Literary Discourse and Migration

The celebration of a borderless world and the overcoming of imperialism has proven short-lived. Borders have re-emerged with full force as physical and political limits; and from there, as symbolic activities and discursive constructions through which the right to exist is negotiated. In an era of forced displacement and militarisation, this volume asks what literature and art can do in the face of migration.

This interdisciplinary collection draws on discourse analysis, semiotics, and literary theory to examine how written and visual languages inhabit the spaces of the border. The volume moves across geographies and genres: from ectopic literature and its challenges to national canons, to the agency of migrant children in contemporary fiction; from direct testimony of forced displacement, to exiles operating across political, affective, or existential dimensions; from the dehumanising logics of asylum-seeking to the pedagogical potential of illustrated narrative.

Literary Discourse and Migration is animated by the conviction that literature and art are not merely mirrors of displacement but interventions in it. It offers conceptual tools for thinking alongside the literary and artistic productions that emerge from displacement and articulate a poetics of transformation - a contribution toward a critical theory that points, finally, to a world without borders.