommodations, medical problems, and accidents and fatalities. The findings also highlight the role of government and non-government agencies and embassies in providing aid and assistance to workers in need. Initiatives taken by the Qatari government to better protect the rights of migrant workers are also discussed. The corpus analysis and interview data also points out the perceived negative cultural, social, and economic impact that migrant workers bring to the State of Qatar. Recommendations for policy implementation to protect the rights of migrant workers in Qatar are discussed.

Fatou Diome’s first novel, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique, can be read as a work of migrant literature in which the Atlantic figures as a separating expanse beholden to a single past, that of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The ocean divides contemporary African migrants to Europe from the continent, as it did enslaved African taken forcibly to the Americas; it consumes a returned impoverished migrant, as it swallowed those who did not survive the Middle Passage. Yet for the authorial protagonist, Salie, and her island home, the Senegalese fishing village of Niodior, the Atlantic evokes multiple histories and experiences. This ocean is a place of freedom, as well as its absence, of daily sustenance as well as migration, of life as well as death, of postcolonial violence as well as the violence of the Trade. The novel’s Atlantic, like the text as a whole, alludes to many pasts, and—at times—abandons the dualities of place, race, and gender that organize most contemporary discourse about migration and oppression. Passages of opaque desire and oblique critique diverge from a dichotomous geography of continents and subject positions. Where Salie and Niodior emerge uncontained by categories inherited from colonial discourses, there are intimations of what genuinely postcolonial freedom might be.

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This project juxtaposes the escape of Syrian refugees in 2015 and the history of refugees from China to Hong Kong in the 60s and 70s. In the framework of this book, the history of Hong Kong “Freedom Swimmers” in the 60s and 70s is presented, and the escape stories of Syrian refugees to Germany in Summer 2015 are presented as illustrations. This juxtaposition hopes to reveal the familiar and the unfamiliar situations that refugees face in different eras and locations. Most importantly, how we could relate ourselves to the refugees by understanding the issues of giving and taking.

[ITA] Il romanzo "Questo è quanto" di Duška Kovačević si presenta sotto forma di narrazione interiore, attraverso tempi e mondi dilatati con uno sconfinamento palese fino all’età dell’infanzia. Momenti narrativi in cui ritornano – netti – atteggiamenti contrastanti, ironie visive, paure, conflitti. Attese. La parola genera scorrimenti di significato, dilatando colori e forme e generando quadri personali immediati e stabili. L’autrice è trasparente anche quando solitudine e silenzio prendono il sopravvento nell’esposizione.

[ENG] The novel "Questo é quanto" by Duška Kovačević presents itself in the form of an inner narrative, through times and worlds dilated with an overt trespass into childhood. Narrative moments in which contrasting attitudes, visual ironies, fears, conflicts, and conflicts return. Expectations. The word generates shifts of meaning, dilating colours and shapes and generating immediate and stable personal pictures. The author is transparent even when solitude and silence take over in the exhibition.

"Latinos are now the largest ethnic minority population in the United States and still they encounter a great deal of misunderstanding, prejudice, and discrimination. Utilizing a strengths-based perspective, Social Work Practice with Latinos addresses the unique needs of this diverse population.

Written by practitioners and scholars from many disciplines, this book discusses social issues of consequence to Latinos and specific strengths and risk factors of the Latino community. They then offer methods that utilize these strengths to ensure a culturally-competent approach to practice with Latino populations. Each chapter is accompanied by key questions for personal and group reflection to facilitate discussion and understanding of these vital themes.

The editors have nearly three decades of combined experience working with Latino populations inside and outside the United States. Drawing on this experience, they integrate these varied perspectives to prepare students and practitioners for practice with this richly diverse community."

Travaillés par une nostalgie de l’origine, les récits autobiographiques d’Amélie Nothomb dépeignent un inconfort devant la perte, un malaise face à la migration géographique. Dans cet article, je propose une lecture psychanalytique de Biographie de la faim (2004) basée sur la notion de mélancolie, définie par Mélanie Klein (1976) et Julia Kristeva (1987) comme un mode de fonctionnement psychique fondé sur une incapacité à gérer le deuil. Pour Kristeva (1974), la mélancolie est associée au sémiotique et constitue une fonctionnalité antérieure au langage, proche du corps et du maternel, pouvant influencer le symbolique, c’est-à-dire le sujet de l’énonciation. Je défends ici la thèse que la mélancolie constitue une structure infralangagière qui organise toute la production d’Amélie Nothomb. Je montre qu’elle transparaît notamment dans Biographie de la faim à travers les affects et passages à l’acte de la protagoniste (avatar de l’écrivaine), chez qui les épisodes dépressifs alternent avec des phases maniaques.

prologue, intro and afterword of book
Publication date: October 20, 2016
Abstract:
Restrictive border protection policies directed toward managing the flow of refugees coming into neoliberal democracies (and out of failing nation-states) are a defining feature of contemporary politics. In this book, Verónica Tello analyses how contemporary artists--such as Tania Bruguera, Isaac Julien, Rosemary Laing, Dierk Schmidt, Hito Steyerl, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green--negotiate their diverse subject positions while addressing and taking part in the production of images associated with refugee experiences and histories. Tello argues that their practices, which manifest across a range of contexts including Cuba, the United States, Australia and Europe, represent an emergent, global paradigm of contemporary art, 'counter-memorial aesthetics'.

Counter-memorial aesthetics, Tello argues, is characterized by its conjunction of heterogeneous signifiers and voices of many times and places, generating an experimental, non-teleological approach to the construction of contemporary history, which also takes into account the complex, disorienting spatial affects of globalization. Spanning performance art, experimental 'history painting', aftermath photography and video installation, counter-memorial aesthetics bring to the fore, Tello argues, how contemporary refugee flows and related traumatic events critically challenge and conflict with many existing, tired if not also stubborn notions of national identity, borders, history and memory.

Building on the writings of such thinkers as Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière, this book offers a useful concept of 'counter-memory' for the twenty-first century. It shows how counter-memorial aesthetics is not only central to the nexus of contemporary art and refugee histories but also how it can offer a way of being critically present with many other, often interrelated, global crises in the contemporary era.

http://bloomsbury.com/us/counter-memorial-aesthetics-9781474252737/

Toward a Migrant Ecocriticism is a proposal for a critical lens that predominantly uses postcolonial ecocriticism and ecocosmopolitanism to address the new environmental cultures constructed out of the visible and invisible migrancies brought about by social, political, economical, and environmental causes. Recent catastrophes like the almost total wipeout of Tacloban City by Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the devastating wildfires in British Columbia, Canada have resulted in humanitarian crises that have forced the movement of migrants from area to area; thus, this lens aims to shed light on these situations of precarity and instability via a chiasmic organization of disaster ecopoetry from Canada and the Philippines. It also attempts to interrogate colonial systems within these two countries, as well as the imperial debris that tie their ruins and ruinations together. A Migrant Ecocriticism seeks to ask questions such as: What can the migrant’s point of view allow us to see in today’s global human and non-human environmental crises? This framework proposes to answer such questions by comparing ecopoetry from both countries to analyse these marginalised points of view: a poet, a migrant, a survivor.

I contend that while the term diaspora is usually associated with a search for identity, the diasporic artist or writer is burdened with the imposition of a great number of ready-made identities circulating through cultural and institutional discourses. This burden is imposed without the writer’s participation or permission.

Scholarly debates over immigration and “diaspora” have shifted in recent years to pluralistic approaches of critics such as Bhabha and Hall who argue that the “hybridity” and “in-betweenness” of immigrants’ life might function as a suitable ground for the social and cultural improvement of their life-conditions. Drawing on such ideas, writers of the present article contend that Jhumpa Lahiri presents a double-sided outlook about the “third space” of diasporic life in her stories, while most critics have considered her attitude toward immigration a negative one. We argue that though Lahiri portrays immigrants’ problems in her stories, a meticulous appraisal of her work reveals the fact that she opposes too much insistence on traditional definitions of home and motherland, and instead pays tribute to the fluidity and flexibility of hybrid identity. She foregrounds the efficiency and fertility of the “third space” of diasporic life in several cases in her fiction by giving centrality and priority to those characters that are flexible, renounce the restricting customs of the left motherland, venture experiencing the inexperienced, and consequently can match themselves with their changed social position to achieve the best out of it.

Taking cue from Mignolo and Walsh’s  concept of decoloniality, this paper presents an experiment and exploration in Korean Thought to think ‘race’. It is a snapshot of an ongoing project of thinking/living decolonially to contribute to the growing literature that challenge the imperial status of Western Thought. The aim is not to call for cancellation nor indict a sense of morality to those who engage with what is conventionally offered in Western academic institutions. Instead, the goal is to participate in an exercise of epistemological considerations through the use of thought paradigms considered ‘Subaltern’ , of the global South,  indigenous , of the ‘margins’ ; namely that of ‘Other’ to the Western intellectual tradition. It effect, Western thought is displaced from the pedestal of the ‘universal’ and laid amongst a constellation of many thought systems. There are three expositions presented in this paper. First, the concept ‘race’ under Western episteme is examined. ‘Race’ is defined as the imposition of subject-object relation through the colonial power matrix. The ways in which this relation manifest is traced on structural and phenomenological levels using the particular example of ‘Asians’ coded under the ideology of Yellow Peril in Aotearoa and more broadly, the West. The second and third chapters offer ‘decolonial alternatives’ through which the subject-object relation can be transcended. Korean concepts of 인 (仁), ‘in’, is used to rethink ontology, and ‘habitus of 한 (韓);(恨), “han”’ , for exposition of decoloniality that is already in praxis. In sum, the paper calls for those who are racialised to locate ourselves in the spheres of liberation and sovereignty, one which can be done through tracing the thoughts of ancestors particular to one’s whakapapa (cultural lineage) . Through claiming this thinking/doing/living, the capacity to hold multiplicities, differences, and orientation towards expansion can be accessed.

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El trabajo reflexiona sobre la cuestión migrante en la literatura puertorriqueña, reconociendo para ello algunos de los escritores más representativos de esa condición (René Márques, Pedro Luis Soto, José Luis González) en torno a un tópico específico: el viaje a Nueva York. Tal relevamiento textual se utiliza como marco a la consideración de “La guagua aérea” de Luis Rafael Sánchez. El armado del corpus permite abordar la reflexión sobre la migración como fenómeno contemporáneo (sin dejar de lado su aspecto colectivo) y la literatura, en tanto modo de expresión de esas preocupaciones. El relato de viajes de Sánchez realiza una lectura crítica de la tradición literaria que constituye una transformación del modelo y una renovación del género al mismo tiempo que ofrece una alternativa al debate sobre la diáspora puertorriqueña en Estados Unidos y articula una polémica que incluye conceptos como cultura, nación, identidad y lengua.

Only since the 1960s has the Asian Diaspora been studied as a historical movement greatly impacting the United States — affecting not only socio-historical cultural trends and geographic ethnography, but also culturally redefining major areas of Western history and culture. This paper explores the reverse impact of the Asian America Diaspora on Mainland China or the Chinese Motherland. Mainland Chinese writers Ha Jin and Yiyun Li have left China and today teach in major American universities and reside in America. However, the fiction of both authors explores themes and landscapes that remain immersed in Mainland Chinese culture, traditions and environment. Both authors explore the themes of “cultural collisions” between East and West, choosing to write in their adopted English language instead of their mother Putonghua tongue. Central to this paper is the idea that ethnicity and race are socially and historically constructed as well as contested, reclaimed and redefined.