Representing 21st-Century Migration in Europe: Performing Borders, Identities and Texts 9781800733817

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Representing 21st-Century Migration in Europe

REPRESENTING 21ST-CENTURY MIGRATION IN EUROPE Performing Borders, Identities and Texts

Edited by Nelson González Ortega and Ana Belén Martínez García

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2022 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2022 Nelson González Ortega and Ana Belén Martínez García All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: González-Ortega, Nelson Arturo, 1952- editor. | Martínez García, Ana Belén, editor. Title: Representing 21st century migration in Europe : performing borders, identities and texts / edited by Nelson González Ortega and Ana Belén Martínez García. Other titles: Representing twenty-first century migration in Europe Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021040522 (print) | LCCN 2021040523 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800733800 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800733817 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Arts and society—Europe—History—21st century. | Emigration and immigration in art. | Europe—Emigration and immigration—History—21st century. Classification: LCC NX180.S6 R47 2022 (print) | LCC NX180.S6 (ebook) | DDC 700/.4552—dc23/eng/20211120 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021040522 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021040523 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-80073-380-0 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-381-7 ebook

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction. Theorizing Textual, Visual and Performative Approaches to Recent Migration to Europe Nelson González Ortega

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Part I. European Migration Represented in Testimonies and Novels Chapter 1. Othering and the Mutual Construction of (Trans)National Identities and Citizenship in Contemporary African and Spanish Migration Narratives: A Decolonial Reading Nelson González Ortega Chapter 2. Border Crossings, Religious Identities and Collective Writing in Pathé Cissé’s La Tierra Prometida/Diario de un Emigrante: La Terre Promise/Journal d’un Emigrant Carles Magrinyà Badiella Chapter 3. Migrant Literature Migrating: The Case of Fatou Diome’s Le ventre de l’Atlantique and Its Reception in Sweden Mattias Aronsson Chapter 4. Can Migration Narratives Change Public Conceptions of Borders? The Somali-Norwegian Borderscape in Roda Ahmed’s Forberedelsen and Its Medial Reception Johan Schimanski Chapter 5. Reflections on Transitional Borderscapes: Performing the Migrant Self in Written and Audiovisual Testimony Ana Belén Martínez García

19

39

53

71

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vi • Contents

Part II. European Migration Represented in the Media Chapter 6. The Visualization of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ of 2015–2016: A Case Study of a Croatian Online News Source Ljiljana Šarić

109

Chapter 7. Crossing the Border between Two Spaces: Narration about the Migrant Crisis of 2015–2016 in Italian Newspapers Elizaveta Khachaturyan

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Part III. European Migration Represented in Contemporary European Cinema Chapter 8. Border, Space and the Body in the Films Biutiful and Victoria Carolina León Vegas

151

Chapter 9. Erratic Bodies in European Cinema: A Radiography of Nations and Clandestine Bodies Laura Camacho Salgado

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Part IV. European Migration Represented in Theatre and Artworks as Migrants’ Counter-Discourse or Artivism Chapter 10. Injurious Metaphors and (Non-)Art as Activist Counter-Discourse to Greece’s ‘Refugee Crisis’ Olga Michael and Jovana Mastilovic Chapter 11. Who Marks the Borders of the (Un)Known? The Dynamics of Relational Reflexivity in the Production of a Play on Forced Mobility in Northern Portugal Elizabeth Challinor

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Conclusion. Migration, Border Aesthetics and Discursive Strategies Ana Belén Martínez García

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Index

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 4.1. The cover of Roda Ahmed’s (2009) novel Forberedelsen, in the second, paperback edition. Design: Trond Fasting Egeland. Photo: © Getty Images, used with permission of the publishers, Gyldendal.

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6.1. Examples of HRT’s images. Source: HRT. http://izbjeglice .hrt.hr/304448/do-15-sati-u-rh-uslo-3513-izbjeglica, 22 October 2015; http://vijesti.hrt.hr/295739/hrvatskaspremna-ako-migranti-krenu-prema-nasim-granicama, 19 August 2015; https://vijesti.hrt.hr/298750/na-hrvatskuse-nece-preliti-izbjeglicki-val, 14 September 2015; https:// www.hrt.hr/299638/vijesti/opatovac-kamp-za-4000izbjeglica, 21 September 2015. Photos: © HRT and Barbara Vid, used with permission.

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6.2. The represented activities of refugees. Created by Ljiljana Šarić.

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6.3. General distribution of 771 images. Created by Ljiljana Šarić.

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6.4. Photographs of refugees: collectivization and individualization. Created by Ljiljana Šarić.

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10.1. Life jacket bag catalogue, Mosaik Support Centre, July 2017. Photograph by Jovana Mastilovic. Lesvos, Greece. © Lesvos Solidarity, used with permission.

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10.2. A child’s drawing of Moria, Mosaik Support Centre, July 2017. Photograph by Jovana Mastilovic. Lesvos, Greece. © Lesvos Solidarity, used with permission.

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viii • Illustrations

10.3. Graffiti in Mytilene City Centre, 2017. Photograph by Περσεφόνη Κερεντζή [Persephone Kerentzi], Lesvos, Greece. © Περσεφόνη Κερεντζή [Persephone Kerentzi], used with permission.

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10.4. Pikpa Refugee Camp kitchen wall mural by Art for Action, Lesvos, Greece, 2017. Photograph: © Lesvos Solidarity, used with permission.

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Tables 6.1. General distribution of 887 images: who or what was exclusively represented or strongly emphasized.

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6.2. Refugees’ photographs: coding categories.

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7.1. Newspapers analysed.

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7.2. Migrant discourse in Italian media from August 2015 to March 2016.

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7.3. Elements used for depicting movement and space.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank the University of Oslo for funding the international workshop on contemporary migration to Europe, ‘Erratic Bodies, Transitional Borders, and Recent Migration in Europe: Representation and Identity Negotiations in Public Discourse, Literature, and the Arts’, 27–28 September 2018. We are also grateful to our colleagues at the University of Oslo, Johan Schimanski, Ljiljana Šarić and Álvaro Llosa Sanz, who, together with Nelson González Ortega, co-editor of this volume, organized the abovementioned international workshop. Stemming from that occasion, a proposal to set up an international editorial board for future collaboration on migration literature research and writing was put forth. For the present undertaking, there would eventually be two main editors, as well as three assistant editors. The main editors of this volume, Nelson González Ortega and Ana Belén Martínez García, thank our assistant editors – Johan Schimanski and Ljiljana Šarić from the University of Oslo and Mattias Aronsson from Dalarna University – for their support in jointly assessing all chapter proposals and providing useful feedback on our draft book proposal. Their insightful comments and suggestions have been most welcome in the process of putting this project together. We are most grateful to Carmen Zamorano Llena, Associate Professor at Högskolan Dalarna, Sweden, for assessing an early version of all the chapters and supporting the project. Finally, we would like to thank our peer reviewers, as well as Berghahn Books, for making this book publication a reality.

INTRODUCTION Theorizing Textual, Visual and Performative Approaches to Recent Migration to Europe

F Nelson González Ortega

Human migration is as old as humankind. From biblical times, human beings have left their places of origin due to factors that have not only pushed them to escape poverty, climatic disasters, personal insecurity, and ethnic, religious or political persecution, but also pulled them to find political and religious freedom, social equity and better living conditions elsewhere (Lee 1966; Stanojoska and Petrevski 2012). Focusing on Europe, from the Renaissance up to the twentyfirst century, regional, national and continental mobility of peoples has often been militarily organized and politically regulated by European empires, whose main economic and political objective has been the appropriation of peoples and territories in America, Africa and Asia through the creation and legitimation of natural and artificial borders both inside and outside Europe. The Portuguese-European establishment of the transatlantic slave trade in Western Africa (in the sixteenth century) and the emergence of nation states in Europe (in the eighteenth), which led to the acceptance of natural borderlines – delineated by rivers and mountains – between European countries, have been the main metropolitan factors contributing to the rise and establishment of European border zones in the so-called modern era. By extension, in the nineteenth century, seas and oceans served as legal frontiers between Europe and Africa. Three particular moments in European history contributed decisively to the militarization of Europe’s (national) borders. The French-German war (1870–71), in which German states led by Prussia defeated France thus ending French hegemony in Europe, the First World War (1914–18) and the October Bolshevik Revolution (1917). Thus, the Second World War (1939–45) would not only create an ideological separation between the United States and the Soviet Union,

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but also between Europe, Africa and Asia. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, mass migration of non-Europeans to the West has grown in an unprecedented manner: ‘In 2015 alone the European Union had 1,015,078 arrivals by sea (asylum seekers and others), up from about 220,000 the year before’ (UNHCR 2016: 6). As a result, a Europe has emerged that is both ‘reunified’ and ‘divided’. Notably, Europe in the twenty-first century remains separated from other countries and continents by different kinds of walls that have served, respectively, as a legal hindrance (e.g. the Schengen zone), as religious boundaries (e.g. Belfast), as economic barriers (e.g. Africa), as cement and steel structures (e.g. the wall between Austria and Slovenia) and as computer-driven hurdles (e.g. Ceuta’s wall). The digital walls built in Ceuta and Gibraltar have been described in fictional and factual texts by Spanish and African novelists and essayists. As stated in Andrés Soler’s novel Las voces del Estrecho, ‘The African wall [in Ceuta] was being built in imitation of the ancient Chinese Wall, but in a more scientific way, with long-distance radars, thermal sensors, night visors, infrared lights and police, helicopters and patrols monitoring the spaces, land, sea and air’ (Soler 2016: 61, my translation). This calls forth that which essayist Juan Goytisolo wrote: ‘The West knocked down the Berlin wall in order to build another wall in the Strait of Gibraltar’ (Goytisolo, cited in Andres-Suárez, Kunz and D’Ors 2002: 7, my translation). In short, all these barriers, real or electronic, not only prevent coexistence between people and nations of the world, but also serve to protect Europeans’ economic interests and Christian identity. ‘For Europe, the [new migratory] threat comes from the Maghreb, hence the Strait of Gibraltar has become a new wall . . . of which Ceuta is the atrium, intended to protect Europe from Black Africa’ (Goytisolo and Naïr 2000: 196, my translation). Drawing upon many existing traditional studies in world migration history and the rise and fall of European empires (Manning 2005: 132–62; Aldrich and McKenzie 2019), as well as research on modern mobility (Cresswell 2006; Tazzioli 2015; Barry 2019) and in hospitality studies (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000; Berg and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2018), we argue that present-day African and Asian migration from South to North is not only a by-product of the Portuguese-European establishment of the transatlantic slave trade in Western Africa, imperial economic designs and the colonial conquest of non-European peoples and territories, but has shaped today’s migrant enslavement in the form of human trafficking, migrants’ underpaid labour in the West, racially motivated othering and current policies of territorial containment in the European Union. Accordingly, to provide an adequate context for the study of yesterday’s ‘migration’ from Europe to Africa and Asia and today’s immigration from these two continents to Europe, the authors in this book resort not only to the push-pull theory, which I will later expand on, but also to theories such as postcolonialism and decolonial studies as complementary for explaining diachronically and

Introduction • 3

synchronically the origin and development of migration in Western Europe in relation to modernity and (de)coloniality. Our book interrogates current textual, visual, written and performative modes of (re)presentation of migrants and migration from Asia and Africa to Europe between 2000 and 2020, but with a special focus on the period between 2015 and 2020. This particular period has been chosen not only due to its new forms of migration from Africa and Asia to Europe, but also due to the multimodal forms (e.g. diverse oral and written discourses and textualized genres, as well as media, film and performative representations) of portraying migrants, bodies and identities in forced mobility that have emerged through the historical processes of colonialism, modernity and peripheral globalization worldwide. As a topic of research, identity is complex and multifaceted because, roughly, it involves the definition of individual and collective characteristics of people and societies in several geographies and at different points in time. When describing transnational identity from their particular research perspectives, the contributors to this volume highlight the following features. Identity is mainly expressed by language, which constitutes a central means of communication between individuals, society and culture. Several factors are involved in the formation of both individual and sociocultural identities, including language (linguistic identity), ancestry (family’s ancestors), territory (local, regional or national identity), sex and gender (biological sex and/or gender role), religion (spiritual orientation or religious affiliation), social class (socio-economic origin and belonging), education (school socialization and professional status), race and ethnicity (ethnic group or ethnic affiliation) and even physical appearance (skin colour, especially in the United States and in South Africa). Thus, identity is not a static condition; it is subject to individual and group negotiations and transformations. It changes and moves following historical and geopolitical evolution, as well as sociocultural trends. The term ‘representation’, as an additional key research concept in our book, presents various meanings: (i) it is associated with diverse kinds of discourses – verbal, literary, journalistic and medial, cinematic, and pictorial; (ii) it is connected to different kinds of research approaches – textual and contextual, (critical/literary) discourse analysis, rhetorical and narratological, cognitive and semiotic, iconic and cinematographic, and performativity; (iii) it is related to various subcontinental, (trans)national, territorial, linguistic and cultural spaces, in Asia, Africa and Europe. Given such epistemological and theoretical variation and complexity, as well as the cultural, semantic and spatial characteristics that the concept ‘representation’ (Latin, representatio: image/likeness; representare: to bring before/exhibit) entails, its definition may become elusive and transitional. In Nelson González Ortega’s study (Chapter 1), ‘representation’ is related to both ‘texts’ and World System Analysis (Grosfoguel 2006) to explore how questions of power relations, politics and policies may be addressed when examining mi-

4 • Nelson González Ortega

grants’ and refugees’ forced mobility, subjectivity, subalternity and Otherness, as well as individual and group interaction between modernity and (de)coloniality in countries of origin, transit and arrival. From an interdisciplinary and crossgeneric perspective that includes literary reception, Johan Schimanski, in our book (Chapter 4) and elsewhere, closely relates our common research terms ‘representation’ and ‘representing’ to the concepts of aesthetics and borders in the sense of ‘how one distinguishes objects that may or may not fall into the category of aesthetic representation: we observed our responses to how painting, film, music, literature represents borders as spaces of constant production’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 5). The authors of this book are also aware that representing the subaltern Other (e.g. asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, refugees and stateless people) may be cognitively and ethically problematic not only for novelists, playwrights, journalists, filmmakers and artists, but equally for scholars who base their corpus or research precisely on such discourses. Ida Danewid (2017: 1681) calls attention to the risk that academics may reproduce rather than challenge assumptions when representing refugees, while Caroline Lenette (2019: 35) has recently argued that narratives may be ‘trimmed or reshaped for academic consumption’. That has always been a risk, as Michael and Mastilovic state in this book when discussing the production and reproduction of the mislabelled ‘refugee crisis’ (Chapter 10) in art and literature, referring to their particular research corpus, which can be extended to the formation of academic discourses on migration in general. The contributors to this research volume are international scholars and experts in research on migration from perspectives as varied as history, literature, (cognitive) linguistics and discourse analysis, area and cultural studies, law, media and communication, film studies, and visual arts. They interrogate migrants’ struggles to reach the land that no one promised them: Europe. Asian and African immigrants attempt to cross such conflictive and liminal border spaces in numerous creative ways as they travel to Europe in the twenty-first century. This book develops general and specific hypotheses, theoretical frameworks and methodologies related to the social sciences in order to research the multimodal representation of twenty-first-century Asian and African migrants striving to enter Europe, being retained in border detention centres or starting their lives in Europe, be they asylum seekers, refugees or undocumented migrants. Topics and research areas covered include textual, iconic, performative and cinematic representation of Asian and African migrants’ historical past, as well as present socioeconomic and political factors and actors related to their forced mobility and border crossing, among which we find transnational organized crime and human rights. Thus, both the EU’s policies on nation states’ securitization practices (see Landau 2018) and increasing right-wing political views articulated in some European newspapers and online – devised mainly to curtail migrants’ transcon-

Introduction • 5

tinental movement and contain them in their own places of origin – are also the focus of the diverse kinds of academic critical discourse elaborated in this book.

Mapping Europe in Four European Border-Crossing Zones and Borderscapes The figurative map created here for analytical purposes designates four zones comprising subcontinental and continental areas of Africa, Asia and Europe, including a sub-Saharan/North African/Spanish zone and the Francophone cultural and linguistic area of West African countries and France. This macro zone – unified geographically, linguistically and culturally by the Mediterranean Sea, but separated by the European Union’s 2016 border laws and policies (Topak 2014; UNHCR 2016) – is designed mainly to contain African and Asian undocumented migrants in their continents of origin (Landau 2018: 1–18). Thus, ‘b/ordering’ (Van Houtum, Kramsch and Zierhofer 2005) practices affect undocumented migrants by forcing them to comply with laws that restrict their movements and their rights. This book attempts to map these territorial, linguistic and cultural border zones in the following four main gateways or liminal border spaces, often crossed by Asian and African immigrants on their way in or out of Europe: (i) the sub-Saharan/North African/Iberian countries gate or exit, (ii) the Libya/Italy gate or exit, (iii) the Turkey/Greece/Balkan countries gate or exit and (iv) the Asia/Africa/Scandinavian countries gate or exit. The authors of this volume argue that these border zones and borderscapes are of different kinds – territorial, ethnic, economic, linguistic, symbolic, cultural and psychological crossroads set up in countries of origin, transit and arrival: ‘Topographical borders can exist in many scales and configured (and subject to FIGURATION) in many different ways in both concrete and conceptual landscapes or spaces. They can be mapped onto or articulate spatially other border planes, be they SYMBOLIC, EPISTEMOLOGICAL, TEMPORAL or MEDIAL, all of which can be spatialized and thus made topographical’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 154). The contributors locate their textual corpora and critical analysis of migrants’ and refugees’ memories and identities constructed in texts within and across these zones. Four authors geographically locate their respective novel, drama and film analysis at the sub-Saharan Africa/Spain/Portugal gate or exit: González Ortega and Magrinyà Badiella (Chapters 1 and 2); Challinor (Chapter 11) in Asia/Portugal; and León Vegas (Chapter 8) in Spain/Germany. One contributor, Khachaturyan (Chapter 7), chose the Libya/Italy gate or exit as her focus of study. Three additional contributions – Martínez García (Chapter 5), Šarić (Chapter 6), and Michael and Mastilovic (Chapter 10) – deal with the Turkey/Greece/Balkan countries gate or exit as their focus of study. Two authors locate their film corpora in Europe – León Vegas (Chapter 8) in Spain/Germany,

6 • Nelson González Ortega

and Camacho Salgado (Chapter 9) in Italy/France/Britain – with regards to cinematic representations of migrants from Asia and Africa. Finally, two authors explore the Africa/Europe gate or exit when analysing their works of fiction and these works’ Scandinavian reception; Aronsson’s corpus is from Senegal/France/ Sweden (Chapter 3), while Schimanski’s is from Somalia/Norway (Chapter 4).

Key Conceptual Sets Used as Theoretical and Methodological Analytical Strategies This book examines the representation of both twenty-first-century migration into Europe and migrants and refugees’ identities, bodies, memories and texts in relation to four theoretical concepts: (i) chronotope/focalization, (ii) metaphor/ metonymy, (iii) performative acts and (iv) border aesthetics. The main editors of this volume asked each contributor to integrate at least two of these key conceptual sets into their study’s theoretical approach. Here, I will outline briefly the essential, though complex, meaning of each of these conceptual formations when applied to the critical discursive analysis of testimonial and fictional works, dramas, journalistic and media texts, film images or icons, and artwork production. (i) Chronotope/focalization. As understood by Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1981: 84), ‘chronotope (literally “time space”) [refers] to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature’. Bakhtin (ibid.: 250–51) situates ‘the representational importance of the chronotope’ on at least four different levels: a) ‘It serves at the primary point from which “scenes” in a novel unfold’, so that the chronotope is ‘plot-generating’; b) it carries ‘representational significance’; c) ‘The chronotope . . . provides the basis for distinguishing generic types [or] specific varieties of the novel genre’; d) the ‘chronotope [informs] the root meaning of spatial categories’ and therefore has semantic significance. ‘Focalisation’ (Genette 1987: 203), on the other hand, is distinguished from ‘point of view’. While ‘point of view’ corresponds to the ‘character whose point of view orients the perspective of the narrative, that is, the character who sees’, ‘focalisation’ refers to ‘the narrator, the speaker. The narrative perspective or the focus/focalisation of narrations . . . does not always cover a complete work, but a specific narrative segment’ (ibid.: 208, my translation). It is the intriguing combination of these two key concepts in literary studies – the Bakhtinian chronotope and Gérard Genette’s focalization – that works hand in hand in this volume. (ii) Metaphor/metonymy. A metaphor in language and literature, as conceptualized by González Ortega, departing from Lakoff (1993), is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. Metaphors connect or transfer two different domains of experience in our thought and language. These domains can be, for instance, life and journey, or

Introduction • 7

life and a path. Metaphor, as an overarching concept, is expressed by images, allegories, analogies and similes. Metaphors that convey ideas, images or symbols related to utopia and dystopia are primarily introduced by authors examining works of fiction in this book. Metaphors often become metonymies. Metonymy designates pars pro parte or a part that originates and moves or transfers symbolically to another part. Metonymy substitutes the name of a thing for its whole (pars pro toto). Linguistic, literary, iconic, cinematic, visual or spatial, and pictorial metaphors are analysed by authors in this book in relation to their own multimodal corpora and research perspectives (see Lakoff 1993). (iii) Performative acts can be seen as drawing on Judith Butler’s important contribution to the field of gender studies. Broadly understood, one can explain ‘performativity’ as the conception of identities as fluid, non-static entities, always in the making. It is in the performance itself that identities are creatively produced and reproduced. Butler’s conception of performativity in turn comes from John L. Austin’s (1962) idea of the ‘performative’ as utterances that turn what is said into reality that is neither true nor false, and John R. Searle’s (1969) ‘speech acts’, similarly meant to account for whatever is expressed that not only presents information, but performs an action. Such a linguistic turn has brought to the fore a focus on how identities are constituted through language. For migrants’ identities, this allows a notable opportunity for self-construction, as noted by my co-editor Ana Belén Martínez García in both her contributions to this volume (Chapters 5 and conclusion). (iv) Border aesthetics, as conceptualized elsewhere by one of the contributors to this book, can be explained as follows: a way of understanding the aesthetic dimensions of borders, BORDERING and BORDERSCAPES. Borders can only exist to the extent that they are tangible: they thus always have an aesthetic dimension. Aesthetical works may give access to the imaginaries about borders. At the same time the B/ORDERING function of borders is a way of differentiating between and making visible social groups and political constituencies. . . . Yet aesthetics in itself also involves BORDERCROSSINGS of medial borders, the border between things and the representations of things. ARTISTIC FORMS are bordered, being paradoxically, both INCOMPLETE and whole. Folded in on themselves, presented in frames, and approached via THRESHOLDS. (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 150)

The diverse theories employed by the authors of this book in their studies include at least two of the four conceptual sets described above in each case. Both ‘chronotope/focalization’ and ‘metaphor/metonymy’ are integrated as analytical tools by González Ortega (Chapter 1) when studying the socio-economic factors and actors intervening in contemporary migration in Europe. ‘Chronotope’ and ‘border aesthetics’ are selected for Carles Magrinyà Badiella’s (Chapter 2) and

8 • Nelson González Ortega

Mattias Aronsson’s (Chapter 3) literary analyses. ‘Metaphor’ and ‘border aesthetics’ in the form of rhetorical figures are chosen by Schimanski for both the narratological reading and reception analyses of his novel corpus (Chapter 4). ‘Performative acts’ and ‘border aesthetics’ are selected by, respectively, Martínez García and Elizabeth Challinor in their close readings of both oral and written testimonies and a theatrical play (Chapters 5 and 11). Both textual and visual ‘metaphor/metonymy’ and ‘border aesthetics’ are incorporated by Ljiljana Šarić and Elizaveta Khachaturyan in their analyses of journalistic and medial discourses reproduced in traditional and online media in Italy and Croatia (Chapters 6 and 7). ‘Metaphor’ and ‘border aesthetics’ are used by Carolina León Vegas and Laura Camacho Salgado in their cinematographic discourse analyses of Spanish and German and Italian, French and British films respectively (Chapters 8 and 9). Finally, ‘metaphor’ and ‘border aesthetics’ have been chosen as conceptual sets by Olga Michael and Jovana Mastilovic in their narratological and rhetorical analysis of artworks (Chapter 10).

The Organization of the Book The present volume is thematically, theoretically and methodologically organized into the following four parts: (i) European migration represented in literature, in the form of novels and testimonies (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5); (ii) European migration represented in journalistic discourses and social media (Chapters 6 and 7); (iii) European migration and migrants represented in contemporary European cinema (Chapters 8 and 9); (iv) European migration and migrants represented in dramatic performance and artworks as migrants’ counter-discourse or ‘artivism’ (Chapters 10 and 11). Although each of the four parts of this book focuses on one specific genre or discourse and one research area, all of them are interconnected in their interdisciplinary approaches by the four conceptual sets – chronotope/focalization, metaphor/metonymy, performative acts and border aesthetics – and critically examine: testimonies, novels and literary genre formation (Part I), journalistic and medial discourse analysis (Part II), the uses and effects of cinematic discourse (Part III) and the discursive and performative analysis of drama and the uses of protest art in pictorial analysis (Part IV), respectively. This versatile, highly interdisciplinary methodological framework is deployed to study multimodal representations of identity reconstruction, comparing and contrasting top-down and bottom-up approaches. Therefore, the arrangement of the chapters allows for their reading not only as independent pieces that aim to enhance authors’ individual research from their particular disciplinary and methodological perspectives, but also as part of a coherent (though multifaceted) series of interconnected narratives.

Introduction • 9

PART I: European Migration Represented in Testimonies and Novels The book’s first part focuses on (narrative) texts and (historiographic) contexts that reconfigure the unprecedented immigration from Asia and Africa to Europe in the early twenty-first century. Specifically, it examines diverse representations of people’s displacements and longer-distance mobilities, (re)constructed textually in the form of memoir, testimony, diary, (auto)biography and novel. My co-editor in this volume, Ana Belén Martínez García (Chapter 5), discusses two testimonial texts, namely a memoir and its subsequent audiovisual testimony. Bearing in mind the textually productive (con)fusion that arises when transcribing non-European immigrants’ border-crossing experiences in testimonies articulated in both literary genres and other generic discursive formations, Martínez García undertakes a (con)textual reading of Nujeen Mustafa’s texts – both a co-authored memoir (Mustafa and Lamb 2017) and a TED talk (Mustafa 2017) – grounding her discussion in key theoretical concepts such as the autobiographical narrating ‘I’ (Smith and Watson 2010), Judith Butler’s performativity theory (Butler 1997), ‘in/visibility’ (Brambilla and Pötzsch 2017: 68–69) and ‘b/order’ processes (Van Houtum, Kramsch and Zierhofer 2005). The author analyses Mustafa’s written and oral testimonies – textually and contextually – to determine if Nujeen – the ‘girl life-narrator’ (Martínez García, Chapter 5) – can eventually cross the border of invisibility to visibility so as to regain her own personal and public voice through performative speech acts. Martínez García’s chapter explores loss and recovery via testimonial production and reproduction and the ethics of presenting oneself as representative of a collective struggle. Martínez García’s research is related, though from a different approach, to Magrinyà Badiella’s (Chapter 2), for the latter also deals with the ethical dilemmas faced by refugees in their attempts to come to terms with and represent themselves in testimonial writing. Like Martínez García, Magrinyà Badiella analyses testimonial writing, but focuses on one kind only – an autobiographical ‘diary’, La Tierra Prometida/Diario de un emigrante: La Terre promise/Journal d’un émigrant (Diary of an Emigrant, English translation), collectively written by the Senegalese Muslim author Pathé Cissé. But while Martínez García centres her study on the testimonial texts themselves, Magrinyà Badiella’s study focuses on the ‘paratext’ (Genette 1997): the Preface to Cissé’s Diary, composed by a Christian who discusses religious differences between Islam and Catholicism, providing her opinion on those. The researcher’s aim here is to study how the diverging representations of religions operate in both the paratext and the text. The authors of Chapters 2 and 5 of Part I are aware that the problem they face (to attempt to determine the discursive and generic nature or type of the various migrant narratives) does not have easy solutions. For this reason, they opt to describe (not determine) the different types of discourses explaining their hybrid genre, without applying rigid (literary) categories in their respective analyses.

10 • Nelson González Ortega

Next, we introduce the chapters that focus on novels in Part I, which distinctively include plot, characters and other discursive features commonly associated with works of fiction. In Chapter 1, González Ortega undertakes a fourfold (historical, sociocultural, aesthetic and ethical) decolonial reading (Restrepo and Rojas 2010) of (trans)national identities and citizenship in twenty-first-century narratives written by non-European and European writers alike. Resorting to historiographical and sociocultural premises, grounded in modernity and (de)coloniality studies, the author examines his selected novels in their diachronic and synchronic sociohistorical context to account for migrants’ double transition from sub-Saharan African villages to modern Spanish cities – thus, from being members of tribal groups to becoming Spanish-European sub-citizens. Complementarily, he describes, through the lens of push-pull theory (Lee 1966; Stanojoska and Petrevski 2012), the means, the actors and the liminal border spaces by which immigrants are retained and constrained in their journey to their idealized Europe. Finally, from an aesthetic and ethical perspective, he describes the negative effect of othering in African and Asian narrators and characters represented in the novels. Comparably, Aronsson (Chapter 3) undertakes a textual and contextual reading of Fatou Diome’s novel Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic) and the reception of its Swedish translation, Atlantens mage, basing his study on readers’ literary reviews posted on the internet (Steiner 2009, 2012), His novel analysis is text-centred, synchronic and digital in nature. Since Aronsson examines in Diome’s novel migrants’ real and symbolic border crossing, issues of centre versus periphery and the transition from tradition to modernity in rural sub-Saharan Africa, his case study relates directly in theme and theory to González Ortega’s case study (Chapter 1). But though both researchers perform textual and contextual readings of their respective novels, written by sub-Saharan authors, they differ in the theoretical and methodological approaches applied to their particular novels: Aronsson’s study is synchronic, uses an internet-based corpus and relies on postcolonialism; González Ortega’s is synchronic and diachronic, focuses on novels written by both sub-Saharan and Spanish-European authors, and uses modernity and decoloniality theories. Schimanski’s ‘Can Migration Narratives Change Public Conceptions of Borders? The Somali-Norwegian Borderscape in Roda Ahmed’s Forberedelsen and Its Medial Reception’ (Chapter 4) examines, as Aronsson does, real and symbolic border crossings of authors, narrators, characters and narratives, migrating themselves – in Schimanski’s case into Britain and Norway – as revealed in the reception of Ahmed’s novel Forberedelsen, written in Norwegian and published in Oslo in 2008. This case study showcases the impact that literary reception has on migration literature in the Norwegian public sphere. Schimanski analyses the book’s cover and other paratexts placed on the border between the novel and its

Introduction • 11

reception. Schimanski focuses, as does Magrinyà Badiella (Chapter 2), on paratexts. However, while the former examines the novel’s cover image, the publisher’s photography and a fable that functions as the novel’s ‘narrative’ paratext, the latter focuses on a novel’s preface as paratext.

PART II: European Migration Represented in the Media In ‘The Visualization of the “Refugee Crisis” of 2015–2016: A Case Study of a Croatian Online News Source’ (Chapter 6), Šarić analyses photographs in online news. She addresses the importance of images in determining how people construct their own and others’ social realities – in this specific case, how Croatian media and their audience constructed their opinions on refugees in transit to central and Northern Europe (2015–16). Building on previous research, the author considers a large collection of images using social semiotics, media studies of European news related to representational frames of the ‘refugee crisis’ and insights from psychological research on ‘the identifiable victim effect’. The study provides a comprehensive overview of (visual) media representations of refugees as both anonymous ‘Others’ and individualized suffering individuals. Empathy shown by the Croatian population and news sources in the early stage of the ‘refugee crisis’, the author claims, was influenced by Croatians’ memories of being displaced refugees themselves during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Šarić’s study shares some similarities with (and differences from) Khachaturyan’s ‘Crossing the Border between Two Spaces: Narration about the Migrant Crisis of 2015–2016 in Italian Newspapers’ (Chapter 7). Although these two studies share their main focus – the so-called ‘Refugee crisis of 2015–2016’, as their respective titles reveal – they differ radically in theory and methodology. Khachaturyan’s selected corpus represents journalistic discourse and style as articulated in Italian national newspapers, not a large collection of news photographs from an online news portal as in Šarić’s study. Khachaturyan’s research approach relies on ‘border aesthetics’ and discourse analysis that is strongly oriented to examining figuration in the form of textual metaphors – universal and culture-specific – used to represent refugees in major Italian newspapers. Šarić, on the other hand, grounds her study in approaches such as social semiotics and cognitive metaphor theory when examining Croatia’s online media discourses. Khachaturyan and Šarić examine journalistic and media discourses that at times provide biased and incomplete verbal and visual representations of migrants as voiceless and anonymous bodies and images that surround and construct European citizens’ understanding of present-day refugees. However, in both authors’ case studies, migrants’ voiceless verbal and visual representations, constructed by journalistic and media discourses, emerge as compelling narratives that challenge stereotypical mainstream European views on refugees.

12 • Nelson González Ortega

PART III: European Migration Represented in Contemporary European Cinema The cinematic depiction of migrants’ experiences of exploitation, misery, exclusion and secrecy guides the focus of the camera lens in the films Biutiful (2010) and Victoria (2015), examined by León Vegas (Chapter 8). Relying on metaphor and border aesthetics, the author examines comparatively the discursive and socio-economic challenges that twenty-first-century cinematic immigrants encounter in the two films. León Vegas’s research focus is the under/ground – as a liminal space, a limbo or hell, and a symbolic and traumatizing border-crossing space – into which the two protagonists have to descend or ascend in Barcelona (a cellar) and Berlin (a subterranean disco and a garage). These migrants are scholarly examined by León Vegas as experiencing misery, crime, death and survival. It is interesting to note that the author examines cinematic illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa living in Spain (Biutiful) and legal migrants living in Europe, specifically Germany (Victoria), these three continents being the macro-space from and towards which migrants and refugees move throughout this book. In the study ‘Erratic Bodies in European Cinema: A Radiography of Nations and Clandestine Bodies’ (Chapter 9), Camacho Salgado uses medical metaphor – of an illness capable of transforming the body of the nation – to examine the images and cinematic representation of clandestine immigrants in three selected contemporary European films: Dirty Pretty Things (2002), L’Intrus (2004) and Terraferma (2011). Structuring the analysis around this particular biopolitical metaphor and border aesthetics, the author investigates how the immune system tries to protect the European body of the nation from the threat of the alien body of the refugee, then questioning the possibility of full incorporation of the alien-Other inside the host (European) body. Three non-diasporic films are discussed in this study in order to explore simultaneously how screening strangers can be a way to control the body of the immigrant or alien, and how these films can be considered a radioactive strategy that reveals the hidden face of Europe and its own story of past hegemonic migrations to Asia, Africa and America. Thus, erratic bodies, national bodies, atomized bodies, antibodies, immune systems and organ transplants constitute the author’s framework when analysing the screening of migrants in European cinema. Through an innovative combination of theories of metaphors – spatial, visual and biopolitical – and border aesthetics, León Vegas and Camacho Salgado have analysed both the cinematic psychosocial lives of illegal and legal immigrants living in Europe (León Vegas) and the physical lives and bodies of undocumented migrants as erratic, unwelcome non-European aliens, (metaphorically) infected and in transit from a sick body into Europe’s community and attempting full incorporation within the Other(’s) inside (Camacho Salgado).

Introduction • 13

PART IV: European Migration Represented in Theatre and Artworks as Migrants’ Counter-Discourse or Artivism Ethics, politics and policies, and aesthetics are core research issues in Challinor’s case study (Chapter 11) and in Michael and Mastilovic’s ‘Injurious Metaphors and (Non-)Art as Activist Counter-Discourse to Greece’s “Refugee Crisis”’ (Chapter 10). Relying on metaphor theory and border aesthetics, Michael and Mastilovic investigate the textual, iconic and pictorial construction of a rightwing political narrative, an advertising image of a female refugee, a literary narrative about an underage refugee, and amateur visual artwork. They focus on the deconstruction of all these discourses, highlighting the potential that these discursive formations have to challenge and subvert xenophobia, derogatory depictions of refugees and the reproduction of an ‘us versus them’ confrontational rhetoric. In Chapter 11, ‘Who Marks the Borders of the (Un)Known? The Dynamics of Relational Reflexivity in the Production of a Play on Forced Mobility in Northern Portugal’, Challinor examines the ethical dimensions of the self-questioning dilemmas that emerge during a collaborative process. Specifically, she looks at the relations between professional actors and a playwright and director when writing and performing a play on forced mobility in northern Portugal based on interviews conducted with refugees. Challinor illustrates how the dynamics of the decision-making process on what was rendered (in)visible in the performance of the play produced borders of in/exclusion for the migrants and refugees involved, with unequal effects regarding their sense of empowerment, capacity for agency and self-articulation. The desire of the actors to mirror human suffering as truthfully as possible as a form of ethical self-conduct and their inability to conceal their emotions resulted in the public spreading of private emotions, especially during the post-show talk-back sessions. This also marked and limited the borders of what is known by undermining the play’s potential for promoting detached, critical thinking in the public sphere about the wider political context of forced mobility. In sum, the narrative, literary, journalistic, media, cinematic and performative migrant – emerging in the chapters of this volume – is fundamentally an in/visible subaltern subject that our book seeks to understand, while accepting the impossibility of fully comprehending their historical past and the figure of the Other that they embody. Our contributors engage critically with these migrants’ texts and identities in an attempt to represent contemporary African and Asian migrants and make them visible for mainstream European citizens. Nelson González Ortega has a PhD from the University of Madison-Wisconsin (1992) and is a Professor of Hispanic Literatures and Cultures at the University of Oslo (Norway). His research focuses on contemporary Hispanic literatures

14 • Nelson González Ortega

and cultures, and their relationships with historiography, ethnography, political science, gender studies and decolonial theory. He has participated in international research projects, including the Sweden-based Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective, published in three volumes by De Gruyter. His publications include Bolivia en el siglo XXI (2017) and Colombia: Una nación en formación en su historia y literatura (siglos XVI al XXI) (2013), among others.

References Aldrich, R., and K. McKenzie (eds). 2019. The Routledge History of Western Empires. London: Routledge. Andres-Suárez, I., M. Kunz and I. D’Ors. 2002. La inmigración en la literatura española contemporánea. Madrid: Verbum. Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Barry, K. 2019. ‘Art and Materiality in the Global Refugee Crisis: Ai Weiwei’s Artworks and the Emerging Aesthetics of Mobilities’, Mobilities 14(2): 204–17. Berg, M.L., and E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh. 2018. ‘Hospitality and Hostility towards Migrants: Global Perspectives – An Introduction’, Migration and Society 1(1): 1–6. Brambilla, C., and H. Pötzsch. 2017. ‘In/visibility’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 68–89. Butler, J. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. Cresswell, T. 2006. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. New York: Routledge. Danewid, I. 2017. ‘White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the Erasure of History’, Third World Quarterly 38(7): 1674–89. Derrida, J., and A. Dufourmantelle. Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, trans. R. Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Genette, G. [1972] 1987. Figures III. Paris: Editions du Seuil. ———. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goytisolo, J., and S. Naïr. 2000. El peaje de la vida. Madrid: Aguilar. Grosfoguel, R. 2006. ‘La descolonización de la economía política y los estudios postcoloniales: Transmodernidad, pensamiento fronterizo y colonialidad global’, Tabula Rasa 4: 17–48. Lakoff, G. 1993. ‘The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor’, in A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 201–51. Landau, L.B. 2018. ‘A Chronotope of Containment Development: Europe’s Migrant Crisis and Africa’s Reterritorialisation’, Antipodes [online first]: 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/ anti.12420. Lenette, C. 2019. ‘Why Arts-Based Research?’, in Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research: Creating Sanctuary. Singapore: Springer, pp. 27–56. Lee, E.S. 1966. ‘A Theory of Migration’, Demography 3(1): 47–57. Manning, P. 2005. Migration in World History. New York: Routledge. Mustafa, N. 2017. ‘I Am Not a Number: A Refugee’s Tale’, TEDxExeter, TEDxTalks, 12 May. Retrieved 26 March 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3r4gnSouqQ.

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Mustafa, N., and C. Lamb. 2017. The Girl from Aleppo: Nujeen’s Escape from War to Freedom. London: William Collins. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 2016. Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Restrepo, E., and A. Rojas. 2010. Inflexión decolonial. Popayan: Universidad Javeriana. Searle, J.R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schimanski, J., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books. Steiner, A. 2009. ‘Amatörkritik på internet’, in T. Forslid and A. Ohlsson (eds), Litteraturens offentligheter. Lund: Studentlitteratur, pp. 177–90. ———. 2012. ‘Digital litteraturkritik’, in C. Lenemark (ed.), Litteraturens nätverk: Berättande på internet. Lund: Studentlitteratur, pp. 51–63. Smith, S., and J. Watson. 2010. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. Soler, A. [2000] 2016. Las voces del Estrecho. Madrid: Akal. Stanojoska, A., and B. Petrevski. 2012. ‘Theory of Push and Pull Factors: A New Way of Explaining the Old’, in G. Milošević (ed.), Archibald Reiss Days, vol. 1. Belgrade: Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies, pp. 179–94. Tazzioli, M. 2015. ‘The Desultory Politics of Mobility and the Humanitarian-Military Border in the Mediterranean: Mare Nostrum Beyond the Sea’, REMHU: Revista Interdisciplinar da Mobilidade Humana 23(44): 61–82. Topak, O.E. 2014. ‘The Biopolitical Border in Practice: Surveillance and Death at the Greece-Turkey Borderzones’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32(5): 815–33. Van Houtum, H., O. Kramsch and W. Zierhofer (eds). 2005. B/ordering Space. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Part I

EUROPEAN MIGRATION REPRESENTED IN TESTIMONIES AND NOVELS

F

Chapter 1

OTHERING AND THE MUTUAL CONSTRUCTION OF (TRANS)NATIONAL IDENTITIES AND CITIZENSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AND SPANISH MIGRATION NARRATIVES A Decolonial Reading

F Nelson González Ortega

The main objective of this chapter is to study twenty-first-century constructions of factual and literary representations of sub-Saharan African immigration into Spain and Europe, and thus to shed light on the discursive construction of African migrants and their erratic bodies and memories by Spanish-European citizens and public discourse. Conversely, the chapter also examines the literary construction of the Spanish-European subject and society by the African immigrant. Bakhtin’s (1981) configurations of time and space (i.e. the ‘chronotope’), Genette’s (1972) tenets concerning ‘focalisation’ and the author’s own reconceptualizations of metaphor/metonymy may prove methodologically productive here for examining the textual strategies used by essayists, narrators and characters to present their factual and lifelike textualized accounts of migration from sub-Saharan Africa into Spain.1 In order to examine the contextual representation of socio-economic factors, actors, means of transportation, citizens’ attitudes, and governmental policies and practices articulated in migrants’ accounts of origin, transit and arrival written by African and Spanish authors, I resort to push-pull theory and approaches based on transnational subjects, identity and ethnicity, gender and class othering, as well as a world system analysis, as proposed by Ramón Grosfoguel (2006) within the global social theory of modernity/coloniality (Restrepo and Rojas 2010). Methodologically, the investigation

20 • Nelson González Ortega

is structured around four research approaches: historiographic, socio-economic, aesthetic and ethical.

Real and Symbolic Barriers in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Migration to Spain and Europe First, we must attend to the historiographic approach, which proceeds from the delineation of the modern origin and development (from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries) of human migration from Asian and African (in particular sub-Saharan) countries to Spain and Europe, as elaborated in the Introduction. From the end of the Second World War up to the 1980s, migration to Spain from Africa was incipient. It was not until the year 1988, when a dinghy boat carrying twenty-three Moroccan immigrants wrecked near the Strait of Gibraltar, leaving many corpses scattered across Tarifa’s popular tourist beaches, that mainstream Spaniards became fully aware that Spain had gone from being a country of emigrants to a country of immigrants.2 This tragic shipwreck, which drowned eighteen Moroccans in the Mediterranean Sea and left only five survivors, who were later deported to Morocco, was widely publicized by the Spanish, European and world press. Unfortunately, however, it led to the construction of a wall in the Strait of Gibraltar and to the creation of Spanish and European Union laws on migration that have been in force ever since. Most Spaniards may remember 1992 as the year in which Spain underwent a great socio-economic modernization. Spanish modernity manifested itself in the 1992 convergence of economic, legal and sociocultural achievements of great national and international importance, such as the inauguration of a vast transport infrastructure of wide motorways and fast trains that linked Madrid with some of the major Spanish cities. The unprecedented growth in the national economy thanks to Extremadura’s industrial greenhouse production and the employment of African immigrants tripled exports to northern European countries (VE: 37–47). Tourism was well on the rise too, as was tourists’ expenditure on Spanish soil. The integration of national laws into the new pan-European legal system allowed Spain to sign the Treaty of Maastricht, becoming, de facto, a full member of the European Union. Despite the prevailing atmosphere of celebration experienced by Spaniards over having finally reached modernity within the framework of the European Union, the years 1991 and 1992 were ominous with regard to illegal immigration into Spain. In those two years, several tragic shipwrecks occurred that left at least one thousand people dead or missing, and the numerous migratory flows from Africa into Spain increased illegal immigration unprecedentedly. The Mediterranean Sea has ever since been a large cemetery (Danewid 2017) where two immigrants per day on average have perished over the last thirty years (1988–

(Trans)National Identities and Citizenship • 21

2018), according to Rafael Lara, director of Human Rights in the city of Cadiz (see El naufragio).

Main Factors and Actors Present in Migration Journeys from Sub-Saharan Africa into Spain and Europe (2000–Present) A socio-economic approach implies pinpointing the main national and international causes of contemporary migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Spain and Europe, as well as the textual identification of the main means of transportation, factors and actors present in migration journeys from countries of origin, transit and arrival (2000–present). According to pull-push theory (Lee 1966; Stanojoska and Petrevski 2012), migration is due to the convergence of internal (push) and external (pull) factors that make poor people leave their countries of birth and undertake long trips abroad in search of a better life: Contemporary international migration is both a manifestation and consequence of globalization [that] foster[s] strong push factors in migrant countries of origin such as economic dislocation and increased absolute and/or relative poverty rates. . . . At the same time, destination countries exhibit pull factors such as significantly higher wages and demand for migrant workers to perform low-wage (or otherwise undesirable) jobs. . . . The push factors . . . are economic, social, political, cultural factors, factors connected with militarization and war conflicts. Their framework includes the disintegration and falling apart of the multicultural countries, religious and ethnic conflicts, natural disasters, economic situations, uncontrolled increasing of the population, wide differences between the economic possibilities of the countries and the number of its inhabitants. The pull factors . . . include lack of workers, good social measures, positive economic situation, democratic system, political and social stability, historic connections between the countries, common language. [And] the modernization of travel systems associated to the reduced cost of travelling. (Stanojoska and Petrevski 2012: 182–83)

As important as push-pull theory appears to be for offering an adequate understanding of the main causes of contemporary migration to Europe, it falls short of explaining historically the origin and establishment of economic and cultural conditions of modernity versus premodernity, neocolonialism and coloniality in Western Europe. A decolonial studies theoretical framework, related to the analysis of novels written by African and Spanish authors, on the other hand, can give more detailed and nuanced historical, economic and cultural perspectives by explaining from (neo)colonial, sociohistorical and geopolitical perspectives the hegemonic relations of power between people of different races, sexes, classes and nationalities, as discussed throughout this chapter. This is the case in Donato Ndongo’s novel El Metro, whose African narrators and characters seem to have

22 • Nelson González Ortega

more latitude to describe the longue durée of (trans)national historical and socioeconomic factors that have impoverished Africans ever since Europeans first set foot on their continent: Like everyone else, Obama Ondo followed by radio and television the drastic devaluation of the currency that affected all the African economies of the metropolis equally. . . . Overnight prices doubled. . . . Farmers, hunters, fishermen and carriers raised prices and rates; many people could no longer acquire daily basic products. . . . Companies reduced their staff, many had to close and unemployment rates skyrocketed. Economies that were already chronically ill ended up collapsing, leaving millions of poor people in the most absolute misery. . . . The dominant oligarchy, those plutocrats that acted in conjunction with foreign interests . . . became richer. . . . The bulky foreign debt [was only] an imposition of neocolonialism to drown the fragile economies of a continent impoverished by predation and abuse. . . . He [Obama Ondo] looked for a job for weeks, with no result . . . he would talk to his cousin Nkony to borrow from him the money he needed to reach his new destination [Spain]. (EM: 188, 190, 191, 192, 198)

It follows that migrants in forced mobility situations often re-present (bring from the past to the present) memories and memoirs, in the form of documentaries and novels, that denounce and contest economic, social, political and cultural experiences and factors inherent to contemporary illegal immigration into Europe. Those represented factors are, among others, ethnicity, gender (VE: 139–60), class inequalities (VE: 216), corruption, discrimination (VE: 211–12), invisibility (EM: 248, 320), forced prostitution (EM: 251; VE: 139–60) and the rise of the international criminal organizations called la Red (the Web), whose profitable business is the smuggling and trafficking of humans (EM: 206; VE: 139–60). In order to inform a broad theoretical framework for studying contemporary European immigration from multiple perspectives, I apply synchronic data offered by push-pull theorists to a diachronic decolonial studies perspective, and to historical conceptualizations of race, gender, class and othering within a capitalist, modern and colonial world system represented in the selected texts.

Main Means of Transportation Used by Migrants in Their Journeys to Europe from Sub-Saharan Countries Various means of transportation are mentioned as being used for crossing the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea, among them the following: foot, fishing boats or cayucos carrying over two hundred people (VK: 18), mother ships and inflatable boats carrying ten people (EM: 222), camels (EM: 138), cars (EM:

(Trans)National Identities and Citizenship • 23

53), inflatable boats carrying sixty people, truck tires, (wind)surfboards and jet skis (EM: 268), microbuses and taxis (VE: 46), pateras or dinghy boats carrying roughly thirty people (VK: 171; EM: 237, 250, 253, 309; VE: 38, 76, 199–200), and small canoes (VK: 18, 178; EM: 260). As for means of transportation and crossing used at border zones or at arrival countries, these vary from ship containers and aeroplanes (VK: 23, 183; VE: 55, 211), legal or fake passports (VK: 105; EM: 238–39, 270; VE: 125), and legal (EM: 321–22) or fake documents (EM: 269–70).

Migration Actors Operating in Sub-Saharan Countries or in Europe If one looks closely at the main agents operating in societies of origin, transit and arrival in the works analysed, one finds: a. The migrant (subject): women and children make up most of the undocumented immigrants to Europe. However, it is worth noticing that over 90 per cent of Asian and African displaced migrants go to non-European countries, such as Lebanon and Jordan. b. The conveyor or Kocseur: men who – individually or as a group (such as la Red, or the Web) – illegally arrange paid transport for migrants in countries of origin, transit and arrival, charging high prices for different kinds of crossing journeys (VK: 105, 159, 170, 171; EM: 222, 229, 248, 254; VE: 46). c. The human traffickers: men who treat Black Africans and poor migrants as commercial merchandise, buying and selling them at their convenience and even stealing from them (VE: 36; VK: 18, 79; EM: 207, 219). Human traffickers form large (trans)national networks (such as la Red) for smuggling migrants (VE: 42–43). d. The pimp: pimps abduct and use migrant women as sexual slaves until they are no longer profitable. If these women refuse to prostitute themselves or cannot be sold for sex, they may be killed or abandoned in the desert or at departure ports, or even thrown into the sea (VE: 43; EM: 206). e. The Gidos: local guides who know the clandestine migratory routes in or out of Africa to avoid countries of arrival’s customs and immigration officials (VK: 65, 80, 176, 177). f. The Tuareg rebels: ancient migrant North African hordes who usually work together with guides and drivers to rob and kill migrants when they refuse to give them their money (VK: 98). g. The transport operators: camel riders (EM: 228) and car, bus, train and dinghy boat drivers and captains. h. Government officials in countries of origin, transit and arrival: national or international police officers, medical staff, custom officials, diplomats or

24 • Nelson González Ortega

i.

j.

k. l.

state official servants, lawyers and so on who may facilitate or obstruct migration. Some of them are corrupt, while others act as migrants’ benefactors (VK: 180–82, 188–89; EM: 268–69). NGO workers: national or international caretakers from Western humanitarian aid agencies who provide support to migrants (EM: 323–25, 330). Some of these aid workers are known to have sexually abused immigrants. The national real estate agent: honest or corrupt clerks who may profit from the embezzlement of (inter)national funds allocated for housing undocumented immigrants in transit or arrival countries. The national citizen in societies of origin, transit and arrival: the supportive host (EM: 337–40) or vigilant citizen (EM: 340–42; VE: 60). Newspaper and media agents: journalists whose work is to report on migratory flows, boat wrecks and conflicts in international border zones.

Border Zones: Places Where Immigrants Are Detained or Set Up in Camps European countries’ migration laws and European Union directives on migration are designed mainly to prevent Africans from entering Europe: ‘By creating a restriction, they create illegality and “illegal” migrants’ (Landau 2018: 175). ‘Africans who manage to move’, Landau continues, ‘are ever more likely to be trapped in the liminality of refugee camps and detention centres as they await their eventual return. . . . Naturalising [irregular] borders and rhetorically and geographically distancing Africa [and Africans] erases the inherently transnational processes behind patterns of exploitation and displacements’ (ibid.: 181–82). Among the places where migrants are detained or which are used as lodgings in departure and arrival countries, one may find: seaports, beach huts, detention centres or reception centres (VK: 181), countryside huts or even roads (EM: 319), train and bus stations, parks and markets (EM: 53, 226–27), churches and host homes (EM: 337–40), and Fuwai or housing compounds administered by locals where migrants are forced to group themselves by nationality, for instance, Algeria, Libya and Morocco (VK: 70–72, 112–20).

Border Zones Aesthetics: Literary Representation of the African Migrant and Their Erratic Memories of Crossing The aesthetic approach contributes to the identification of the main textual strategies employed by the authors of the selected texts (see note 1) to construct either plot, chronotope,3 focalization,4 or metaphor/metonymy. Additionally, the ethical approach serves to further relate decolonial studies to the analysis of so-

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cial and ideological aspects of premodernity, modernity and othering within the modern, colonial and capitalist world system’s paradigm and the locus d’énonciation of (trans)national subjects represented as authors, narrators and characters. This is the case in El viaje de Kalilu (The Journey of Kalilu) (Jammeh 2009), an autobiographical book written in Spanish, in testimonial fashion, by the Gambian author Kalilu Jammeh: Chapter 1. Why I have written this book. I was present at more than six funerals a week for almost a year. Fleeing poverty and wars, many young African men and women end up dead. The Sahara Desert, the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean becomes the place not chosen for the final rest. Most of these young people leave Africa on foot, with little or no money and with the intention of getting to Europe to work. However, what happens is that the majority never arrives or return to their place of origin, and their whereabouts remain unknown forever. Many die of hunger and thirst, some are killed by armed robbers, others are victims of a snakebite, or drown while trying to cross the Mediterranean or the Atlantic in small canoes, and there are those who go crazy in the middle of the mountain or the sea. I have made this journey myself, and I have encountered such difficulties and suffering that I could never have imagined. (VK: 18)

The main theme of Jammeh’s book is the vicissitudes suffered by authors, narrators and characters in migratory journeys from sub-Saharan Africa to Spain and Europe. This literary topic is also central to the other two novels in the selected corpus, written respectively by African author Donato Ndongo (El Metro/The Subway, 2014) and by Spanish author Andrés Soler (Las voces del Estrecho/Voices from the Strait of Gibraltar, 2000). These three books, although different in form, contents and narrative prose style, are similar in terms of their autobiographical, testimonial and confessional dimensions. However, these texts belong to different literary genres. Kalilu is a strictly autobiographical book, while Soler’s novel Las voces and Ndongo’s El Metro are typically works of fiction based on real facts, such as the numerous shipwrecks that have occurred in the Mediterranean Sea over the last three decades. Thus, they articulate narrative structures, polyphonic Christian and Muslim narrators (VE: 89–114), aesthetical configurations of time and space, literary figures and techniques such as metaphor/metonymy, focalization, metaliterature (VE: 84, 97) and intertextuality (EM: 39; VE: 131, 326), and an elaborate style. The factual and fictional spaces and times (i.e. the chronotopes) represented in the selected autobiographical book and the two novels correspond to the territories of sub-Saharan Africa, Morocco and Spain during the years between 1988 and 2014, when large migratory flows to Spain and Europe took place. In El viaje de Kalilu, the author-narrator articulates the exact chronotope of his journey: ‘I arrived on Spanish soil [9 January 2004] one year and six months after I

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left Gambia [July 2002], having travelled more than 17,000 kilometres, passing through Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Western Sahara, suffering the unspeakable’ (VK: 183–84). Jammeh includes in his book a detailed map marking his journey from and across sub-Saharan countries into Spain (VK: 8–9), as well as an appendix with a chronological table showing precise dates, countries and the names of cities, distances between them and even the means of transportation he used in his migratory journey. Comparatively, in the novel El Metro, Donato Ndongo, from Equatorial Guinea, creates an omniscient narrator – Lambert Obama Ondo, from Cameroon – to tell the story of his migration from his native village of Mbalmayo to Madrid, structuring his narration around two space-time (chronotope) axes. A central, synchronous axis, in which the narrated events take place mainly in Madrid and its subway at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Chapter 1, 16–19), shapes the circular structure of the novel. A secondary, diachronic axis allows for the factual and fictional succession of narrated events, ranging from his clan’s mythical origins to the beginning of the twenty-first century (Chapters 2–15), when the protagonist Obama Ondo, after having survived many tragic and deadly situations crossing the Saharan desert, finally arrives in Spain. Ndongo’s novel is told from the point of view of a poor African immigrant who encapsulates his story along two main temporal levels. A real-time level lasts for over two years in which Lambert Obama’s perilous journeys take place, beginning in Mbalmayo and ending in Madrid. A symbolic or psychological time period covers Lambert’s long and frequent evocations of the traditional way of life of his grandparents and other ancestors. Likewise, in El viaje de Kalilu and El Metro, readers see migratory avatars through the focalized lenses of African narrators. However, in Soler’s Las voces del Estrecho, African migrants tell their own stories, although the novel’s narrators and characters’ physical features are not seen or focalized: all the migrant characters are represented as dead, except for the omniscient narrator and Ismael, the cemetery’s gravedigger who picks up corpses from the Strait of Gibraltar, hearing their voices and talking back to them, while forever navigating the Mediterranean Sea.

Utopia/Dystopia as Metaphor/Metonymy in El viaje de Kalilu, El Metro and Las voces del Estrecho A metaphor in language and literature is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. Metaphors connect or transfer two different domains of experience in our thought and language. These domains can be life and journey, or life and a path. Metaphor, as an overarching concept, is expressed by images, allegories, analogies and similes. Metaphors that convey ideas, images and symbols related to utopia and dystopia are frequent in

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the selected texts. Utopia means place in Greek (topoi), and its derivative ‘utopia’ can have a twofold and correlative etymological meaning: ‘ou-topia’ = in (nowhere) and ‘eu-topia’ = in a (good) place. Hence, the Good Place: the perfect State (country) or the ideal state of happiness (or both). Orally transmitted, world-universal ancient myths and legends that connect migration and death – articulated in biblical accounts (i.e. Noah’s ark, the Book of Exodus) and in classical Greek literature (i.e. the Odyssey) in which people must overcome great barriers and obstacles – have been transformed and turned into literary topics and universal migration metaphors in the selected texts. The most frequent metaphors articulated by African and Spanish narrators in their migratory narratives are those that envision a boat as a life journey (Abbeele 1991; Koné 2015) and Europe as a Paradise or The Promised Land (i.e. utopia), as it is textualized in Ndongo’s novel El Metro: ‘He already was at the end of the road, he had finally reached the promised land’ (EM: 266). Europe conceived as a paradise is also a metaphor textualized in Kalilu’s autobiographical book: ‘It is not easy for any traveller to travel to “paradise” as Europe is called’ (VK: 40). In the novel Las voces del Estrecho, the Spanish main narrator explains metaphorically how sub-Saharan migrants try to overcome poverty, lack of jobs, religious and political persecution, and even natural disasters to escape to the idealized Perfect State – Europe. ‘The poor go deep into the Strait (of Gibraltar) waters as Noah’s ark in the waters of the [Universal] Flood: hoping to find the Land of Promise’ (VE: 65). Both Spanish and African narrators are aware that their utopian journey to Europe becomes an anti-utopia or ‘dystopia, an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanised, fearful lives’ (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2020): ‘Dirty lodgings [at the African port cities] were the prelude to death. Immigrants were waiting to embark, and many died on these dangerous journeys. Others would be arrested, returned to their homeland. But those who have lost hope, spent hours and weeks searching for The Promised Land’ (VE: 132). The ideal maintained by sub-Saharan migrants of reaching Eden, Paradise or the Promised Land (Europe) alive blurs fiction and reality into a dystopia of revulsion, corruption, prostitution, violence, torture and death, or permanent economic exploitation: The fruit and vegetable greenhouses [in Almeria, Spain] filled with plants, fruits, streams, trees and us humans. . . . We discovered that we now live in large prisons with plastic walls . . . one worked, ate, and lived there. (VE: 38–39)

As inferred from this passage, not only does utopia become dystopia for Africans, but also the narrative function of metaphors reverses its topoi; working life in greenhouses (El Ejido, VE: 37–47) now becomes hell for immigrant workers, forcing them to dream of their ‘lost paradise’ – Africa.

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Metaphors in the selected texts become metonymies, as happens with the above metaphor of greenhouses, expressed as metonymy in Las voces del Estrecho: Two seas cloud your eyes: the one of the waters and the one of the plastics that meander between the mountains, swaying to the beat of the wind on the plains, and even already entering the Mediterranean Sea. (VE: 38)

Metonymy in language and literature indicates pars pro parte, or a part that originates and moves or transfers symbolically to another part. Metonymy substitutes the name of a thing for its whole (pars pro toto), as happens in the above passage, where the part (plastic) transfers, by virtue of contiguity, to the whole (the Mediterranean Sea).

Premodernity versus Modernity: The Transit(ion) from African Villagers to European Citizens in El Metro by Donato Ndongo Premodernity can be conceptualized generally as the social, economic and cultural patterns that existed either before Columbus’s 1492 arrival in America or before eighteenth-century European industrialization. The main characteristics associated with imagined pre-industrial or premodern communities, like the African ones depicted in the selected texts, are: a rural village or region; ancestry; ethnic and religious homogeneity; a cosmovision and a way of life based on millenary traditions; a set of customs and norms considered morally good to direct or judge the behaviour of people in a community; slow social and economic change that happens over generations; predominance of manual work; prevalence of oral culture and face-to-face communications, which foster strong personal relationships among people; rumour, gossip and informal conversations; limited present-day means of transportation; restricted social mobility; and so on. In contrast, modernity, defined generally as the socio-economic order that emerged mainly in Western societies after the eighteenth century, when European industrialization spread worldwide, was instrumental for the emergence of nation states in Europe. The features related to the kind of modernity textually represented here are: an urban space (entailing city, country and citizenship); a promoted notion of ethnic, social, religious and cultural diversity; a socially planned society that strives to continually move forward towards economic progress and innovation; the rise of an amoral society; a fast-changing society with no strong sense of morality or fixed values; a predominance of technologically specialized work over manual work; a fast-moving pace of life that prevents long-lasting relationships between family members or citizens; the prevalence of the written and visual culture over orality; news produced and disseminated via TV, social media, mobile phones, computers and so on (EM: 273); a prevailing

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fast and fluent social mobility (Cresswell 2006: 4); and a strong sense of individuality and privacy among members of a modern society (EM: 287). Thus, premodernity and modernity are not frozen in time and space; they change as languages and cultures do.

Modernity versus Coloniality: How to Enter and Exit Modernity Premodernity and modernity occur across several geographies and times. In fact, people can enter or exit premodernity or modernity, or travel between them as many times as they want (García Canclini 1995), as El Metro’s African narrator and protagonist does: ‘Obama Ondo quickly adopted urban lifestyles’ (EM: 168). In this way, modernity manifests itself in a city, a country or a continent: ‘In the sub-Saharan context represented in The Metro, the concept of citizenship [modernity’s main legal pillar] does not become more relevant than the affiliation of the inhabitants to ethnicity, religion or language which they identify with within a territory [premodernity’s main feature] not necessarily defined by a country’ (Rizo 2015: 86, my translation). Thus, ‘the Fang ethnic group [from Mbalmayo, Cameroon] and not a national space is asserted as the place of origin or starting point of Obama Ondo’s migration to the north’ (ibid., my translation). In El Metro, Ndongo’s narrator structures his lifelike migratory journey around the history of three generations of his family, each with their own world view. Ondo’s family’s first generation is led by Ebang Motúu, Ondo’s grandfather, who defends his clan and tribe’s traditions and beliefs, and does not allow infiltration by the ideas put forward by whites or by their written religion, Christianity (EM: 21–45). The head of the second generation is Ondo Ebang, Lambert Obama’s father, who converted, and first becomes an acolyte and afterwards a cook at Father Pierre Claver’s Catholic missionary station in Cameroon. While living with and serving Western missionaries, Ondo Ebang marries an African woman who gives birth to Lambert Obama Ondo, the narrator-protagonist of El Metro and the third-generation leader, who lives with his father and mother at the French missionary station until his mother dies. Afterwards, he returns to find his roots in his grandparents’ clan, before crossing the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to reach Spain. As implied, members of these three generations are represented in Ndongo’s El Metro either entering, exiting or being within premodern or modern spaces and times. The struggle between premodernity and modernity is developed throughout El Metro. The precarious African premodern era is represented in Ndongo’s novel through Ondo Ebang’s wife, who lives at the Catholic missionary station, modestly enjoying modern times’ amenities and comfort, of which the other African women who lived in premodern and colonial times were deprived: ‘Lambert

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Obama’s mother did not work the land like the other Black women, nor did she go out to get deep in the streams to fish . . . , nor did she clear the forest or carry the heavy baskets provided with food and firewood, like the rest of women whom she saw bent under the burden of the load, the yoke crossing their forehead like draft animals’ (EM: 40). Narrators and characters appear immersed in a dual global world that is deeply rooted in both modernity and premodernity or coloniality. In decolonial studies, the concepts of colonialism and coloniality are differentiated. Colonialism is understood as the process and apparatus of political and military dominance that are used to guarantee raw materials and the exploitation of labour in favour of the colonizer. It is a form of institutional, administrative and political domination (Restrepo and Rojas 2010: 15, my translation). Colonialism in Africa has a beginning and an end date: it began in the fifteenth century with the arrival of Europeans in Africa and ended with the national independence of most African countries by the 1960s. Coloniality, instead, conceived as the result and effect of colonialism, did not disappear in the twentieth century with the national independence of African colonies; it continues in the present day, as explained in Grosfoguel’s (2006: 26) modern and colonial capitalist world-system analysis (Restrepo and Rojas 2010: 15–16, my translation).

Othering and the Mutual Literary Construction of (Trans)National Identities and World Views in Contemporary African and European Migrants’ Narratives ‘The term Othering describes the reductive action of labelling and defining a person as a subaltern native, as someone who belongs to the socially subordinate category of the Other. The practice of Othering excludes persons who do not fit the norm of the social group, which is a version of the Self ’ (Bullock et al. 1999: 62). Subalternity implies, then, the existence of the ‘Other’ as inferior to oneself. The native Other is seemingly subordinate to the rational European citizen. Otherness and subalternity are inherent to colonialism. These two concepts are linked to past and present processes of domination and legitimation of economic power, in the form of coloniality that still exists today. What is examined here is the ways in which narrators and characters in the selected texts construct the image of the Other and the self, sometimes as a unified mass of African migrants who are depicted as being either opposite or similar to us Europeans. In other cases, the image of European men and women is constructed through focalization, either by reductive generalizations of mutual views of each other or by highlighting people’s skin colour or place of birth (identifying them as Arabs, Spanish, French, Europeans or Africans).

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Ethnic, Historical and Cultural Othering (‘Coloniality of Being’) In this case, Africans are depicted as seen by Europeans,5 through the voice of an African narrator: He was just a Black man: black – they said – without history, science or technique; black stripped of his tongue, of his identity, of his culture; black, without poetry, without art, or notion of aesthetics; black – they said – without past, present, or future. He came from the damn land, Africa the continent of eternal night, the heart of darkness. (EM: 18)

A four-way process of othering is articulated in this passage: (a) The author, from Equatorial Guinea, creates (b) a narrator from Cameroon who (c) represents himself as an African migrant who (d) adopts not the voice of, but a reductive and prejudiced perspective on, African people. Such a complex process of othering displays the artistic use of innovative literary techniques, the fusion of a double locus d’énonciation.6 Voice and character impersonation, the narrator’s transferred focalization, intertextuality and literalization of stereotypes are textualized here by the African narrator to put both unpronounced words in the mouths of Europeans and oppressive ideas in their heads. In short, through a masterfully elaborated narrative structure, the African narrator gets away with making European characters appear prejudiced and racist, even though they do not utter a word in the passage, but only project their thoughts as mediated by the African narrator. The effect of the message on the reader is as effective as if it were told directly by prejudiced Europeans.

Othering by Culture and Global Economy (‘Coloniality of Knowledge’) In another case, Europeans are depicted as seen by Black and white men:7 He should not risk that those whites who know everything would discover his deception [false passport]. It was essential to accentuate his status as an illiterate, limit himself to being just an illiterate Black miser, an unhappy African who did not know any European language, a poor victim who fled from the misery and wars that devastated his land, a poor African that had faced all the hardships to avail himself of their hospitality. (EM: 270)

Deception is a key word in this statement, uttered by an African narrator who, by using narrator’s focalization as a literary technique, succeeds again in artistically misleading the non-informed reader to consume and naturalize stereotypes and discourses of victimization and compassion associated with Western mainstream citizens’ view of Africans.

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Othering in Relation to Gender Here, Spanish and Moroccan women are depicted as seen by a young Moroccan clerk: He knew from the first moment that she was a Spanish woman and not a prostitute. Afterwards, she told him that she was born in Seville . . . Look, I barely talk with other women, here [in Morocco] they talk little, they are destined to marry, to take care and serve their husbands, but you are like women we see in the movies. . . . The Patera shipwrecked. . . . The woman in Seville, never knew about his death. For her the adventure was over. (VE: 130, 134, 137)

The relation between premodernity and modernity concerning gender becomes literarily meaningful here through comparing traditional Moroccan monogamous women with free, modern Spanish women. Traditional family life, individuality and emotional insensibility are questioned here as outstanding features of either premodernity or modernity.

Othering in Relation to Ethnicity and (Trans)national (Neo)colonialism In this passage, Africans are depicted as seen by other Africans (‘Coloniality of Power’):8 In so many years of independence . . . very few compatriots could recognise themselves as free and prosperous; only those raised [socio-economically] by the portentous finger of their excellence [the President], in exchange for contributing to maintain the inherited structure of colonization, reinforced by the oppression of Blacks by Blacks. (EM: 69)

Here, the power relations of hegemony and subalternity within a modern, colonial and capitalist world system are laid bare. Thus, a ‘coloniality of power’ (see note 10) or historical subalternization corrupts African elites to adopt European and North Atlantic hegemonic geopolitical policies and practices of exploitation in order to oppress their peoples.

A Modern, Colonial and Capitalist World System: Power Relations of Hegemony and Subalternity in Ndongo’s El Metro Narrators’ and characters’ oppressive perspectives on ethnicity, social class and culture, as well as the discriminatory views of difference that they express, refer symbolically to issues of othering, Eurocentrism9 and the power relations of hegemony and subordination within a modern, colonial and capitalist world system. Decolonial studies are instrumental for revealing the economic, political

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and sociocultural relations between the North (i.e. the North Atlantic hegemonic geopolitical discourses) and the South (i.e. the non-Western subaltern narratives) of the world from the perspective of subaltern subjects – the world’s poor and oppressed people. For this reason, decolonial studies’ central concepts are (neo)colonialism and coloniality versus decoloniality. Coloniality is defined as ‘a historical phenomenon . . . that extends to our present and refers to a pattern of power that operates through the naturalization of territorial, racial, cultural and epistemic hierarchies that enables the reproduction of relations of domination’ (Restrepo and Rojas 2010: 15, my translation). Concomitantly, decoloniality occurs when ‘[t]he figure of the oppressed appears illustrated in the peripheral villages, the working-class women, the oppressed youth, the poor, the masses and the exploited classes’ (ibid.: 54, my translation). Thus, ‘the oppressed subject can be liberated by a commitment within himself, a critical reflection of his oppressive reality that will eventually lead both to his own liberation as a subject and to the liberation of the oppressor himself ’ (ibid.: 54, 56, my translation), as El Metro’s narrator-protagonist experiences at the end of the novel: Obama Ondo knew that the whites . . . want to know everything. Maybe that’s why they progressed. And that the monotonous life of those people was not easy either: always getting up at dawn, making the same journey each day, attending the same routine task five or six days a week, letting time pass with the sole illusion that Sunday would always arrive and they would rest a little then . . . A lifetime overwhelmed, with that stress. It was not easy for anyone to earn money. It required self-denial, effort, organization. I would never again believe that whites are privileged beings: their sacrifice fed them every day, acquiring those little flats like hives, paying the car and furniture by instalments, and dressing and educating their children. (EM: 337)

However, in his final critical reflections on Spaniards living within an alienating kind of modernity, Obama Ondo becomes aware that Europeans, although in a different grade, are like him, ‘bewitched by the snares of modernity’ (EM: 25). To put it in decolonial terms, Obama Ondo has not only entered but also internalized Spanish modernity. Thus, the Spanish-European gaze has informed his self-understanding as a sub-Saharan African. Ironically enough, after letting the Other (the Spaniard) become himself and having finally entered European modernity through his friendly relations with the Spanish girl Lucía, Obama Ondo is brutally murdered in the subway by Madrid’s white supremacist skinheads, who had seen him with her: The three young skinheads entered the same train car, . . . he heard their whispers in three voices: you will never fuck white girls again, disgusting monkey, fucking nigger. And at the same time, a hard punch and the coldness of a thin

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stiletto puncturing his side and piercing his lung, at the height of his heart . . . His grandfather, the beloved tribe chief, Ebong Motúu, told him [in his agonizing thoughts] don’t be afraid, son: You have finally reached the destination port, and your death will not be anonymous. (EM: 340–42)

The last three lines of the novel refer to a circular structure that unites tradition and modernity: the representative of the first generation of Obama Ondo’s dynasty, Ebong Motúu, meets symbolically in a circle of mutual death with the representative of the third generation, Obama Ondo himself.

Conclusions This chapter has offered a decolonial reading of literary representations of the mutual construction of (trans)national and citizenship identities undertaken by some of the main actors in contemporary North and sub-Saharan African immigration into Spain and Europe. Methodologically structured around historical, socio-economic, and aesthetic and ethical approaches, the study presents the following preliminary findings. Historically, there has always been a connection between immigration and human trafficking, but today that connection has increased exponentially, with more tragic and inhuman results than ever before: from 1988 to 2018, an average of two non-European migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea per day, trying to enter Spain and Europe (see note 2). Real evidence and literary renderings of illegal immigration to Europe suggest that man-made walls and the European Union’s laws, designed to regulate migration, have been more useful to criminalize and dehumanize immigrants in the eyes of European citizens than to protect immigrants’ lives and human rights. In the selected texts, I have identified the precarious means of transport, the terrible lodgings in migrants’ countries of origin, transit and arrival, and the profitable business of trafficking and economic exploitation to which subSaharan migrants are subjected, preventing most migrants from arriving in Europe safe and sound. One in three Africans (33 per cent) who try to migrate to Europe succeed, while the others die in the attempt or are, following the European Union’s laws, deported to their countries of origin or to their last port of embarkation. The aesthetic approach, as a core exploration of this chapter, has helped reveal that the selected literary texts articulate similar themes, but exhibit different kinds of chronotope; a varied use of focalization; the inclusion of utopia/dystopia and metaphor/metonymy dimensions; the textualization of modernity versus coloniality; a literary articulation of individual and group identity and othering;

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and the analysis of power relations between peoples and countries within a modern, colonial and capitalist world system. The use of point of view/focalization and metaphor/metonymy in these three texts is gradual and complex. In Jammeh’s El viaje de Kalilu, the authoritative point of view of the Gambian author permeates the autobiographical account from beginning to end. Meanwhile, in El Metro, the uniform point of view of the Cameroonian narrator – deployed by the Equatorial Guinean author Donato Ndongo – diversifies, turning into various types of focalization adopted by the main narrator, the other narrators and the novel’s numerous other African characters. In Soler’s Las voces del Estrecho, the focalization of narrator-protagonists, represented as living beings in the texts by Jammeh and Ndongo, disappears, giving rise to a complex system of focalization that is mainly adopted to fictionally represent two living beings and the multitude of corpses and souls that ‘see’ and ‘speak’ during their eternal wandering in the Mediterranean Sea. Hence the title of the novel: Voices of the Strait of Gibraltar. Utopia and dystopia – in the form of metaphors and metonyms and in varying degrees of narrative complexity – are mainly used to portray real or symbolic seas and landscapes (transit and border zones or the Mediterranean Sea) represented either as cemeteries, a tortuous peregrination to either Europe or Africa (dystopia), or as Paradise and Hell or vice versa. Most metaphors and metonymies in the three texts stem from either biblical universal myths or classical Greek literary legends, popularized orally or put in writing in religious or secular texts, such as Noah’s ark, the universal flood, the Book of Exodus, the Apocalypse, and The Odyssey. Decolonial studies conceptualizations have been instrumental to examining forced migration not only synchronically – as in the case of push-pull theory – but also from a diachronic or longue durée point of view, as well as from non-European and European perspectives; this helped to identify two major interrelated causes in the selected texts for the unprecedented increase of contemporary forced migration into Europe: (a) the historically established asymmetrical relations between North Atlantic hegemonic geopolitical discourses and non-Western subaltern narratives, among them the sub-Saharan ones analysed in this chapter; (b) Southern subalternity manifested in the texts as the absence – in sub-Saharan and North African territories – of fair social formations that would allow inhabitants to obtain full rights, such as those associated with Western citizenship. The absence of authentic citizenship and the legal rights that come with it is due mainly to the lack across Africa of either an effective nation state system or any other kind of fair, lawful, equalitarian and democratic social organization. Ethical asymmetry between Western hegemony and Southern subalternity – represented in the selected texts – is both epitomized and contested by Ndongo’s narrator in El Metro: ‘The new masters who came from the other part of the world carrying with them the Only Truth [Progress]’ (EM: 21); ‘And why must

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all humanity resemble Europeans?’ (EM: 305). Thus, the African narrator is fostering new decolonized ways of questioning both Eurocentrism (see note 11) and the asymmetrical power relations between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’ from the perspectives of the subaltern subjects of the world. Nelson González Ortega has a PhD from the University of Madison-Wisconsin (1992) and is a Professor of Hispanic Literatures and Cultures at the University of Oslo (Norway). His research focuses on contemporary Hispanic literatures and cultures, and their relationships with historiography, ethnography, political science, gender studies and decolonial theory. He has participated in international research projects, including the Sweden-based Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective, published in three volumes by De Gruyter. His publications include Bolivia en el siglo XXI (2017) and Colombia: Una nación en formación en su historia y literatura (siglos XVI al XXI) (2013), among others.

Notes 1. The selected corpus is composed of one factual essay, El peaje de la vida (PV or Toll of Life) by Goytisolo and Naïr; one autobiographical book, El viaje de Kalilu (VK or Kalilu’s Journey) by Jammeh; and two novels, El Metro (EM or The Subway) by Ndongo and Las voces del Estrecho (VE or Voices of the Strait of Gibraltar) by Soler. Hereinafter, the acronyms in italics appearing after the titles will be used in quotations from these texts. All translations into English are mine, unless stated otherwise. Complete references are given in the Reference List. 2. Spain’s foreign population is composed of three main groups: tourists, legal skilled and unskilled workers, and asylum seekers, undocumented migrants and refugees. The latter group is the focus of analysis in this chapter. 3. ‘Chronotope’ implies ‘intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships’ (Bakhtin 1981: 84). Bakhtin (ibid.: 250–51) situates the significance of the ‘literary chronotope’ on at least four different levels: (1) they have narrative, plot-generating significance; (2) they have representational significance; (3) they ‘provide the basis for distinguishing generic types’; and (4) they have semantic ‘significance’. 4. Genette (1972) distinguishes ‘point of view’ from ‘focalisation’. The first corresponds to the ‘character whose point of view orients the perspective of the narrative, that is, the character who sees’ (ibid.: 203) while the second refers to the narrator, the speaker: ‘The narrative perspective or the focus/focalisation of narrations . . . does not always cover a complete work, but a specific narrative segment (ibid.: 208, my translation). 5. ‘Othering’, The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, 3rd edn. (1999: 62)5. ‘Coloniality of being refers to the effects of colonialism reflected on the experience of colonial subalterns, . . . the coloniality of being not only affects those who are belittled or dehumanised, but also those who imagine themselves as superior and embodying the paradigm of humanity’ (Restrepo and Rojas 2010: 158, my translation). 6. ‘The geopolitical and political-body location of the subject who speaks’ (Grosfoguel 2006: 22, cited in Restrepo and Rojas 2010: 141, my translation).

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7. ‘Coloniality of knowledge would suppose a kind of epistemic arrogance by those who imagine themselves to be modern and consider themselves as holders of the most appropriate (or even the only) means of access to the truth (whether it be a secular or a theological means) and therefore that they may assume they can manipulate the natural or social world towards their own interests’ (Restrepo and Rojas 2010: 137, my translation). 8. ‘Coloniality of power’ refers to ‘a power relationship of domination, exploitation or confrontation around work, nature, sex, subjectivity and authority within the framework of emergence and reproduction of the capitalist system’ (Restrepo and Rojas 2010: 131, my translation). 9. ‘The Eurocentric version is based on two principal founding myths: first, the idea of the history of human civilization as a trajectory that departed from a state of nature and culminated in Europe; second, a view of the differences between Europe and non-Europe as natural (racial) differences and not consequences of a history of power’ (Quijano 2000: 542).

References Abbeele, G.V.D. 1991. Travel as Metaphor: From Montaigne to Rousseau. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, M. 1981. ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes towards a Historical Poetics’, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 84–258. Bullock, A., S. Trombley, and A. Lawrie (eds). 1999. ‘Othering’, in The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, 3rd edn. Grand Rapids, MI: HarperCollins, p. 62. Cresswell, T. 2006. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. New York: Routledge. Danewid, I. 2017. ‘White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the Erasure of History’, Third World Quarterly (38)2: 1–16. García Canclini, N. 1995. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Genette, G. [1972] 1987. Figures III. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Goytisolo, J., and S. Naïr. 2000. El peaje de la vida. Madrid: Aguilar. Grosfoguel, R. 2006. ‘La descolonización de la economía política y los estudios postcoloniales: Transmodernidad, pensamiento fronterizo y colonialidad global’, Tabula Rasa 4: 17–48. Jammeh, K. 2009. El viaje de Kalilu. Barcelona: Plataforma Editorial. Koné, T. 2015. ‘El barco como cronotopo en El Metro de Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo’, Perífrasis 6(11): 37–51. Landau, L.B. 2018. ‘A Chronotope of Containment Development: Europe’s Migrant Crisis and Africa’s Reterritorialisation’, Antipode 51: 169–86. Lee, E.S. 1966. ‘A Theory of Migration’, Demography 3(1): 47–57. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2020. ‘Dystopia’. Retrieved 10 September 2020 from https:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dystopia. ‘More Than 1,000 People Dead in Mediterranean So Far this Year’. 2019. Aljazeera, 1 October. Retrieved 1 September 2021 from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/1/ more-than-1000-people-dead-in-mediterranean-so-far-this-year. El naufragio: 30 años de memoria sumergida [film]. 2019. Dir. F. Santiago. Servicio de Vídeo de Diputación de Cádiz. Spain.

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Ndongo, D. [2007] 2014. El Metro. Madrid: Assata. Quijano, A. 2000. ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’, Nepantla Views from South 1(3): 533–80. Restrepo, E., and A. Rojas. 2010. Inflexión decolonial. Popayán: Universidad Javeriana. Rizo, E.G. 2008. ‘Review of El metro by Donato Ndongo’, PALARA: Publications of the Afro-Latin American Research Association 12: 84–89. Soler, A. [2000] 2016. Las voces del Estrecho. Madrid: Akal. Stanojoska, A., and B. Petrevski 2012. ‘Theory of Push and Pull Factors: A New Way of Explaining the Old’, in G. Milošević (ed.), Archibald Reiss Days, vol. 1. Belgrade: Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies, pp. 179–94.

Chapter 2

BORDER CROSSINGS, RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES AND COLLECTIVE WRITING IN PATHÉ CISSÉ’S LA TIERRA PROMETIDA/DIARIO DE UN EMIGRANTE: LA TERRE PROMISE/JOURNAL D’UN EMIGRANT

F Carles Magrinyà Badiella

In recent years, numerous collectively composed autobiographical novels and diaries about the real experiences of migrants have been published in Spain. This method of collective authorship is used in sociology and cultural anthropology and has been adopted within literature to present literary reports in the form of novels, autobiographies, diaries and even testaments. The objectives of such works are more ethical and instrumental than aesthetic, although the latter aspect is also taken into consideration. These texts are first-person testimonials based on the experiences of non-Spanish speakers in the search for El Dorado – here a metaphor for the rich West – that use the languages of Spain (be it Castilian, Catalan or Galician) for their literary creation. For Inmaculada Díaz Narbona (2018: 135), this Afro-Hispanic literature is a kind of ‘stranger’ (or writing of ‘strangerhood’, as she calls it) in the history of the Spanish literary canon. It is not, though, pure fiction, for the main goal of these texts is to tell their story, bearing in mind that what precipitated these migrants’ attempts to reach Europe was the desire to escape from dictatorships, difficult economic situations or the violence caused by war. In this context, migrant narrators from Senegal and Gambia have joined forces with Spanish writers and other cultural actors to create works that deal with their experiences of travelling from sub-Saharan Africa to Spain. Among other works, this is the case with Pathé Cissé’s La Tierra Prometida/Diario de un Emigrante: La Terre Promise/Journal d’un Emigrant (2008, The Promised Land/Diary of an Emigrant), Kalilu Jammeh’s El viaje de Kalilu

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(2009, Kalilu’s Journey), and Patrick Lambal and Jordi Tomàs’s El pescador que volia anar al país dels blancs (2013, The Fisherman Who Wanted to Travel to White-Man’s Land), first published in Catalan. Considering the need for case studies of ‘strangerhood’ literatures (Díaz Narbona 2018: 135), Pathé Cissé’s narrative project is particularly interesting. It emerged from a collaboration between more than five actors of different nationalities, both Spanish- and Frenchspeaking (as reflected in its bilingual French-Spanish edition), and includes variously authored compositional areas and ‘medial borders’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 164), including the text by Cissé and paratexts and illustrations by other actors. After a close reading, the explicit presence of Catholicism and Islam stands out in various forms in both the paratext and the text, highlighting various meanings and functions of religion. La Tierra Prometida (Cissé 2008) explicitly states that it is a narrative account written by a Muslim and edited mostly by Catholics. Throughout the text, different aspects of Islamic and Senegalese traditions (witchcraft, for instance) emphasize the complexity and richness of the dialectic between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Some of Cissé’s critique is about the absence of religious values in the sociopolitical powers both in Senegal and in West Africa. My aim is thus to study how the different representations of religion operate in the text and paratext by using the concepts of border aesthetics – following conceptual and terminological contributions by Johan Schimanski (2006) and Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe (2017) – Gérard Genette’s (1997) paratexts and Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s (1981) chronotope. The main claim of this chapter is that the different religious ideologies and border figurations in Cissé’s text and paratext highlight the difficulty in negotiating the religious identities and tensions that exist between religious exclusivity and inclusivity. For the purposes of this paper, I will not examine all the paratextual aspects, but will instead focus on problematizing whether or not the prologue fosters a true dialogue between religions. Schimanski differentiates planes of borders (2006) and rhizomes (2017) with a wide variety of concepts. I will mainly structure the chapter around notions located in the following planes: the symbolic; the temporal; the topographical; and finally, the textual (in connection to Genette). In the case of symbolic borders, also called conceptual borders, I follow Schimanski’s (2006: 55) definition as a way of understanding the topic of religion: In literary texts, I propose to use the term ‘symbolic border’ mostly about the differences concerning the lived life of humans and other agents, either in its social aspects (gender, religion, class, ethnicity, hegemony, etc.), in its individual aspects (being, body, psyche, etc.), or in the in-between of interpersonal relationships. Literature to a large extent deals with precisely the crossing or the transgression of such symbolic borders.

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The representations inherent in the different categories of symbolic, temporal and topographical borders are thus relevant when they highlight a transitory state, that is, a transformation from one state to another, or when a longmaintained situation between two states begins to change. Concepts like liminality, threshold and in-between are central when studying border phenomena related to space because they suggest that there is a contact zone that enables both the separation and division of identities (Rossello and Wolfe 2017: 11). These concepts are all suitable for a study of migrant narratives and representations of a given topic. Temporal borders deal mostly with the human life cycle (birth, adulthood, marriage and death) and are linked to rituals of transition, liminality and the way that literature represents the unity of time and space – what Bakhtin (1981: 84), in his theory of ‘chronotope’ or chronotopos (literally, ‘time-space’), calls ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature’. These chronotopes constitute organizing centres – or ‘themes’, as Mattias Aronsson suggests in his contribution (Chapter 3) to the present volume – for the fundamental narrative events of the novel: ‘The chronotope is the place where the knots of narrative are tied and united’ (Bakhtin 1981: 250).1 Topographical borders refer primarily to the spatial dimension, but also to imaginary barriers like markers in national borders, property borders such as fences and bodily borders such as skin. Even though liminality does not refer necessarily to space, the very notion itself (limen signifies ‘threshold’ in Latin) derives etymologically from the realms of space and territory. In anthropology, the concept of liminality is used to analyse transformations of identities and interactions between identities and intermediate zones. In literary works, the term ‘liminality’ also concerns aspects of space, time and the state of the characters, and is characterized by indeterminacy, ambiguity and hybridity, highlighting a realm of new possibilities where new cultural expressions can be tested (Bhabha 1994). In postcolonial studies, it is therefore used to describe a border, marginal space or threshold – all spaces that create distinct spheres, identities or discourses. This concept is thus also close to the Bakhtinian chronotope of threshold, which combines temporal and topographic borders. When it comes to textual borders, we can link this concept with Gerard Genette’s ‘paratext’, as described in Seuils (translated as Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, 1997). The paratext is constituted by all the elements that surround and frame the main text in a published work. In Genette’s (1997: 1–2) words, ‘more than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold’. It thus comprises those liminal devices and conventions, both within the book (peritext) and outside it (epitext): titles and subtitles, forewords, dedications, prefaces, notes, afterwords, illustrations, pseudonyms and epigraphs (ibid.: 344). The epitext consists of elements such as interviews, publicity announcements, reviews by and addresses to critics, private letters and other authorial and edi-

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torial discussions ‘outside’ the text in question. The paratext is the sum of the peritext and epitext (ibid.: 5). Put simply, it is anything outside the literary text. Because it is a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction, the peritext can be a zone of public influence that serves the better reception of the text and enables a more pertinent reading of it (ibid.: 1–2). Therefore, it constitutes a border zone where ideology and discourse can be expressed. Textual borders are a more recent concept, dealing with, among other things, the compositional areas of the text or its different typographical sections. The product of a text (the book) is thus divided into different metaphorical borders. We as readers cross the borders of the text and the different thresholds of the manuscript by the act of reading (see Schimanski 2006). Religion plays a central role in the peritext of Cissé’s narrative project. From the book cover we can attest to the creation of a polyphonic contact zone of different actors to highlight the collaborative spirit of the project. With a title in both Spanish and French, the cover makes clear that the author is Pathé Cissé, but includes the names of some of the coordinators of the project. The epigraph is dedicated to Cissé’s family, the Red Cross and those that died on his journey (together with a short prayer dedicated to them). Then there is a list of the sixteen collaborators: the writer of the prologue (Paz Pasamar), the proofreaders of the French version and the translators of the Spanish version, the writer of the diary itself (Cissé), a glossary, and photos and paintings by other actors. All these items and texts constitute what Genette (1997: 1) calls a ‘peritext’. The hybrid nature of the book (paratext/peritext and text) is in itself a point of connection that, on the one hand, enables the creation of a new realm of possibilities that eludes a concrete space in the canon of Hispanic literatures and, on the other hand, questions what is literary or not literary in a narrated multilingual autobiography. A book collaboration like Cissé’s makes possible that which would otherwise remain invisible, and in this way allows the reader to go through a ‘passage’ to perceive discrepancies in social concepts like religion (as well as gender, class, ethnicity and hierarchy). Among the actors who collaborated in the production of La Tierra Prometida, there were also writers who were not co-authors and wrote only one chapter at the beginning of the book, that is, what Genette (1997: 207, 263–75) refers to as an ‘allographic preface’ (a peritext). The allographic preface to Cissé’s book leads us to question how religion is presented and whether there is an ideology of religion or some degree of proselytism that permeates this project. Díaz Narbona (2015: 37) reminds us that since the publication of the first book in this genre, Force-Bonté (1926) by Senegalese writer Bakary Diallo, these tutelary texts often include a prologue highlighting their ideological intentions. The purpose of these prologists has varied, but their words serve to create a blueprint for the rest of the work. They normally introduce the hero, emphasize their virtues in integrating into the new society or discuss the injustices of migration. In the prologue

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to La Tierra Prometida, written by Andalusian writer Pilar Paz Pasamar, we are immersed in an interreligious dialogue articulated by mostly Christian Catholics in what seems to be a largely religious project. Pasamar draws an analogy from two stories in the Holy Scriptures to illustrate the adventures and vicissitudes of migrants trying to reach Europe, feelings of inner exile that Cissé may have experienced. First, she describes the story of the Israelites migrating from Egypt and crossing the desert, taken from the Book of Exodus (in the Old Testament and Jewish Torah).2 Then she retells the account of Jonah, Nineveh and getting trapped inside the belly of the whale. These episodes appear in the Bible, the Torah and the Quran, although it is unclear whether Pasamar’s failure to link them to Cissé’s own faith background was intentional or not. It seems as though the references to sacred texts (or their absence) create a limit or border that, with the information given, cannot be crossed. For Muslims, the Bible and the Torah are part of the Book, together with the Quran. In fact, numerous stories from the Old Testament are rewritings that became part of the Islamic canon, a process that, from a Muslim point of view, might be termed ‘amendments’. Pasamar writes that Cissé is a believer, although she does not specify in which religion, introducing the story of Jonah with the formula ‘en nuestro credo’ (‘in our creed’; Cissé 2008: 11). However, given that in the diary, Cissé’s strength in the face of adversity is based on strong religious beliefs – he explicitly writes that he is a Muslim – adding words along the lines of ‘and that of Cissé’ would have generated a much more inclusive approach. The true dialogue that followed would have reinforced the shared points of all three Abrahamic traditions. One may conjecture that the references to Catholicism are an attempt to balance the obvious presence of Islam in the main text. However, the last word of the prologue, ‘Amine’ (the way in which Senegalese Muslims and Christians say ‘amen’), suggests a more neutral and inclusive approach to the project. The prologist argues that Cissé’s entire journey is a test of his faith in God and in humanity, particularly when he accesses Western society for the first time and the feelings of exclusion that this creates. Pasamar uses the word ‘Dios’ for God instead of ‘Allah’, which might have been more inclusive when speaking within the framework of Cissé’s beliefs. Nonetheless, Cissé also writes ‘God/Dios’ in his diary. One quantitative fact that is not conclusive but indicative is the relative absence of the following words in all the peritext and main text: ‘Allah’, ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘Quran’. In the text, ‘Muslim’ is used only twice and ‘God’ twenty-two times. Praise for Catholic values is also evident. The prologue is directed to the Spanish-speaking reader and aims to highlight the loss of Christian values. While it recognizes that any believer from any faith can get lost in a capitalist society and live in an ‘unstable zone’ in a kind of inner exile, Pasamar’s emphasis is on the devaluation of Christian theological virtues (faith, hope, charity). If the intention of the allographic text is to influence or guide the reading public, the prologue falls into some sort of othering. If the aim were to foster interreligious dialogue, a kind of analogical

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thinking would have striven to find similarities, correspondences and contiguities between Christianity and Islam, avoiding binary thinking. The diary begins with a biographical description of the protagonist and points to the link between law and religion. Cissé comes from a modest family on the outskirts of Dakar and is the eldest of eleven brothers. As early as the second paragraph we get a clear glimpse of the importance of his religion: as a good Muslim, he has to show respect, love life and keep his struggles always within the law. We can immediately see his first conundrum: is embarking on a clandestine trip not breaking the law? Clearly, Cissé’s aim is to fulfil his dream of travelling to ‘El Dorado’, in this case Spain, in a cayuco, in the hopes of providing money for his family in Senegal. Transgressing the law in this way leads him, now as a border-crosser, to an in-between space of exception (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 161). This reminds us of the chronotope of the threshold, which, for Bakhtin, combines well with the chronotope of ‘crisis’ and ‘break’, where the subject takes a decision that changes their life (Bakhtin 1981: 248). Embarking on a journey, at risk of dying and living for a period outside the law, from the moment Cissé sets foot on the boat, the time he spends at sea is composed of liminal spaces. The arguments in favour of transgressing the law are compelling: the media and the political and religious authorities in Senegal are corrupt and do not make an effort to solve the migration problem. That is, they do not follow the religious and traditional values that Islam teaches, according to Cissé, and thus make him exempt from the moral demands of Islam. Cissé comes from a pluralistic religious environment. Central and western Senegal’s religious make-up includes all of Islam’s different branches, as well as Catholicism, Protestantism and indigenous religions (Cochrane 2013: 45). The Catholic presence (around 4 per cent of the total population) is a leftover from the colonial past when, in the nineteenth century, French Catholic missionaries sought conversions to Catholicism. Islam in Senegal is multifaceted. Between 90 and 95 per cent of the population in Senegal is Muslim, mainly a form of Sunni that follows the Maliki School of Law for Islamic practices. This is not to forget that Senegal is a republic, with a constitution that forms the basis for the rule of law, not Sharia. From the late 1970s, reformist movements of Islamic revivalism have swept across Africa, challenging both the secular outlook of the state and the mystical, non-political outlook of Sufi Islam, which in Senegal was manifested mainly by the Tidjaniyya and Muridiyya orders. Since the 1980s, conservative Islamic currents like Salafism and Wahhabism have gained power. These adherents claim to promote ‘pure Islam’ and reject both the Sufi brotherhoods and state secularism. Efforts to improve the relationship between the Sufi brotherhoods and the political apparatus have been made since colonial times. Recently, however, exceptions to this relationship have been noted, leading to the supposition that collusion between the state and Islam is developing. Under the presidency of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, at the time when

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Cissé was writing his diary, it was possible to speak of some level of state-based ‘comprehensive secularism’, together with the emergence of a popular current of Islam from the Mourid Sufi religious sphere. In light of the accelerated neopatrimonialism of the Wade regime, a Salafi-oriented Islamic association softened his message. From the 1980s, Senegal’s Jamaatou Ibadou Rahmane (JIR) sought to penetrate the political sphere, changing its radical discourse and increasing its media visibility in order to garner legitimacy. This association has now become a major religious, social and political actor (Gomez-Perez et al. 2009: 188–89; Gomez-Perez 2017: 176, 190). Even though the desire of Muslims to display their religious identity has become more widespread, especially among women and young people like Cissé, radical expressions of Islam are still rare in Senegal. Most Muslims in Senegal reject the concept of external jihad or holy war and understand Islam as a peaceful and tolerant religion that favours dialogue rather than coercion (Sambe 2015: 132). Cissé’s diary displays a clear tone of social criticism when describing the situation in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. He is critical of religious beliefs, the social structures of ethnic groups, popular taboos, political corruption and Spanish migration policy. His critique is not focused on the effects, changes and values brought about first by colonialism and later on by neocolonialism, but on current African governments and their widespread corruption. In particular, Wade’s presidency has been controversial. He has been accused of corruption and nepotism and of placing constraints on the freedom of the press and other civil liberties. Leaving aside the memory of imperial France and French missionaries, Cissé focuses his condemnation on the present. This is why this text is not a ‘pure’ postcolonial discourse. Reflections like these are introduced by quotation marks and italics and have a different narrative voice, content and tone to the rest of the text. Since this is a diary, such reflections are from Cissé. The function of these digressions is to articulate wider demands and hopes, and to denounce the current situation for African migrants today, particularly in West Africa. Sometimes they take the form of short essays, like at the end of the diary, and use rhetorical questions to invoke the reader’s sympathy. In the final pages we learn that the diary is narrated in extrema res. It is Cissé’s eighteenth day in a migration centre. His text is, in fact, not only a product of waiting (Van Houtum and Wolfe 2017), but also of crossing the metaphorical border of procrastination: sitting down, taking pen and paper, and writing the whole story (ibid.: 76). The use of ambiguity to provide greater emancipation to the narrator, therefore, transgresses the limits of textual borders and makes it difficult to differentiate between diegetic levels. The result is an effective blending of the process of the in-between, of essay and inner monologue. The transgressive merging of two levels with the intrusion of this voice in La Tierra Prometida creates a no-man’s land of the narrative zone that only the reader, through their effort to understand the text, can decode.

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Cissé (2008: 72) makes the link between politics, religion and ethics quite clear: ‘Llegará un día en que el político, cualquiera que sea, tendrá que rendir cuentas no solo al pueblo sino también a Dios’ (‘A day will come when the politician, whoever it may be, will have to be accountable not only to the people but also to God’). There is a clear intention in this choice of words. The ultimate aim of the diary is to denounce and make visible current events in which migrants find themselves involved, as well as to criticize and report on the situation in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. Cissé has explicitly stated in an interview (Cissé and Benítez 2016) – which for Genette (1997) forms part of the epitext – that literature and his diary have enabled him to express his irritation towards the injustice of the laws relating to foreigners and migrants, the so-called ‘Ley de Extranjería’ (Aliens Act) from 2000. While the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) approved the first law regulating migration back in 1985, it was in light of increased migration through Morocco in the 1990s that the Spanish People’s Party (Partido Popular, PP) introduced a second law in 2000 suppressing the rights of illegal immigrants to syndication, striking and demonstration. This Aliens Act also stipulated that undocumented immigrants without rights of residence did not have the right to work or decent housing. In late December 2007, the Spanish Supreme Court revoked these laws, coincidentally only a short time before Cissé (2008) published his diary. As for the writer’s role, Cissé becomes a kind of griot, a traditional Senegalese storyteller or troubadour from precolonial times who relates legends, stories of the tribes and the lives of charismatic (sometimes religious) leaders with the purpose of advising and exhorting his community (Hale 2007: 24–40). More concretely, he becomes a spokesperson for the society in which he lives and a representative of the community to which he belongs. Writers are always bearers of meaning and identity and an author is not just perceived as a distant individual. Literature is not solely an aesthetic expression, but rather serves its community, its main objective being to make a situation visible, be it economic, political or religious. A similar idea is expressed by the most representative Equatoguinean writer, Donato Ndongo, who is quoted as saying: ‘In the Fang ethnic group, to which I belong, there is no art for art’s sake, but it has to be useful, as well as beautiful. My books are a proposal for taking action to solve the problems that afflict this generation of Africans’ (García 2007). It is by combining the figure of the Senegalese griot with contemporary narrative techniques that Cissé creates an ambiguous zone for the construction of a narrative space and a discourse that enables him to focus on migration issues. Key to the whole adventure is Cissé’s belief in destiny. One of the Sunni articles of faith is predestination or qadar, the belief that all that will happen to a person is recorded in a Preserved Tablet. His visit to the marabout on the very day of his journey, as described in the first chapter, denotes the enormous trust placed in this multifaceted and widespread figure in Senegal and Gambia. The

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objective of the visit is a fortune telling and a blessing by prayers, both for Cissé and for the rest of his family. The visit to the marabout is a common trope in this type of migrant literature and is analogous to the visit to the oracle in classical literature (e.g. Aeneid, book VII). There is no univocal definition or function for the figure of the marabout. The peritext includes a glossary with the following definition: ‘guía religioso musulmán, superior al imán, del que se dice puede predecir el futuro’ [‘Muslim religious leader, superior to the imam, of whom is said can predict the future’] (Cissé 2008: 84). In general, ‘marabout’ has become a term used in West Africa for saints and religious leaders. They possess different skills and contribute in varying ways to their religious communities, from healing to teaching (Cochrane 2013: 37). Cissé’s definition makes a controversial point: he ranks the marabout above the imam. The conservative doctrines espoused by the Islamic groups mentioned earlier would condemn this immediately; any kind of fortune-telling or magical practice is considered a serious sin. The definition in the glossary implies, therefore, a new transgression, in this case in the understanding of Islamic values. The status and skills of the marabouts are complex, since they have different levels of influence. Some lead Sufi orders in Senegal, such as the Muridiyya, Tijaanyya, Layanne and Qadiriyya (Buggenhagen 2012: 16). Others have one or more disciples, and some act autonomously. The marabout’s secret and esoteric knowledge, transmitted in a mostly master–disciple relationship, has given them an undeniable attraction. A marabout can also be a mixture of witch doctor and saint, the so-called wali Allah or ‘friend of God’ (Cochrane 2013: 33). He or she – marabouts are mostly men but can also be women – is well versed in herbology and, most importantly, in the exegesis and secrets of the Quran. On the more obscure side, a marabout can perform black magic and can put a curse on someone in exchange for payment. This is why people seek protection from the ‘evil eye’ by wearing amulets. It is believed that a marabout’s knowledge comes from their ancestors, who acquired it through contacts and deals with the jinns – invisible entities made out of fire that, according to the Quran, can be Muslim or not, good or bad. Some marabouts want to be paid for their services and some do not. A marabout can also be a political leader, a religious leader, an imam or a Sufi, which makes it practically very difficult to categorize this character.3 In sum, the word marabout refers to a person with some saintlike quality or to a religious leader in local communities. In some countries of West Africa, this word also refers to a wizard (good or evil) who performs magic and divination (Naranjo 2009: 17). After consultation, a marabout normally asks the recipient to carry out an act of charity or perform a ritual in addition to wearing an amulet. In Cissé’s case, he was required to buy a chicken and ‘holy water’, that is, water that contains the diluted ink of specific verses from the Quran. All this is done to reinforce the power, the blessings or baraka – a kind of continuity of spiritual presence and revelation in Islam that begins with God and flows through Him to

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those closest to Him (Schimmel 1994: xiv) – intended to strengthen the individual’s faith and increase their chances of good luck, even though these are already, paradoxically, predestined. From the seventh day of the journey, there is a marked over-representation of the importance of religious rituals against dangers and adversities in the cayuco by the protagonist and the rest of the passengers. In this sense, spaces that involve some form of intermediate or border state for the characters, that is, some kind of threshold, are particularly interesting to study due to their dynamism. Examples of such spaces are pilgrimage sites, gardens, beaches, vehicles, boats, subways and caves. The function of the maritime chronotope of the cayuco or ‘big canoe’ proves significant for the theme of the diary, as it is the key element needed to fulfil the journey and involves moments of vital crisis for the main character. Fear, tension, loss of a sense of time and the inhumane conditions of the journey each convey the experience of exclusion in this border-crosser when conflicts lead to new structures of authority. Cissé (2008: 36) repeats numerous prayers and invocations to the saints when he is accused of being a ‘deum’, a wizard or demon that governs the wind and the natural elements and is believed to have brought hunger, sickness, wind and cold to the journey. Similarly, in El pescador que volia anar al país dels blancs, none of the passengers on board a similar migrant boat questions the authority of a marabout when he accuses four Ghanaians of being the cause of sickness and several deaths (Lambal and Tomàs 2013: 116–18). Cissé’s feeling of strangerhood intensifies when he is beaten and secluded in the hold of the boat, here analogous to a subterranean dark space or ‘underworld’, such as a dungeon, cave or, by analogy, the belly of the whale, as the story of Jonah recounts in the prologue. The hold functions as an in-between space of waiting, seclusion and subsequent rebirth, echoing the classical motif of the adventure of the afterlife, catabasis or descensus ad inferos, in which the hero travels through a cave, has to pass an initiation test and returns to tell what he has seen. Descensus ad inferos literally means ‘the descent to lower places’ or to the lower world, and the Latin word inferos should not be confused with inferna. Inferos is comparable to the English ‘inferior’, or ‘lower world’. The catabasis (a going down) must be followed by an anabasis (a going up) in order to be considered a true catabasis and not death. Inferna, on the other hand, is comparable to the English ‘infernal’, an adjective meaning ‘hellish’ (Connell 2001: 264). Cissé’s experience encompasses all of these meanings: his accusation of being ‘devilish’, his descent into the lower world of the hold (a hellish, infernal place) and his subsequent anabasis, or rebirth, because of his faith in God. The claustrophobia, loneliness and the sensation of being in a living hell that Cissé describes while inside the hold is a reminder of the difficulties and the inhumane conditions of his ancestors during the journeys that were part of the Atlantic slave trade. In this case, the journey is of ninety-seven migrants (ninety-six men and one woman) for eleven days, with extremely cold nights, subhuman conditions of hygiene and several passenger deaths. These moments of disorientation – ‘no sabíamos a dónde

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íbamos’ [‘we did not know where we were going to’] (Cissé 2008: 40) – restlessness and ambiguity correspond to those of in-between situations. The answer for Cissé is always the same: to remain faithful to his God until reaching land, which his contemplation of Mount Teide on the island of Tenerife keeps in his mind. We can link the idea of these superstitions with marginalization and exclusion because fear and the supernatural (tradition) can produce among fellow passengers on a boat an epistemological border between the known and unknown. The superstition behind the ‘deum’ implies an imaginary border zone that includes hauntings and encounters (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 163) in the cayuco, the place where the natural and the supernatural coexist. This in-between and liminal state opens the possibility of an anti-structure that confronts the common hierarchic structure (Turner 1991). Taking into account the changes in the signs of identity that occur in this intermediate phase, the function of the chronotope of the cayuco is to open the possibility of distinguishing the conventions brought by tradition in front of the essential elements of one’s identity. Turner (1967: 97) describes this liminal state as a ‘realm of pure possibility’, where people can abandon their social conditioning and constitute a new space. As an individual, Cissé’s liminal experience gives him a social critique as well as a sense of nonbelonging or of not occupying any symbolic space in the social structure. This break from society, however, does not involve a resolution in his personal vital crisis. Once in the complex modern industrial Western world, Cissé progresses from a temporary liminality to what Turner (1982: 53–55) calls a more permanent liminoid or liminal-like state that is prolonged until the diary is published. The Canary Islands represent the arrival of the longed-for continent, the desired El Dorado. It symbolizes the convergence of the two continents – a Spanish territory in Africa. But most importantly, it symbolizes an imagined third space between Africa and Europe. The point of arrival is literally a beach, a liminal space between the sea and land and a threshold to the new civilization. What is noticeable is the absence of any land-based markers, like walls or fences. There are, though, conceptual separations, invisible and figurative walls separating Cissé from his new life. After they are spotted by the police, the Spanish Red Cross, one of the agents mentioned earlier to which the diary is dedicated, assists the migrants. Metaphorically, the cross has Christian connotations, but also represents a plus sign (+), a symbol that evokes a sense of inclusion. Cissé (2008: 45) has only positive words for the organization, declaring their sense of humanity and arguing that the world would be a better place if all the nations were to have politicians with such qualities. Yet the diary is clearly critical of the Spanish police, who treat the migrants as objects by giving them armbands, codifying them – Cissé’s number is 11 (2008: 48), with the ‘number plate’ 2762 (2008: 68), thereby actualizing processes reminiscent of the slave trade. Despite all of these adversities, faith is Cissé’s leitmotif. He includes transcriptions of prayers that speak to the covenant with God and impel him to record his experiences. In the final words of his diary he makes a utopian promise to the reader: young

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Africans, if they behave responsibly, will change the course of history ‘with the help of God’ (ibid.: 78). Both the text and peritext repeatedly display appeals to faith, be it Catholic or Islamic. How is the negotiation of religious identities represented? How are the different borders transgressed? The scope of the application of symbolic borders, paratexts and chronotopes is particularly remarkable in a study of religious identities. The foregoing analysis validates the proposition that religion in Cissé’s La Tierra Prometida creates a set of strategies that lead to border-making through the aesthetic form of literature, both in the text and the paratext. It is evident that the notions of exclusion, transgression and proselytism are central to this collective book project. The negotiation of identities proves problematic, suggesting processes of othering and exclusion in the different textual borders. The ideological function of and tension between the main text and the paratexts (the cover, preface and glossary) combine with the different voices and narrative transgressions of the main text’s textual borders (the diary/social criticism). Religious ideology and Catholic apology underlie the preface, which by silencing common-ground examples of passages from the Bible and the Quran fails to cross the textual borders of sacred texts. Islamic values are questioned and their corruption is, for Cissé, enough to allow him to transgress Senegalese and Islamic law. In the case of the glossary, Muslim orthodoxy and the authority of the imam figure is questioned, transgressing the limits of Islamic doxa. In the main text, the superstitious tensions that are accentuated by the boat’s restrictive setting emphasize Cissé’s exclusion and marginality. A level of inclusion is manifested when entering the West (with the help of the Red Cross). Chronotopes of the border in this diary include the cayuco and its cave-like hold, together with the Bakhtinian chronotopes of crisis and break. The chronotope of the threshold and temporal and topographical borders combine to create transitory and liminal situations for the protagonist, but other tropes typical of border-crossing narratives are also found: disorientation, the supernatural, guides, guards and utopias. On the plane of expression, social criticism is often articulated in ambiguous atmospheres. The use of religion in La Tierra Prometida displays different understandings of the border that reflect the social and political belief systems of the protagonist and his community. The importance of social criticism in Cissé’s nonfiction project concerns both Senegal and its religious and political corruption and the Spanish police and their harsh migration laws, but also the different religious ideologies and values of Cissé and his collaborators. Cissé shows us in his work that what helps us understand the seriousness of important social issues such as migration is, paradoxically, problematic in collective literary projects like this one, which aims to promote ethical engagement with migrants from subSaharan Africa. The representations of religion and proselytism in this intercultural project, presumably so well meaning, run the risk that this testimony will never raise awareness of clandestine migration from sub-Saharan Africa, but will become, in the end, merely a religious pamphlet for the Western secular reader.

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Carles Magrinyà Badiella, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at Dalarna University. His background is in Hispanic literary studies, and his current research focuses on contemporary Afro-Hispanic migration narratives. Other research interests include Western Esotericism, alchemy and other subversive disciplines in literature from the Spanish Golden Age. He is currently Editorial Board Member of the Cultural Identity Studies series published by Peter Lang, and participates in the project ‘Temporalities and Subjectivities of Crossing: Contemporary Public Migration Narratives in Europe’, in collaboration with the University of Oslo.

Notes 1. See Chapters 1 and 3 in this volume for factual and fictional spaces and other applications of the chronotope in contemporary African narratives. 2. In the Quran, the Moses narratives are in the following passages (chapter/sura and verses): 2.49–61, 7.103–60, 10.75–93, 17.101–4, 20.9–97, 26.10–66, 27.7–14, 28.3– 46, 40.23–30, 43.46–55, 44.17–31 and 79.15–25; the story of Jonah is in chapter/sura 37, 139–48. 3. The term Sufism is not univocal, nor does it have a closed meaning. Under the name Sufism we can identify different expressions whose basic aim is the desire for union and relationship with the divinity in order to understand the reality of things. These include rituals and techniques in the framework of Sufi Islamic orders or non-Islamic currents (e.g. Neosufism; Sedgwick 2008).

References Bhabha, H.K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Buggenhagen, B. 2012. Muslim Families in Global Senegal: Money Takes Care of Shame. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Cissé, P. 2008. La Tierra Prometida/Diario de un emigrante: La Terre Promise/Journal d’un Emigrant. Bilingual edition, ed. E. Rivera and M.F. Romero. Cádiz: Diputación provincial. Cissé, P., and L. Benítez. 2016. Entrevista a Pathé Cissé. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Retrieved 1 November 2019 from http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/ entrevista-a-pathe-cisse-dakar-senegal-1977/. Cochrane, L.L. 2013. Weaving Through Islam in Senegal. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Connell, M.F. 2001. ‘Descensus Christi Ad Inferos: Christ’s Descent to the Dead’, Theological Studies 62(2): 262–82. Díaz Narbona, I. 2015. ‘Escrituras testimoniales africanas en el contexto español: Migraciones y extrañeidad’, in I. Díaz Narbona (ed.), Literaturas hispanoafricanas: Realidades y contextos. Madrid: Verbum, pp. 132–66.

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———. 2018. ‘“They Look at You and Nobody Cares Who You Are or What You Do”: Writings of Strangerhood’, in Y. Agawu-Kakraba and K. Aggor (eds), African, Lusophone, and Afro-Hispanic Cultural Dialogue. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 131–45. García, A. 2007. ‘Mis novelas son una propuesta de acción: Donato Ndongo – escritor’, Diario ABC, 22 November. Retrieved 10 August 2021 from http://www.abc.es/hemero teca/historico-22-11-2007/abc/Canarias/mis-novelas-son-unapropuesta-de-accion-dona to-ndongo-_-escritor_1641397706708.html. Genette, G. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gomez-Perez, M. 2017. ‘“Political” Islam in Senegal and Burkina Faso: Contrasting Approaches to Mobilization since the 1990s’, Mediterranean Politics 22(1): 176–95. Gomez-Perez, M., M.N. LeBlanc and M. Savadogo. 2009. ‘Young Men and Islam in the 1990s: Rethinking an Intergenerational Perspective’, Journal of Religion in Africa 39(2): 186–218. Hale, T.A. 2007. Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music. Indiana, IN: Indiana University Press. Jammeh, K. 2009. El viaje de Kalilu. Barcelona: Plataforma Editorial. The Quran, ed. Muhammad M. Pickthall. Perseus Digital Library. Retrieved 1 October 2019 from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a2002.02.0006. Lambal, P., and J. Tomàs. 2013. El pescador que volia anar al país dels blancs. Barcelona: Pòrtic. Ley de Extranjería. Ley Orgánica 4/2000, de 11 de enero, sobre derechos y libertades de los extranjeros en España y su integración social. Retrieved 1 October 2019 from http://noticias .juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/lo4-2000.html. Naranjo, J. 2009. Los invisibles de Kolda: Historias olvidadas de la inmigración clandestina. Barcelona: Península. Rossello, M., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Introduction’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–24. Sambe, B. 2015. ‘Senegal: Un islam local en épocas de globalización religiosa’, Nueva sociedad 257: 124–38. Schimanski, J. 2006. ‘Crossing and Reading: Notes towards a Theory and a Method’, Nordlit: Arbeidstidsskrift i litteratur 19: 41–63. Schimanski, J., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Intersections: A Conclusion in the Form of a Glossary’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 147–70. Schimmel, A. 1994. Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Sedgwick, M. 2008. ‘Neosufism’. Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism. Retrieved 15 February 2021 from https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/dictionary-ofgnosis-and-western-esotiricism/*-DGWE_254. Turner, V. 1967. ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage’, in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 93–111. ———. 1982. ‘Liminal and Liminoid, in Play, Flow, Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, in From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, pp. 20–60. ———. 1991. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Van Houtum, H., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Waiting’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 129–46.

Chapter 3

MIGRANT LITERATURE MIGRATING The Case of Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique and Its Reception in Sweden

F Mattias Aronsson

This chapter examines Fatou Diome’s novel Le ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic), published in 2003, and the reception of its Swedish translation Atlantens mage (2010). The study has an intrinsic, text-centred perspective, as it examines the representations of migration and of migrants in Diome’s work, and also an extrinsic, reader-response-oriented perspective, for an important part of the study focuses on the public discourses surrounding the novel in the form of literary reviews.1 The Swedish translation was published at the end of a decade in which the experiences of non-European migrants and of the children of migrants had begun to play an important role in contemporary Swedish literature – a phenomenon that was soon noticed by the press and other media.2 Le ventre de l’Atlantique tells the story of a Senegalese woman, Salie, who has emigrated to France, and of her younger half-brother who has stayed behind. The reader learns that Salie’s migration to France was a result of her marrying a Frenchman – a marriage that ended in divorce – and her subsequent survival, living on her own means in the new country. Migration, belonging, exile and xenophobia are important themes in the novel, which has been cited as an example of Francophone migrant literature and of world literature (see, for instance, Lindberg 2015: 45–47; 2016: 74). The focus of this study is the migration – and the obstacles to migration – of the literary text itself, of its fictional characters and of its author, Fatou Diome. Salie, the female narrator, claims that many people in Senegal still suffer from what she calls a ‘mental colonisation’ in the early twenty-first century (Diome

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2006: 32).3 Thus, according to the main character, French cultural and economic hegemony persists even after forty years of political independence for the nation of Senegal. Le ventre de l’Atlantique is an interesting work to examine because it speaks from the point of view of a female African migrant. According to Edward Said (1978), the Western man has historically defined the Orient and the Oriental. This is undoubtedly true, which is why Diome’s novel presents a very welcome corrective to Said’s theory. Here, a Black Senegalese woman acts as narrator, and her gaze and her voice dominate throughout the text. For once, there is no African ‘Other’ defined through the Occidental lens. The reader-response part of this study deals with the reception of Diome’s novel in Sweden. I examined reviews published in the Swedish press, as well as reviews published on the internet. The material was collected in March 2018 by using the database Mediearkivet for the press and the search engine Google for reviews published in the blogosphere. The overall aim of the project was to study what happens when an example of Francophone migrant literature migrates to a non-Francophone environment, and the chapter seeks to answer the following questions: how is migration depicted in Le ventre de l’Atlantique? How can the different variations of migration (that is, the migration of the author, of the novel itself and of the fictional characters) be understood, and how does the subject of migration appear in the literary reception in Sweden of the novel?

Language and Identity: Dominance and ‘Mental Colonisation’ in the Francophone World According to Frantz Fanon in his essay Peau noire, masques blancs from 1952 (Black Skin, White Masks, 1967a), language is intimately associated with power because it is a tool used by the colonizer to dominate the colonized. ‘To speak’, the author declares, is first and foremost ‘to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization’ (Fanon 1967a: 17–18). Fanon maintains that colonized people suffer from an inferiority complex that comes from losing their original local culture (ibid.: 18). As a result, Fanon says, the colonized individual will try to adopt the language, customs and values of the colonizer. He will go to great lengths to reject ‘his blackness, his jungle’ (ibid.) because the assimilation of the colonizer’s culture is highly advantageous. Fanon writes: ‘The Negro who knows the mother country is a demigod’ (ibid.: 19), and argues that a coloured person who masters the French language in the colonies is seen as and treated as ‘almost white’ (ibid.: 21). It is in the interest of the individual to learn the colonizer’s language because it represents ‘the key that can open doors’ that used to be locked to all colonized people (ibid.: 38). However, in order to surmount the social hierarchies, the colonized person has to renounce his past and his culture. In his

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subsequent work The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 1967b: 38) (French original title Les damnés de la terre, 1961), Fanon writes: ‘In order to assimilate and to experience the oppressor’s culture, the native has had to leave certain of his intellectual possessions in pawn. These pledges include his adoption of the forms of thought of the colonist bourgeoisie’. That is to say, a colonized person cannot climb the social ladder without leaving something important behind. One might think that Fanon’s descriptions of colonial dominance and subordination, as he identified them in the 1950s and early 1960s, would be antiquated half a century later. However, the novel Le ventre de l’Atlantique presents many vivid examples of lingering colonial structures in Senegalese society in the new millennium. Indeed, the descriptions of life on the small island of Niodior, situated off the Senegalese coast, may be read as an illustration of Fanon’s theories on cultural domination. Diome (2006: 33) describes this rural community of farmers and fishermen as a ‘relentlessly Francophile universe’. Not only can the French language be heard in this milieu, but it can also be seen, as Madické, the narrator’s half-brother, notices: And yet he’s often heard, even seen, that language. Yes, he’s seen it, here in his country: that language wears trousers, suits, ties, shoes with laces; or skirts, suits, sunglasses and high heels. He does recognise the language that flows in Senegalese offices, but he doesn’t understand it and that irritates him. (Ibid.: 8–9)

As evidenced above, the French language in Diome’s novel is associated with articles of clothing that signal financial prosperity. As such, it represents urbanity and modernity, that is to say, the key to a better life for ordinary people – just as Fanon (1967a: 38) points out in Black Skin, White Masks. Further, the fact that Madické speaks only the local, indigenous language (he has only attended the Quran School) seriously hinders his chances in life. Le ventre de l’Atlantique portrays the problematic relationship between centre and periphery, between France and Senegal, and it can therefore be considered a postcolonial novel. It may be read as an illustration of Homi K. Bhabha’s (2004: 9) assertion that postcolonialism is ‘a salutary reminder of the persistent “neocolonial” relations within the “new” world order’. There is, in fact, a direct parallel between what Bhabha calls neocolonial relations and Diome’s description of the ‘mental colonisation’ of Senegalese people. According to the narrator, the inhabitants of Niodior have their attention constantly on the former colonizer. The French dominance is, for example, visible when the young boys play football on the beach: They formed teams named after their favourite clubs and stayed faithful to them throughout their youth, each boy taking the name of his hero. So, on the sandy pitches, marked out by four hastily gathered wooden sticks for goal

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posts, you could watch Paris-St-Germain take on Marseilles, or Nantes crush Lens, if it wasn’t Sochaux struggling against Strasbourg. The television showed other big European clubs, too, but there was nothing doing. After the historically recognised colonisation, a kind of mental colonisation now prevails: the young players worshipped and still worship France. In their eyes, everything desirable comes from France. (Diome 2006: 32, emphasis added)

As we can see, the Senegalese adolescents of the early twenty-first century portrayed in the novel remain culturally preoccupied with, and influenced by, their country’s former master – and this ‘mental colonisation’ consolidates French dominance in the country. In another scene, the heroine sees her brother watching a televised football match ‘surrounded by his jubilant friends, who go berserk every time France wins – another outbreak of post-colonial syndrome’ (ibid.: 157, emphasis added). Diome’s literary representation of life in rural Senegal very much resembles the key colonial principle of ‘mimicry’, defined by Bhabha (2004: 127) as ‘almost the same but not quite’. Bhabha exemplifies this by quoting excerpts of colonial discourse from the nineteenth century in which the importance of mimicry is stressed. His examples concern the English colonization of India, but the same principle applies to the French imperial project. The idea was that the imitation of English manners would induce the colonial subjects to remain under English protection (ibid.: 124). The aim of the civilizational project was to produce a class of people ‘Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect – in other words a mimic man raised “through our English School”’ (ibid.: 124–25). The parallel between Fanon’s ‘almost white’ and Bhabha’s mimic man as ‘almost the same but not quite’ seems clear. Bhabha finds the colonial project in general, and the creation of a ‘mimic man’ in particular, highly problematic – as does Diome when she denounces the ‘mental colonisation’ in Senegal. However, to break free from a colonial past is no mean feat. Pascale Casanova (2004: 80–81) states that in comparison to non-colonized countries, ‘the use of European languages had been systematically imposed in colonized territories, leading to greater complexity in the forms of dependency that developed’. Casanova (ibid.: 81) argues that linguistic and economic domination persists in postcolonial societies, so ‘proclamations of national independence do not suffice to eliminate outside pressures’. As this study shows, Fatou Diome’s novel provides many illustrations of Casanova’s thesis. The fact that Fatou Diome is a literary author who writes in French is worth noticing in this context. It indicates that it is still, in the twenty-first century, the language of the former colonizer that opens doors – not only for the fictional characters in Diome’s novel, but also for herself as a novelist struggling to find,

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and maintain, a position in the ‘world republic of letters’ (Casanova 2004: xii), in the words of Casanova (ibid.: 264), who claims that ‘the literary use of one of the great central languages’ is almost indispensable for dominated writers if they want to enter the literary world. The decision to write in French is therefore a very logical choice, even if it, in itself, may be regarded as a sign of submission. Casanova (ibid.: 258) declares: ‘For writers from countries that have long been under colonial domination . . . bilingualism (defined as “embodied” translation) is the primary and indelible mark of political domination’. Thus, if writing in French means surrendering to existing and unequal relations of power between the centre and the periphery, what strategies can Francophone authors adopt in the face of lingering colonial structures? Casanova (2004: 124) explains that one solution has been to construct a mental dichotomy, which she calls ‘the acrobatic theory known as the “two Frances”’. With reference to Raphaël Confiant, Casanova (ibid.) defines this theory as ‘the belief in a supposed duality – the colonizing, reactionary, racist France and the noble, generous France, mother of arts and letters, the emancipating creator of the rights of man and the citizen’. According to Casanova (ibid.: 125), the construction of this dualistic mental representation has ‘permitted Francophone writers to preserve a sense of freedom and cultivate the special identity necessary to their literary existence while at the same time fighting against political subjugation’. As a matter of fact, a dichotomy of this type is clearly visible in Le ventre de l’Atlantique. At the same time as the heroine denounces the racism inherent in French society and the French ‘mental colonisation’ of the Senegalese youth, she personally remains grateful to France as the ‘mother of arts and letters’, to quote Casanova (ibid.: 124). When introducing the village schoolteacher, Monsieur Ndetare, in the narrative, Salie declares: ‘I owe him Descartes, I owe him Montesquieu, I owe him Victor Hugo, I owe him Molière, I owe him Balzac’ (Diome 2006: 41). Apparently, a love for these prominent figures of French letters and French philosophy is the most important gift that the narrator received from her schooling on the island.4 Just as Fanon (1967a: 38) argued, the French language is clearly ‘the key that can open doors’ for people in the former colony. For Salie, it opens up a whole new literary and philosophical universe, and it thus permits her intellectual birth. She says, still apropos of her former schoolteacher: I owe him the first French song I murmured, because I owe him my first phoneme, my first moneme, the first French phrase I read, heard and understood. I owe him my first letter of French, written wonkily on my broken slate. I owe him school. I owe him education. I owe him, in short, my ambiguous adventure. Because I pestered him endlessly, he gave me everything: letters, numbers, the keys to the world. (Diome 2006: 41–42, author’s emphasis)

The educational adventure into French culture is ‘ambiguous’ for Salie, because it creates some distance between her and other members of the community.5 She

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declares that every word she writes, every book she reads, distances her from the other villagers (ibid.: 120).

The Author and the Novel as Border-Crossers: The Importance of Accessing the Centre of the Francophone World It is important to remember that Le ventre de l’Atlantique is not only written in French, but also published by a Parisian publishing house, Editions Anne Carrière. As Casanova (2004: 127) points out, ‘Consecration in Paris is indispensable for authors from all dominated literary spaces’ because it represents ‘a passage from literary inexistence to existence, from invisibility to the condition of literature’.6 Casanova (ibid.: 127) calls this transformation littérisation. To ‘make it’ in Paris is particularly challenging for Francophone writers from the periphery, she argues, because the French attitude towards this category of authors has for a long time been condescending: Paris never took an interest in writers from its colonial territories; or, more precisely, it long despised and mistreated them as a species of extreme provincials, too similar to be celebrated as exotic foreigners but too remote to be considered worthy of interest. . . . Indeed, the few national literary prizes that have been awarded to writers from the former French colonies or from the margins of the Francophone area have been motivated by transparently neoimperial considerations. (Ibid.: 122)

Nevertheless, in the new millennium, Fatou Diome found herself among the happy few, the chosen ones who made it in Paris, which Casanova calls ‘the capital of the literary world, the city endowed with the greatest literary prestige on earth’ (ibid.: 24). Born in Senegal in 1968, Diome moved to France in the early nineties, and made her literary debut with a collection of short stories in 2001. In 2003, she published her first novel, Le ventre de l’Atlantique, with a Paris-based publishing house and through financial support from the Centre National du Livre, a national public agency dedicated to the promotion of high-quality literature.7 This example illustrates how the centre–periphery dichotomy is still very much alive in the twenty-first century. The hierarchical relationship between the dominating former colonizer and the dominated ex-colony persists in the Francophone world. As a young intellectual hailing from the periphery, Fatou Diome had to master the French language (which was not her mother tongue) and to acquire the cultural capital valid in a French-speaking intellectual milieu; she then had to physically cross the border and migrate to the centre, where she had to integrate into its dominating literary circles in order to get published, to be recognized as a literary author, to find a readership, to receive grants, to get her

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works translated into other languages8 – in short, to enjoy the process of littérisation described by Casanova (ibid.: 127).

The Chronotope of Migration in Le Ventre de l’Atlantique: A Tale of Two Forces – Push and Pull In this study, migration is considered to be a literary chronotope, in the tradition of Mikhail M. Bakhtin. He defines the concept in the following way: ‘We will give the name chronotope (literally, ‘time space’) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature’ (Bakhtin 1981: 84). Migration literature typically deals with both space (often, as in Diome’s novel, the crossing of physical borders) and time (as there is always a ‘before’, a ‘during’ and an ‘after’ the relocation). Therefore, migration may be considered an example of a literary chronotope.9 As Bakhtin (ibid.: 250) points out, these chronotopes are first and foremost important for the literary narrative: What is the significance of all these chronotopes? What is most obvious is their meaning for narrative. They are the organizing centers for the fundamental narrative events of the novel. The chronotope is the place where the knots of narrative are tied and untied. It can be said without qualification that to them belongs the meaning that shapes narrative.

According to the push-pull theory commonly used in migration studies (e.g. Kuvik 2012: 222–23; Sana and Conway 2013: 489; Borkert 2018: 59), there are often negative factors in the home country that ‘push’ people to leave (such as civil war, famine, political persecution or unemployment), but there may also be so-called ‘pull’ factors: positive conditions in the receiving country that make it attractive to migrants. Le ventre de l’Atlantique may be used to illustrate the theory, as both aspects are represented in the novel. As one can imagine, there are many push factors shown in the descriptions of the local community. Without being a story of misery and want, life on the island of Niodior is nevertheless described as hard and monotonous. No one in the community has enough savings to invest in activities more prosperous than the traditional subsistence fishing and farming. Thus, the chances for a better life are slim if one stays at home. The young men on the island are perfectly aware of this problem and of the obligation that weighs upon them to feed their families, which more often than not comprise extended family members from several generations. This burden of responsibility constitutes an obvious push factor. Apart from the harsh economic realities that affect everybody on the island, there is – for the main protagonist, Salie – another set of push factors that, quite clearly, have influenced her own migration to the North. Her emancipation and

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strong individuality make her an outsider in the village, and she is one of the rare characters in the novel to criticize the strong community spirit reigning on the island. Salie argues, for example, that: The traditional community is of course a great comfort, but it drags you down and smothers you. It’s a steamroller that crushes you, the better to absorb you. The ties that bind the individual to the group are so stifling you think only of breaking them. (Diome 2006: 120)

Consequently, many of her compatriots accuse her of being egoistic and Occidentalized. There is also a masculine domination in the village that everybody finds natural, except for the two intellectuals (Salie and the schoolteacher), who denounce it as oppressive. The patriarchal and misogynist structures of local society are severely condemned by the narrator. She gives several illustrative examples of how difficult it may be for a woman to live a full and emancipated life in this environment where traditional values persist. For instance, widespread polygamy (ibid.: 126, 132), the numerous childbirths that lead to overpopulation (ibid.: 126, 130) and the Islamic sharia law that is in vigour (ibid.:88) are explicitly criticized. When a child is born out of wedlock, it is killed in order to restore the family’s honour (ibid.: 86–92), and in one scene, a marabout – a traditional West African sorcerer and healer – sexually assaults the heroine under the guise of medical treatment (ibid.: 104–9). All these oppressive structures of rural Senegalese society contribute to pushing the heroine into migration. Pull factors are closely linked to the ‘mental colonisation’ of the population described above. The idea that ‘everything desirable comes from France’ (ibid.: 32) suggests that there is a widespread feeling within the local community that emigration is the only way to succeed in life. Applying Johan Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe’s (2017: 155) terminology, the Atlantic Ocean becomes the ‘borderscape’ separating the harsh reality in Senegal and the imagined El Dorado in the North. In Le ventre de l’Atlantique, there are many examples of people who have perished in the ‘belly of the Atlantic’ while trying to improve their life. The dangerous act of border crossing is also one of the notions underlying the research field of border aesthetics. As Mireille Rosello and Wolfe (2017: 4) assert, ‘We care about border aesthetics because it has everything to do with the proliferating and dangerous borders of our globalized world. Border aesthetics is about people who die trying to cross a border’. If France is widely regarded by the villagers of Niodior as paradise on Earth, it is because they gain their knowledge of the outside world mainly by way of French television commercials and the mendacious stories told by (selfproclaimed) successful migrants such as the ‘man from Barbès’. This character led a very degrading life during his years spent in France, where he experienced hardships such as hunger, loneliness, homelessness and racism. Upon his return, however, he becomes the island’s local hero, as his meagre savings allow him to

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marry four wives and to buy the village’s first television set. He does not reveal any details of the true nature of his existence, when he was ‘a nigger in Paris’ (Diome 2006: 59, author’s emphasis).10 Instead, he turns into ‘France’s best ambassador’ (ibid.: 59) and prefers revelling in stories about the city of light: It was like nothing you could imagine. Like on TV, but better, because you see it all for real. . . . It was magnificent, but the word doesn’t do it justice. Even the Japanese come to take photographs of every corner of the capital. It’s said to be the most beautiful capital city on earth. . . . Ah! Life, over there! A real life of luxury! Believe me, over there they’re very rich. . . . And everyone lives well. Nobody’s poor, because even those with no work are paid a salary by the state: they call it benefit. You spend the day snoozing in front of your TV, and you receive the same as one of our highest-paid engineers! . . . Your wildest dreams can come true. You’d have to be a real idiot to come back from there poor. (Ibid.: 55–58)

The ‘man from Barbès’ does not reveal the fact that France no longer has any need for the unskilled labour offered by African immigrants. The admiration he enjoys in the village reposes on the young men’s naïve dreams of emigration, and he has no intention of informing them that without any particular and sought-after skills, they are quite simply not welcome in France. This aspect of the narrative can be linked to Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial theory, in which he denounces the different attitudes of developed countries towards educated and uneducated migrants respectively. These nations applaud multiculturalism as an ideal, Bhabha (2004: xiv) argues – they have no problem draining the South for brains and talent – but when it comes to accepting people who are forced into exile, it is a different story altogether: States that participate in such multicultural multinationalism affirm their commitment to ‘diversity’, at home and abroad, so long as the demography of diversity consists largely of educated economic migrants – computer engineers, medical technicians, and entrepreneurs, rather than refugees, political exiles, or the poor.

As Kuvik (2012: 216–17) points out, the need for skilled immigrants in Europe has been increasing steadily since the 1990s, in large part due to the technological boom and the emergence of a ‘knowledge economy’ in the West. However, there has been no corresponding increase in the demand for unskilled labour.11 Rosello and Wolfe (2017: 1–2) affirm that there is all the difference in the world between being a holder of an EU passport and being a refugee trying to enter fortress Europe. The latter category of people become ‘belated subalterns in a neo-imperial global system’ (ibid.: 16). In fact, the narrator’s hostile attitude towards African migration in Le ventre de l’Atlantique is based on this simple fact: as an educated, intellectual and highly skilled immigrant in France, Salie is well

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aware of the difficulties that her uneducated and unskilled compatriots encounter when struggling for a decent life in exile.

From Border Aesthetics to an Aesthetics of Reception: Swedish Reviews of Atlantens Mage There are rather few reviews of Fatou Diome’s work published in Sweden, a great deal fewer than can be found for other modern-day female French authors such as Marguerite Duras and Faïza Guène (see Aronsson 2016, 2018). There are also considerably fewer Swedish reviews of Fatou Diome’s work than of other Francophone authors, such as Calixthe Beyala, Marie NDiaye and Alain Mabanckou.12 This is largely due to the fact that only one of Diome’s novels – Le ventre de l’Atlantique – has been translated into Swedish, whereas all these other authors have two or more publications. The corpus of this study comprises fourteen reviews, derived from different sources: the national Swedish press (1), the regional press (3), online publications (3) and literary blogs (7).13 Migration is associated with the adjacent themes of exile and identity in the Swedish reception of Atlantens mage. Several reviewers choose to focus on how hard it is for the individual migrant to (re)construct and (re)negotiate their identity in exile. The main character Salie is the prime example. For her, life in France is a complicated affair, the reviewers conclude, and she often feels homesick: The Belly of the Atlantic explores the dilemmas of exile, the feeling of homesickness mixed with the relief of having got away. (Hamberg 2010)14 It is impossible for Salie to explain that immigration and a new start in life are, in reality, much more problematic and humiliating than Madické’s ‘dream powder’ might suggest. (J. Fries 2010)

Homesickness, however, implies that there is a home to return to. But migration and exile are experiences that may transform the individual to the extent that the old community no longer feels like home. The result can be rootlessness, loneliness and a feeling of being trapped between cultures. Nilsson (2010), for instance, quotes the narrator Salie when she says: ‘I’m a stranger everywhere’, while Boström (2011) calls the novel ‘a captivating book about not belonging anywhere’. The most important pull factor seems, in the case of the main protagonist, to be the chance to enjoy personal freedom and independence in France. Nina Fries (2012) argues that ‘Salie does not seek money and fortune, but freedom’ and that Diome’s literary debut ‘raises questions about identity and freedom’. But as other reviewers quite rightly point out, freedom and independence usually come at a price:

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When Salie opposes Western individuality and African community spirit, she perspicaciously reveals that she had to pay a high price for her newly found independence in France. (Jarlsbo 2010) Diome describes the exiled person’s existential crisis and confusion of identity in a very realistic manner. . . . Upon your return, you often sense that you have changed in exile; you do not know where you belong anymore. This is hugely painful for many people. You no longer belong anywhere. In the same way as a lot of people who have left their home countries, the main character Salie feels that she has obtained freedom in the new country, but at a very high cost. The price to pay is often loneliness and exclusion. Diome describes all these difficulties in a nuanced and empathetic way. (Lyrans Noblesser 2010)

It should be noted that the feelings of exclusion and living between cultures are not interpreted as entirely negative experiences by all reviewers. Some of them point to how such a position may allow the individual to discover new and interesting details. Nina Fries (2012), for example, recalls the author’s ‘position between two worlds’, which allows her to successfully observe events from a privileged perspective. This way of looking at migration is very much akin to the notion of ‘freedom in exile’ associated with many postcolonial authors, for instance Katherine Mansfield, V.S. Naipaul and Ngugi wa Thiong’o (see Nyman 2017: 20). The other pull factor mentioned in Swedish reviews is the one that the heroine herself highlights in the novel, namely the untrue stories portraying France as ‘Paradise on Earth’ that abound in the former colony but have no bearing on reality. For instance, Boktoka (2010) recalls ‘the unrealistic dreams and fantasies that the West creates in poor countries, dreams that are shattered by racism in the West and by the way it treats African immigrants’, while Thorburn (2011) focuses on something of a dilemma for many migrants: ‘[t]hose who have been reasonably lucky do not dare relate any story that is not a success story in order not to be regarded as traitors to the faith in Europe as the land of happiness’. Several reviewers note that the myth of France as a kind of El Dorado puts a great deal of pressure on the migrants who have been fortunate enough to enter the Promised Land. This, in turn, creates feelings of inadequacy: People in the home country often think that the emigrant lives in the lap of luxury, and they expect to receive a share of the imagined riches. . . . The demands from others and from the individual him-/herself are often unreasonable. (Lyrans Noblesser 2010) The obligation to help out is a heavy burden for Salie, and she often feels that the demands on those who have emigrated are hard to live up to. (Johansson 2012)

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Some reviewers also focus on the push factors that incite Salie and the other characters in the novel to emigrate. The most frequently discussed factor is lack of freedom for women, which is a problem caused by traditionalist and patriarchal structures in the local community. Lager (2013) writes: ‘It is a political book that discusses many important social issues such as . . . a strong culture that favours polygamy and having lots of babies’. In fact, very few reviewers (only three out of fourteen) put Diome’s novel within a surrounding literary context. Not surprisingly, the few commentators who do contextualize Diome’s work choose to inscribe her in the tradition of Francophone or African literature (or both): In their literary works, many African Francophone authors in the diaspora deal with migration and experiences of exile in the new home country France. Fatou Diome, born in Senegal, whose first novel ‘The Belly of the Atlantic’ has now been published in Swedish, belongs to this category of writer. (Jarlsbo 2010) She has an expressive metaphorical language that I recognize from other African authors (think Alain Mabanckou). It is clear and distinct, and often surprising for a Western reader. (Johansson 2012)

One of the excerpts above (Jarlsbo 2010) is quoted from a review published in the well-known national newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, and the other one (Johansson 2012) comes from the blogosphere. There is one more reviewer who inscribes Diome in a literary context. The blogger Lyran (2014) presents a list of ten novels that, in her opinion, deal with the theme of ‘living in exile and returning home’. The list is interesting because it gives a frame of reference for Diome’s work, and the fact that Le ventre de l’Atlantique is incorporated into this particular group provides the readers of the blog with a specific literary context for the novel. Besides Fatou Diome, the list includes three other Francophone authors: Marie NDiaye, Kim Thúy and Léonora Miano, as well as six Anglophone writers: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Taiye Selasi, Julie Otsuka, Chinua Achebe and Leila Aboulela. We can note that many authors on the list have links to Africa; exceptions are Thúy, Lahiri and Otsuka. Moreover, the vast majority are women, the only exception being Achebe. The blog post written by Lyran has attracted comments written by seven people, which is a relatively decent number compared to the usual mediocre amount of interaction in the universe of book blogs (see, for instance, Söderlund 2012: 197; Aronsson 2012: 77–79; 2016: 17–18). In the subsequent exchange between Lyran and the commenters, two other authors are mentioned in the context of the ten presented by the blogger. Lotta (2014) proposes Marjaneh Bakhtiari and Linda (2014) mentions Arkan Asaad. Both are Swedish writers who, according to the commenters, also deal with the subject matter of ‘living in exile and returning home’.

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The general assessment of the Swedish translation of Le ventre de l’Atlantique is positive. In her review published in Norrköpings Tidningar, Nilsson (2010) finds the novel interesting, and she specifically highlights the juxtaposition of Diome’s powerful style and the novel’s more lyrical parts. The bloggers are generally enthusiastic as well: Boktoka (2010) finds it essential to read and Lager (2013) is impressed by the author’s ability to weave separate stories into a coherent whole. Svensson (2014) declares that she loves the poetic language of the text, as well as its subject matter. However, there are also critical voices to be heard. Jonna Fries (2010) finds parts of the novel ‘grossly polished in black and white’, and Jarlsbo (2010) regrets that the text’s literary qualities are sometimes ‘overshadowed by the frequent and over-explicit sociopolitical references’. Nina Fries (2012) deems the narration ‘prodigiously good’, but at the same time she feels that it sometimes ‘turns into clichés’, which ‘irritates’ the reviewer. The most detailed and developed critical assessment is provided by Maria Hamberg (2010) in the regional newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad. She declares: The problem is just that I do not find the novel good enough. There are too many times when Diome addresses the reader directly, she does not trust the reader’s power of insight but explains a little too much a little too often. . . . Here you have everything you could ask for in a novel, but it feels like Fatou Diome has become victim of some kind of exoticism. Instead of providing the author with a good editor who could have straightened up the novel, the publisher has identified an opportunity to make a lot of money from the work of a ‘young, black, female immigrant’. (Hamberg 2010)

To summarize, some reviewers are positive while other critics find the novel too didactic. The latter group maintains that the text tells the reader exactly what the author believes is right and wrong, with her message coming across as a little too obvious. In other words, the novel is perceived by some reviewers as a somewhat clichéd roman à thèse. As we have seen, however, this is far from a unanimous opinion that all critics embrace.

Final Remarks: The Migration of Literary Criticism In the novel Le ventre de l’Atlantique, Fatou Diome (2003) presents an interesting perspective on migration – that of an African migrant who experiences how difficult it can be to be accepted and to integrate into a European society, while also feeling a heavy burden of more or less unrealistic expectations from people in her home country. Both voice and gaze in the text belong to a Black female migrant – the narrator Salie – who freely criticizes the false representations of France as a land of milk and honey that dominate in rural Senegal, at the same time as she de-

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nounces the patriarchal and oppressive structures reigning in her home community. Thus, it is a novel in which a representative of a group often referred to as the marginalized ‘Other’ steps into the spotlight and assumes the role of the speaking subject. This chapter has also examined the reception of the novel in Sweden. This reception is hardly extensive when compared to that of other Francophone literary works: only fourteen reviews have been found, seven deriving from the traditional or online press and seven from the blogosphere. The fact that there are as many bloggers writing about the novel as there are press reviews is unsurprising. Today, literary criticism is migrating into the blogosphere, and the established literary critics affiliated to the traditional press no longer monopolize the reception of literature (see, for instance, Steiner 2009: 179–82, 2012: 51; Boot et al. 2012: 1). The boom of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) in the last decade of the twentieth century and the subsequent rise of the blogosphere as a social phenomenon have changed the situation drastically. These phenomena have democratized literary reception inasmuch as they have given ‘ordinary readers’ and booklovers – that is, individuals who do not occupy established positions in the field of cultural production – the opportunity to review and discuss literary works. Bloggers have become key agents in the literary market, and it will in the future become increasingly important for publishing houses to attract the attention of these non-established critics who publish their reviews in the blogosphere – just as it has always been important to get noticed by the established literary critics writing in traditional media outlets. Some publishers have already become aware of the bloggers’ crucial role as influencers (that is, people who have influence over potential buyers), so they are obviously eager to establish and maintain good relationships with these individuals. Among the comments on Lyran’s (2014) review of Atlantens mage, for example, one can find the following attempt by a person working in public relations at Natur & Kultur (a major Swedish publishing house) to cajole the blogger into paying attention to their publications: Hello! Please send me an e-mail so I can give you Marie NDiaye’s forthcoming novel Ladivine at a later date. Looking forward to hearing what you think about it. Sincerely, Helena at Natur & Kultur. (Eitrem 2014)

The comment illustrates the editors’ eagerness to create a buzz for upcoming titles, not only in the traditional press, but also in the blogosphere. This is, as I have suggested above, a natural part of the modern marketing logic that will almost certainly increase in importance in the future, in symbiosis with the rise of e-commerce. If I am right in this assumption, we will probably see more examples of overt and disguised marketing actions directed towards bloggers in the years to come.

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Migrant literature is a well-established part of the literary field today, and the academic body of work focusing on the genre is ever expanding. Fatou Diome is one of many authors who have touched upon the chronotope of migration in a Francophone context, and she is in good company. In the early twenty-first century, writers such as Marie NDiaye, Léonora Miano and Alain Mabanckou, to name but a few, have attracted a great deal of attention from scholars, critics and readers alike. It remains to be seen, however, whether the increasing influx of refugees during and since the so-called ‘European migrant crisis’ (see Lendaro 2016) of 2015 will have an enduring effect on the production of Francophone migrant literature, and, if so, what kind of influence it will have. Mattias Aronsson (PhD) is Associate Professor in French at Dalarna University, Sweden, where he teaches French and didactics. His main research areas are contemporary French literature (of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries) and the didactics of literature, and he has published articles and book chapters focused on reader response, gender and postcolonial and translation studies. Recent articles include works on the French authors Marguerite Duras and Faïza Guène, as well as the use of fanfiction and song lyrics in the teaching of French as a foreign language.

Notes 1. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic studies of literature harks back to the influential work of René Wellek and Austin Warren (Theory of Literature, 1942). 2. See, for instance, the works of Leiva Wenger (2001), Boyacioglu (2003), Hassen Khemiri (2003) and Bakhtiari (2005), which were all much discussed in the Swedish press in the early twenty-first century. 3. For the reader’s convenience, quotations throughout this chapter are from the English translation, The Belly of the Atlantic (2006). 4. These names are then complemented by the names of other authors that reveal the schoolteacher’s (and the narrator’s) penchant for communist, feminist and postcolonial theories, as well as for world literature: Karl Marx, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Yourcenar and Mariama Bâ (Diome 2006: 41). 5. At the same time, the expression ‘ambiguous adventure’ (French original: aventure ambiguë) is a nod to a classic Francophone novel by the same title, written by the Senegalese author Cheikh Hamidou Kane and published in 1961. 6. The term ‘border-crosser’ is used in the tradition of the field of study known as border aesthetics, as presented by Schimanski and Wolfe (2017: 153). The expression is useful for our purposes since it includes not only the displacements of human migrants but also those of artistic forms. 7. The fact is acknowledged in the paratext of the novel: ‘I would like to thank le Centre national du Livre for its help and support’ (Diome 2006: n.p.).

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8. The paratext of the Swedish translation (Atlantens mage, 2010) informs the reader that the translation rights to the novel belong to a literary agency by the name of Wandel Cruse. The agency is naturally – according to Casanova’s theory – based in Paris. 9. For other examples of studies focusing on the chronotope of migration, see McBrideLimaye (1995) and Dick (2010). 10. Just as in the English translation, the original French expression ‘un nègre à Paris’ illustrates the hostility and racism that this fictional character encountered in the French capital. However, it also alludes to Bernard Binlin Dadié’s Francophone novel by the same title, published in 1959. The allusion is lost in translation, since the English title of the novel is An African in Paris (1994). 11. See also Nyman (2017: 11), who, with reference to Farrier (2013: 4), stresses the importance of distinguishing between voluntary exiles and asylum seekers, as there are many factors that separate the two categories of migrants. 12. See Lindberg (2016: 70), who found forty-three reviews for Beyala, forty-one for NDiaye and forty for Mabanckou in the Swedish press, compared to only five for Diome. 13. The sources are as follows: National press: Svenska Dagbladet (Jarlsbo 2010). Regional press: Smålandsposten (J. Fries 2010), Helsingborgs Dagblad (Hamberg 2010) and Norrköpings Tidningar (Nilsson 2010). Online publications: Feministiskt perspektiv (Elfving 2011), Dagens bok (Thorburn 2011) and Litteraturmagazinet (N. Fries 2012). Literary blogs: Boktoka (2010), Lyrans noblesser (2010), Boktokig (Boström 2011), Och dagarna går. . . (Johansson 2012), Feministbiblioteket (Lager 2013), Afrope (Svensson 2014) and Kulturkollo (Lyran 2014). 14. For the reader’s convenience, the original Swedish quotation has been translated by the author of this chapter. The same principle has been applied throughout the readerresponse section of the study. All reviews derive from websites without pagination.

References Aronsson, M. 2012. ‘La réception sur Internet de Kiffe kiffe demain de Faïza Guène’, in E. Ahlstedt et al. (eds), Actes du XVIIIe congrès des romanistes scandinaves/Actas del XVIII congreso de romanistas escandinavos. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, pp. 63–80. ———. 2016. ‘La réception de Marguerite Duras en Suède: La critique professionnelle et non-professionnelle’, Moderna språk 110(2): 1–24. ———. 2018. ‘La réception de Faïza Guène en Suède – la banlieue française en traduction’, TTR (traduction, terminologie, rédaction). Traduire la banlieue: Problématiques, enjeux, perspectives 31(1): 97–125. Bakhtiari, M. 2005. Kalla det vad fan du vill. Stockholm: Ordfront. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, pp. 84–258. Bhabha, H.K. [1994] 2004. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Boktoka. 2010. ‘Atlantens mage av Fatou Diome’, Boktoka, 16 September. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from https://boktoka.se/?p=2261. Boot, P., L. Aroyo, G. Schreiber, and M. van Erp. 2012. ‘The Changing Face of the Book Review’, WebSci 2012: 1–6.

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Borkert, M. 2018. ‘Moving Out of the Comfort Zone: Promises and Pitfalls of Interdisciplinary Migration Research in Europe’, in R. Zapata-Barrero and E. Yalaz (eds), Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies. Cham: Springer, pp. 57–74. Boström, E. 2011. ‘Atlantens mage av Fatou Diome’, boktokig, 27 April. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://boktokig.blogspot.se/2011/04/atlantens-mage-av-fatou-diome.html. Boyacioglu, D. 2003. Istället för hiphop. Stockholm: Tiden. Casanova, P. 2004. The World Republic of Letters, trans. M.B. DeBevoise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dick, H.P. 2010. ‘Imagined Lives and Modernist Chronotopes in Mexican Nonmigrant Discourse’, American Ethnologist 37(2): 275–90. Diome, F. 2003. Le ventre de l’Atlantique. Paris: Editions Anne Carrière. ———. 2006. The Belly of the Atlantic, trans. L. Norman and R. Schwartz. London: Serpent’s Tail. ———. 2010. Atlantens mage, trans. L. Riad. Helsingborg and Stockholm: Sekwa. Eitrem, H. 2014. Untitled comment on ‘Att leva i exil – och att komma hem’, Kulturkollo: Ett bloggkollektiv med läsglädje, 27 August. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://www .kulturkollo.se/2014/08/27/att-leva-i-exil-och-att-komma-hem/. Elfving, K. 2011. ‘Frispråkig författare vägrar vara till lags’, Feministiskt perspektiv, 21 January. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from https://feministisktperspektiv.se/2011/01/21/fris prakig-forfattare-vagrar-vara-till-lags/. Fanon, F. 1967a. Black Skin, White Masks, trans. C.L. Markmann. New York: Grove Press. ———. 1967b. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. C. Farrington. London: Penguin. Farrier, D. 2013. Postcolonial Asylum: Seeking Sanctuary behind the Law. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Fries, J. 2010. ‘Fatou Diome: Atlantens mage’, Smålandsposten, 21 September. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://www.smp.se/bocker/fatou-diome-atlantens-mage/. Fries, N. 2012. ‘Hur många drömmar ryms i en fotboll?’, Litteraturmagazinet, 25 January. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://www.litteraturmagazinet.se/fatou-diome/atlantensmage/recension/hur-manga-drommar. Hamberg, M. 2010. ‘Exilens dilemma’, Helsingborgs Dagblad, 2 December. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from https://www.hd.se/2010-12-02/exilens-dilemma. Hassen Khemiri, J. 2003. Ett öga rött. Stockholm: Norstedt. Jarlsbo, J. 2010. ‘Välkryddad exilberättelse’, Svenska Dagbladet, 9 October. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from Mediearkivet. Johansson, A. 2012. ‘atlantens mage – slukar dig hel!’, Och dagarna går. . . , 13 February. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://joanna-ochdagarnagar.blogspot.se/2012/02/atla ntens-mage-slukar-dig-hel/. Kuvik, A. 2012. ‘Skilled Migration in Europe and Beyond: Recent Developments and Theoretical Considerations’, in M. Martiniello and J. Rath (eds), An Introduction to International Migration Studies: European Perspectives. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 211–36. Lager, H. 2013. ‘Diome, Fatou; Atlantens mage; 2003’, Feministbiblioteket, 8 August. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://feministbiblioteket.se/diome-fatou-atlantens-mage-2003/. Leiva Wenger, A. 2001. Till vår ära. Stockholm: Bonnier. Lendaro, A. 2016. ‘A European “Migrant Crisis”? Some Thoughts on Mediterranean Borders’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 16(1): 148–57. Linda. 2014. Untitled comment on ‘Att leva i exil – och att komma hem’, Kulturkollo: Ett bloggkollektiv med läsglädje, 27 August. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://www .kulturkollo.se/2014/08/27/att-leva-i-exil-och-att-komma-hem/.

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Lindberg, Y. 2015. ‘Le regard suédois sur les femmes de la Francophonie’, in M. Cedergren and S. Briens (eds), Médiations interculturelles entre la France et la Suède: Trajectoires et circulations de 1945 à nos jours. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, pp. 44–55. ———. 2016. ‘La Littérature francophone de l’Afrique subsaharienne en Suède: Les femmes font place à la honte’, Parallèles 28(1): 64–82. Lotta. 2014. Untitled comment on ‘Att leva i exil – och att komma hem’, Kulturkollo: Ett bloggkollektiv med läsglädje, 27 August. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://www.kul turkollo.se/2014/08/27/att-leva-i-exil-och-att-komma-hem/. Lyran. 2014. ‘Att leva i exil – och att komma hem’, Kulturkollo: Ett bloggkollektiv med läsglädje, 27 August. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://www.kulturkollo.se/2014/08/27/ att-leva-i-exil-och-att-komma-hem/. Lyrans Noblesser. 2010. ‘Atlantens mage’, Lyrans Noblesser, 18 November. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://www.lyransnoblesser.se/2010/11/atlantens-mage.html. McBride-Limaye, A. 1995. ‘Dialogical Horizons: Latino Voices and U.S. Audiences: E Pluribus Plures’, Comparative Civilizations Review 32(1): 46–85. Nilsson, C. 2010. ‘Alltid en främling, alltid med hemlängtan’, Norrköpings Tidningar, 14 October. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from Mediearkivet. Nyman, J. 2017. Displacement, Memory, and Travel in Contemporary Migrant Writing. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV. Rosello, M., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Introduction’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–24. Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon. Sana, M., and B. Conway. 2013. ‘Surveys and Ethnosurveys’, in S.J. Gold and S.J. Nawyn (eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 484–93. Schimanski, J., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Intersections: A Conclusion in the Form of a Glossary’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 147–69. Söderlund, P. 2012. ‘Med livet som insats: Om bokprat på internet’, in U. Carlsson and J. Johannisson (eds), Läsarnas marknad, marknadens läsare: En forskningsantologi. Stockholm: Fritzes kundtjänst, pp. 193–206. Steiner, A. 2009. ‘Amatörkritik på internet’, in T. Forslid and A. Ohlsson (eds), Litteraturens offentligheter. Lund: Studentlitteratur, pp. 177–90. ———. 2012. ‘Digital litteraturkritik’, in C. Lenemark (ed.), Litteraturens nätverk: Berättande på internet. Lund: Studentlitteratur, pp. 51–63. Svensson, H. 2014. ‘Atlantens mage – missa inte denna pärla’, Afrope, 20 September. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from https://afrope.se/tag/atlantens-mage/. Thorburn, A. 2011. ‘Drömmen om Frankrike’, Dagens bok, 11 March. Retrieved 13 March 2018 from http://dagensbok.com/2011/03/11/fatou-diome-atlantens-mage/. Wellek, R., and A. Warren. [1942] 1956. Theory of Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

Chapter 4

CAN MIGRATION NARRATIVES CHANGE PUBLIC CONCEPTIONS OF BORDERS? The Somali-Norwegian Borderscape in Roda Ahmed’s Forberedelsen and Its Medial Reception

F Johan Schimanski

The title of Roda Ahmed’s (2008) novel about a young woman growing up in a Somali family in Norway and Britain, Forberedelsen, means ‘the preparation’. The novel deals with preparation for life, a coming-of-age, but also preparation for marriage – in this case, an arranged marriage that never takes place. In the novel’s cover image (see Figure 4.1), we see a woman striding forth, but at the same time turning around, caught in a double movement. She could also be running away but turning to look back at her past. The forward direction of her legs and the backward direction of her torso and head – along with the top of her dress and the author’s name and title – divides her body in half at the point of turning, creating a bodily bordering that could be read as signifying hybrid identity. The fonts of the author’s name and of the title point also to a hybridity of genre, with the modern Dymo tape font of the author’s name suggesting gritty realism and the old-fashioned roundhand of the title a romantic story. Images, colours and fonts can help market a book by suggesting to readers what kind of book it is, and whether it will fit their tastes and identities (cf. Phillips 2007). The use of two contrasting fonts suggests a book bridging different aesthetics, paralleling the mixture of romantic orientalism and uneasy violence that Pamela Pears (2007) traces in images of women on covers of novels by first- and second-generation Algerian migrant women in France. Readers can also see the image on the cover as a representation of the novel’s storyworld, in which case the use of a human

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figure can create empathy (cf. Santos and Ferreira 2019: 206) and identification, strengthened here by the alignment of the woman’s and the readers’ gazes. The focus on an individual and the emotion associated with running away and looking back makes this an image that ‘demands’ rather than just being ‘offered’ to the viewer, even if the face is not visible and the photograph is not a close-range shot (see Chapter 6 in this volume). The book cover is also a material and medial border that the reader has to cross when entering the book (Schimanski 2006: 53– 54). If we see reading as a spatial act, the cover of Forberedelsen can be read as an allegory of a double movement involved in reading: the woman appears to be moving out of the book to join the reader, but FIGURE 4.1. The cover of Roda Ahmed’s also turning to look in the same di(2009) novel Forberedelsen, in the second, rection as the reader who wants to paperback edition. Design: Trond Fasting Egeland. enter the book. The fonts also cross Photo: © Getty Images, used with permission of the the medial border in two opposing publishers, Gyldendal. directions, with the handwritten title suggesting the point of an ink pen pressing ‘into’ the book, while the Dymo font of the author name appears to press ‘outwards’ (unusual in writing). The Dymo font suggests pressure on the extra layer or border of the tape, jutting into the sphere of the reader with a certain violence. Like many border-crossers, readers crossing into the book may project their romantic desires into the other, and the roundhand may lull them into believing that their sense of self and identity will remain unchanged as they do so. At the same time, the Dymo font warns them that the book might change them in a ‘performative encounter’ (Rosello 2005). If we are familiar with Walter Benjamin (1969: 257–58), we can imagine, behind the woman, the ‘wreckage’ or ‘debris’ of history, in his image of an angel moving relentlessly forward into the future but forced to look back at the traumatic injustices of the past. Unlike Benjamin’s angel, however, the woman on the novel’s cover is twisted at the waist. It is as if she is subject to what Louis Althusser (1971: 163) called the ‘interpellation’ forming one’s identity as a sub-

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ject, through a recognition of self as embedded in social hierarchy. Interpellation involves a turning movement; Althusser (ibid.) imagines the process as a scene on a street in which we turn after a policeman calls out to us. For many readers, the woman on the cover will interpellate her own identity as a migrant. The cover of the paperback edition (Ahmed 2009) suggests that she is specifically a second-generation migrant, as it features a quote from a review including the words ‘Norwegian-Somalian family’.1 The woman’s clothing and hair, however, challenge stereotypical perceptions of Muslim women, pointing to an agency and resistance to cultural traditions and an alignment with dominant norms within Norwegian society. Book covers are part of the ‘distribution of the sensible’ (cf. Rancière 2004) in modern society, helping regulate personal experience and impressions as they cross the border from the private spheres of the author (and those they wish to represent) into the public sphere. Covers are paratexts that are not under the complete control of the author (Genette 1997: 23); while publishers and marketing departments may take heed of authorial wishes, they will usually have the final say, in many cases deciding on covers without consulting authors. The agency involved in making book covers in a commercial or semi-commercial market (in Norway, publishers are subsidized by the state through library purchases) is complicated and spread over several individuals and institutions, involving not only authors and publishers, but also graphic designers and artists (cf. Andersen 2012: 254) – in the case of Forberedelsen, the designer Trond Fasting Egeland and an unknown photographer (the photo is credited to the stock image company Getty Images). Publishers make choices based on experience, intuition and sometimes research on readers. Because the cover as a discursive act involves giving a subject position to an ‘ideal reader’, buyers and readers also have a form of delegated agency in the process (Badaracco 2001: 40). The cover can thus be said to be a preliminary form of reception. It is in many cases an interpretation of the text, and of a contemporary ‘horizon of expectation’ (cf. Jauss 1982) about literature in the public sphere, taking an intermediate, negotiating position between expectations and any break the book might make with them (ibid.: 25). The cover can influence the impact of the book by affecting bookshop sales and library loans, and also readers’ interpretations of the book, also in advance (Andersen 2012: 252), even conveying ideas and values to people not reading the book. Readers usually see the cover before they begin reading: Gérard Genette (1997: 27) writes that it can be ‘the first manifestation of the book offered to the reader’s perception’. Readers can refer back to it while reading and retain an iconic memory of the cover afterwards. These processes apply both to individual and to collective readers; covers can also influence the critical reception of a book (Andersen 2012: 254). This chapter investigates the role of literary reception in the impact of migration literature within the public sphere, focusing on how that reception is

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expressed through some of a novel’s paratexts – as we have seen, the cover, but in the following, primarily the media commentary on the book in the form of reviews. In new editions, such as the paperback edition of Forberedelsen, quotes from reviews can feature on the cover, emphasizing the connection between reviews and covers, a connection also highlighted by the practice of reproducing the book’s cover in reviews. Like covers, reviews can function as the first medial border that the reader crosses before entering the book. Some reviews help readers cross the border into the book, while others warn readers away, hindering their potential border crossings. I use Ahmed’s Forberedelsen (2008) as a case study, limiting my methodological and empirical reach to hermeneutic interpretation and discourse analysis of published material. Another line of enquiry would focus on internet forums, blogs and other websites, with Mattias Aronsson’s work (2012) on the reception of Faïza Guène’s migration novel Kiffe kiffe demain (2004) serving as a precedent; see also his contribution to this volume on the reception of the Swedish translation of Fatou Diome’s Le ventre de l’Atlantique (2003). Any answers produced as I examine the textual trails that books leave behind them that do not involve me engaging in interviews or questionnaires involving actual readers will have certain limitations, perhaps privileging the non-migrant voices of the Norwegian literary system before diasporic voices. Contributions on Norwegian migration literature coming out of literary ethnography – such as work by Cicilie Fagerlid (2020) on author events at libraries, or by Michelle A. Tisdel (2020: 127) on life narratives as ‘biographical objects’ – help foreground the experiences of normal (including diasporic) readers and complement my historical and textual approach, as would approaches using reader groups on the model of the Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds project (2016) at the University of Oxford.

Photographs as Border Figures Forberedelsen also contains other photographs – photographs that we cannot see, but which are described as Zara, the main character, looks through a collection of pictures dating back to 1920 while visiting her grandmother Ayeeyo in the Somalian diaspora in London (see also Schimanski 2019: 44–46). These photographs constitute a repeated motif in the book, appearing first as we readers cross into the text at the beginning of the novel (Ahmed 2008: 9–11), directly after a short introductory fable, and then as we cross out of it, at the very end of the novel (ibid.: 164–66). A narrative causality connecting these to the final geographical border crossing of the book confirms a tendency of border crossings to invoke a reflective perspective on the self (Schimanski 2006: 47–48); their positioning at the outer borders of the book also introduces an external perspective on the narrative as a whole.

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The photographs remind Zara of an idyllic past in Somalia that she, born in Norway, has never experienced, but also of her grandmother’s greatest mistake in life, choosing not to marry for love, but according to her family’s wishes. They stand in contrast to another set of photographs collected in an album presenting Zara’s suitors or potential marriage partners, preparing for a temporal border (marriage) that Zara chooses not to cross. Ayeeyo’s photographs function as umbilical border objects, to use Debra Castillo’s term (2007: 124) for an object that connects a migrant with a real or imaginary homeland. The photographs cross the borders both between Europe and Africa and between the present and the past. They cause Zara to escape from London to Paris, crossing the border in a Eurostar train. They are also aesthetic objects. Zara looking through them may remind us that we are reading a book – also an aesthetic object – as does their position in passages framing the book’s retrospective narrative. The message to readers is that they should see the book as a border object connecting us with Zara and the complexity of the European-Somali borderscape. Forberedelsen is one of a number of migrant narratives published in Norwegian in the last two decades by second-generation or ‘generation 1.5’ migrants (Kongslien 2007: 211). Ahmed is an example of the latter, born in Somalia, moving with her parents to Norway as a child and growing up with access to Norwegian literary culture. In this corpus, texts tend towards both documentary and fiction, including testimonials, novels, fictionalized autobiographies and so on. The type of first migration also varies, including work migrants (primarily from Pakistan and India) and refugees (e.g. from Somalia). As I write, Somalis make up the third largest group of immigrants (counting also the children of immigrants) in Norway, after Poles and Lithuanians; when Forberedelsen was published in 2008, they were fifth on the list (Statistisk Sentralbyrå/Statistics Norway 2019). Somali immigrants are considered ‘problematic’ from the point of view of the mainstream, being seen as difficult to integrate (Fangen 2008: 14–15; Engebrigtsen and Fuglerud 2009: 11). However, the corpus of migration narratives published in Norwegian involves both privileged and underprivileged migrants. Roda Ahmed and her character Zara belong to the former category, with their educated parents moving to Norway in their professional capacities. This phase in migrant writing in Norway emphasizes both symbolic borders within migrant communities and the crossings of national boundaries, contrasting with earlier stories of urban borders and racism. New forms of mobility – cheap plane travel and smartphones – create the possibility of external border crossings, both medial and physical, including visits to the country of origin and also, as is the case in Forberedelsen, cross-diaspora visits. The main narrative opponents are not racist Norwegians, but parents and family structures, with the protagonists caught in conflicts concerning modernity and gender. The corpus contains an extensive repertoire of ‘border figures’ (Schimanski 2006: 58–60), that is, textual figurations including images and metaphors, along with narrative

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configurations of time and space. Zara’s grandmother’s photographs, as umbilical objects, are one such figure of the border between Europe and Africa, privileging external border crossings rather than internal urban ones. Research on migration narratives is constantly being overtaken by events. How can one, for example, relate border concepts in a published narrative by a privileged generation-1.5 immigrant to Northern Europe, published seven years before the ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015, to the dangerous and often fatal journeys across the Mediterranean by migrants fleeing hardship and violence? A tentative answer would be that the news media and policymakers must also focus on the longue durée if the social problems and conflicts often associated with migration are to be avoided. They must face not only questions of border control and human security, but also questions of the last leg of the border-crossing journey: integration. They must take into account the complexity of the border assemblage as a borderscape stretching across not only space, but also time. They must listen to generation-1.5 migrants, who are close to the experience of migration, but also have access to European public spheres, through integration, schooling and literature.

A Public Social Imaginary Literature and published narratives function in this context as part of a public social imaginary that is important to political and democratic processes. Published narratives cross the border from the private to the public sphere, or between ‘life history and history’ (Tisdel 2020: 126). They can ‘represent an individual’s intervention in a particular public discourse’ (ibid.: 130). Within the public sphere, literature overlaps with other public discourses at the same time as it describes private experiences. This is especially so in Norway, with its developed culture of public debate, which includes literature as an important component (Gripsrud 2017). Migrant literature has had a material impact on bordering practices in Norway. For example, the publication of Maria Amelie’s bestselling testimonial Ulovlig norsk (2010, ‘Illegally Norwegian’) made her visible as a so-called ‘paperless’ migrant, leading to her deportation, a media spectacle and a change in immigration law (Amelie 2014; Schimanski 2017/2018). Mapping the reception and impact of migration literature means asking how the public sphere is structured. What is it that migration literature has an impact on? The public sphere as a space in which to articulate opinions about society is a much-debated and historically evolving concept predicated on equally complicated terms, such as ‘public’, ‘publicity’, ‘public opinion’, ‘society’, ‘state’, ‘privacy’ and ‘intimacy’. Its initial theorists, Hannah Arendt (1998) and Jürgen Habermas (1991), made clear their doubts as to whether we have functioning public spheres that are able to engage critically with the state and the marketplace at all.

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Here I use the concept as a way of discussing how migration literature, through the act of ‘public(-)ation’, may help private and intimate experiences cross epistemic borders into overlapping national, transnational, hegemonic and counterhegemonic public spheres. How these border crossings address democratic politics is difficult to show; while one might hypothesize that migration literature may help shape public perceptions and imaginaries, the impact of Forberedelsen is limited to specific publics within Norway, and also by the constraints of the market and established discourses. Both Arendt and Habermas privilege literature as an integral element in a well-functioning public sphere. For Arendt (1998: 50), ‘storytelling’ is a way of transforming ‘shadowy’ intimate experiences into a ‘deprivatized and deindividualized’ form ‘to fit them for public appearance’. However, any form of communication that contributes to making voices heard and intimate experiences visible is dependent on its relative freedom from the mechanisms of the market and the inertia of doxa. Public migrant narratives are thus not just repositories of descriptions or of border figures, but also actively perform these borders through the act of publication and crossing into the public sphere. To approach such narratives in Norwegian is also to become aware that for a select number of migrants undertaking the extended border crossing that is migration, one step on their way is the step into literature. To cross the border into writing becomes part of crossing the border into Norway. In Ahmed’s Forberedelsen, this is signalled subtly, through the photograph motif and through references to traditional Somali storytelling. Further questions of impact and reception remain, if we are to follow the book’s journey into the public sphere, and often back into the private experiences of readers. In Norway, Ahmed’s Forberedelsen was the second most read debut novel of 2008 (Dagbladet 2009: 44). Here, I will examine its public reception by comparing border concepts in the novel to border concepts in mass media book reviews. Does this mediatization of the novel reduce the complexity of the novel’s borderscape? To what degree do not just the text of the book, but also the act of its publication affect which border concepts are present in its reception? Examining the textual function of book covers, Tore Ryan Andersen (2012: 261) writes that ‘the blurb even constitutes a veritable miniature poetics, which in condensed form expresses the blurbist’s ideas about the function of literature’. This applies not only to blurbs, such as the quote from Ingrid Brekke’s (2008) review on the cover of the paperback edition of Forberedelsen, but also to both the cover itself and Brekke’s original review. All of these implicate horizons of expectation about the purpose of literature, and in this case the purpose of migration literature. The quote claims that the book gives ‘an exciting glimpse into the life of a Norwegian-Somali family’ and that the author is ‘a clear literary talent’.2 The implication is that literature can allow access into the lives of specific migrant communities that ‘we’ (an implicit subject position) might otherwise know little about, and also that good literature is the product of talent. The blurb has been

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chosen because the publishers expect readers to recognize in it their own poetics and conceptions of literature. To examine the newspaper reviews of a migration novel is, ultimately, to ask what Norwegian readers want when they read such a novel. My hypothetical model involves four main motivations. Beside wishing for (1) an aesthetic experience – perhaps to be provided by ‘the great immigrant novel’ in Norwegian, in emulation of well-known English-language examples – readers have (2) a need for information and insight into immigrant life, which they hope that novels might provide, and they want (3) to keep up with public debates, for example on illegalized migration, arranged marriages, face coverings, honour killings, terrorism, everyday racism, detention centres, people smugglers, human rights, boat deaths and similar topics. Finally, in some cases where both readers with traditional Norwegian and migrant backgrounds are concerned, they look to such literature as (4) a source of identification that can be used for the negotiation of identities (cf. my analysis of the cover above) and forms of self-bibliotherapy. These four motivations form a horizon of expectation for migration narratives. A fifth motivation common where literature is concerned – entertainment – is less relevant to migration literature, though could become more so were we to examine crime fiction or romance novels featuring migration. Inspired by studies of the media reception of borderscapes (e.g. Brednikova and Nikiforova 2019), my reading investigates various representations or performances in the media, isolates border figures involving perceptions, emotions or embodied experiences, uses discourse analysis to connect these to conceptual change and explores policy implications. Where the latter are concerned, I suggest that cultural policy can potentially help make complexity sensible and denaturalize reductive imagery by taking the aesthetic into account, connecting outer and inner borders, and creating an opening for resistance to deterritorialized forms of control. What we might call ‘bottom-up policy’ must focus on sustainable everyday processes over time and not only on spectacular events; it must provide accounts of the migration borderscape that are neither sensationalist (see Mazzara 2019) or reductive.

Borders in the Novel Forberedelsen mixes genres and crosses genre borders. The novel has autobiographical aspects, uneasily combining teenage romance with the postcolonial, magical realist style typical of many well-received English-language migration novels. In the novel, a partially fragmented narrative moves back and forth in time, embedded with short fables, powerful metaphors and symbolism. The photograph motif also contributes to a postmodern feeling of media materiality common in contemporary migration novels.

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The book presents a coming-of-age narrative as Zara crosses the temporal border separating childhood from adulthood. In the process, the protagonist crosses epistemological borders, as is normal in such narratives (Schimanski 2006: 56). Zara, who has primarily lived within a Norwegian lifeworld, discovers that she is caught between Somali and Norwegian cultures. When she falls in love with a Norwegian man, she must hide this part of her Norwegian life from her family, creating her own epistemological barrier. As the fable that introduces the book suggests, the novel also presents a narrative of liberation. Zara is held captive by traditional rules after travelling to visit relatives in the Somali diaspora in London, but the novel ends with her transgressive escape from an arranged marriage on the Eurostar to Paris. Marit Ann Barkve (2018: 167–69) argues that Forberedelsen – like many of the diasporic Norwegian fictions in her corpus – follows the plot of Henrik Ibsen’s Et Dukkehjem (1879, A Doll’s House). The centrality of the final motif of border crossing in Forberedelsen is underlined by the similarity with Ibsen’s play, which also ends with a topographical border crossing out of the family, as Nora exits a patriarchal situation by crossing the threshold of the home through the doors of the house, leaving for the world outside. While the fictional Zara, born in Norway in 1981, comes from a privileged background, the novel describes the change and alienation that comes with puberty, including familial control over sexual reproduction. Zara’s cross-diasporic journey to London leads her into a ‘third space’, and a contradictory, liminal temporality in which tradition is mixed with modernity. Her grandmother Ayeeyo’s photographs bring her into contact with a modernity that is paradoxically situated in the past. Looking at them, she crosses the epistemological borders formed by the traumatic secret of Ayeeyo’s arranged marriage, hidden behind Ayeeyo’s traditional role in bringing Zara into exactly such a marriage. The Eurostar train and its topographical border crossing signifies a modern and cosmopolitan break with tradition and diaspora. I will not attempt to cover the whole variety of border figures present in Ahmed’s novel, but refer here to a dominant repertoire. I have already mentioned the photograph motif as a figure of umbilical borders, connecting Zara across space and time with previous generations and places. The novel deepens its sense of temporal layering by positioning her as not only a second, but simultaneously a third-generation migrant, with her grandparents coming to London in 1970 as political exiles from the Siad Barres regime. This layering underlines the status of her grandmother as both guarding tradition and providing the inspiration for Zara to break with that tradition. Readers crossing into the novel must first negotiate a short fable (Ahmed 2008: 7–8), a paratext that functions as a narrative ‘abstract’, pre-announcing the rest of the novel (cf. Labov 1972: 363–64). The fable tells of an exiled king sent to the edges of the Earth (an ultimate geographical border), who meets an exiled slave who has been enchanted into a mermaid. Exile as a border experience

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is combined with motifs involving bodily borders: as both human and fish, living between land and sea, the slave-mermaid is a transformative, hybrid monster living in two worlds. Her situation and body provide a symbolic image of the second- or third-generation migrant living between two cultures and ultimately in a sphere outside both. In the book’s introductory fable, love eventually overcomes the enchantment, and the happy couple find a utopian land for exiles to live in – a journey into a third space corresponding to Zara’s escape on the Eurostar to cosmopolitan Paris. The fable about the king and the slave helps to set up water and the sea as a border figure in the novel. Zara finds herself in what the existential philosopher Karl Jaspers (1956: 201–49) has called a Grenzsituation – a ‘border situation’, in which the subject is moved into an extreme space that is both transitional and liminal – and must face up to questions of her own identity. The novel expresses confusion about identity through Zara’s internal conflict between love for her family and love for a Norwegian man whom she metaphorically describes as a seaman visiting port (Ahmed 2008: 50–51). The sailor and the mermaid meet, so to speak, on a transitional sea of confusion. As in many other migration narratives published in Norwegian, racism is not a major theme in Ahmed’s novel; Zara’s alienation is primarily concerned with borders internal to her family and the Somali diaspora. The novel does however make occasional reference to stereotyping, including patronizing exoticization by people who are perceived as belonging to mainstream culture, such as when a middle-aged woman in a café expresses surprise at Zara speaking such good Norwegian (Ahmed 2008: 24–25).

Borders in Reviews So how do these border figures in the novel translate into its public reception? Public response to the novel includes reviews, mentions in short news notices, the publisher’s websites, book-lovers’ and library blogs, and book recommendations on social media sites for readers and for migrants. I have primarily examined fifteen news media reviews by professional reviewers (all 2008: Brekke; Bulie; Farsethås; Hjulstad; Hult; Johansen; Kristiansen; Kroneberg; Langstrøm; Larsen; Riiser; Rø; Schäffer; Skaaret; and Stenstad. For the sake of convenience, I will not be including the year in references to these reviews). The reviews appeared in three national and ten regional newspapers, along with a national business daily and a national news portal; the national press provided full-length reviews (470–730 words), while the regional papers had mostly short (150–290 words) and a couple of medium-length (around 340 words) reviews. Most of the reviewers were women, and all were marked as belonging to a majority Norwegian public by their historically Norwegian names, or names of Danish or German

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origin (which can indicate historical migration in Norway). Literary critics take on hybrid subject positions, retaining expert authority while identifying with the general public; many of the reviewers were experienced staff reviewers, some well known as such. In their evaluations of Forberedelsen, the reviews express what motivations readers might have for reading migration literature, relatable to the four categories I posited earlier. Almost all of the reviews focus on themes central to readerly motivations related to keeping up with current public debate in Norway, especially when this is central to the plot, for instance in the case of the transgressive nature of Zara’s relationship to a Norwegian or the planned arranged marriage. Most reviews focus on the symbolic borders that underlie hybrid identities, commonly referring to what is thought of as living between two cultures, implying that the novel expresses what it is like to be caught in a tension between a symmetry of essentialized forces. The title of Benedicte Kroneberg’s review is ‘Conflict between Cultures’ and her lead paragraph refers to an adolescence ‘drawn between two cultures’.3 Karoline Riise Kristiansen uses the metaphors both of roots and of different worlds: ‘Zara has a life which is on a different planet than her roots’.4 Some reviewers explicitly point to the novel’s relevance to ongoing debates or state that it addresses important questions (Kristiansen; Brekke; Bulie; Farsethås; Larsen; Hult). Ingrid Brekke makes the judgement that the novel is ‘not just interesting because of the theme’, as Ahmed ‘is also a clear literary talent’,5 while Kåre Bulie’s lead reads ‘[i]mportant themes, unimportant novel’;6 though disagreeing, both make a distinction between the need for debate and the motivation of reading for aesthetic experience. The aesthetic aspect is taken seriously in the reviews, in positive and negative evaluations of Ahmed’s style; it can also be viewed less seriously, such as when the novel is in one case characterized as ‘colourful’7 (and presumably thus exotic and attractive). While the novel is seen as presenting a symmetrical encounter between two value systems, the perspective of the reviewers is more asymmetrical, one of non-migrant reviewers looking in from the outside. For many of them, the novel is an epistemological and medial border designed to give us insight, responding to the readerly motivation of gaining information: it gives a ‘glimpse into a world that is unknown for many of us’,8 making sensible the fragmenting effects of diasporic experience. Diasporic experience of this kind has not been dealt with in Norwegian literature before (Bulie), and the novel is educational (Langstrøm). One of the reviews, with the title ‘Sharp Light on Dark Corners’,9 takes a sensationalistic and reductive approach, focusing on the novel’s critique of ‘Muslim’ patriarchy (only two reviews mention ‘Muslim’ culture). Another veers into Orientalist discourse, evoking the spices, oils and ‘heavy fragrances’ that the reader can sense in one scene.10 The ‘othering’ of the experience presented in the novel is all-pervasive. In some cases, the existence of another perspective or voice is acknowledged, as when Brekke praises the novel for making it possible to ‘read . . .

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from the inside’11 – though here again, Brekke positions her readers as being on the outside. A few other reviewers (Kroneberg; Schäffer; Hjulstad; Stenstad) also see the novel as potentially offering an inner perspective, a view in or an alternative voice. Bulie refers to Ahmed’s ‘first-hand knowledge’.12 Reviewers come close to acknowledging readers’ motivations connected to identification (Farsethås), implying at least indirectly the possibility that people from migrant communities – who perhaps do not need to be ‘informed’ – might also want to read the novel, with the phrase ‘unknown to many of us’ implying that there are some who might know more.13 Two reviewers also entertain the possibility of the novel helping mainstream readers to see their own culture from the outside (Farsethås; Larsen). The novel is characterized as healthy and edifying (Kristiansen; Rø), implying that it might have a therapeutic or prophylactic role in the face of possibly destructive tensions between identities. Aesthetic experience and the information value of the novel are either supported or undermined by the perceived qualities and weaknesses in Ahmed’s style. On the one hand, the reviewers tell us that her style is low-key, laconic, light to read, concentrated, concrete, lively, charming, romantic, atmospheric, imaginative and occasionally nuanced; the novel has narrative drive, is well told and offers striking observations in a subtle way. On the other, the style is characterized as clichéd, imprecise, repetitious, inelegant, uneven, tame, girlish and naïve; the novel is fragmented and has an unclear chronology. The novel offers access to experience through its warmth and internal focalization, but the characterization is lacking in verisimilitude, the plot is predictable and the description is superficial. Most reviewers allow for both positive and negative attributes where the aesthetics and epistemology of the novel are concerned, though some (Skaaret; Langstrøm; Hult) avoid positive attributes and others (Kristiansen; Hjulstad) avoid negative ones. While diasporic experience can be one of fragmentation, some reviewers point to what they felt to be the unfinished, immature or fragmentary state of the novel as a weakness (Kristiansen; Rø; Skaaret; Hult). An inbuilt pressure in the review genre encourages evaluations of novels as good or bad literature. Forberedelsen is criticized as too simplistic and girlish (Rø; Farsethås; Johansen; Larsen), disappointing any expectations of it being the awaited so-called great immigrant novel. The photos of Roda Ahmed accompanying some of the reviews implicitly confirm this evaluation, connoting immigration (through racialization), youth (with a rebellious touch), urbanity and beauty (Ahmed has worked as a model). As authors’ portraits, these photos are not directly connected to the literary text and its storyworld except through perceivable similarities between the author and her protagonist. While the novel sold well and had a fair amount of medial impact, it has not undergone further literary ‘consecration’ (Casanova 2004: 126–27, 135), neither been translated or given much academic attention. Ahmed, while going on to write a regular newspaper column, has not published a second novel

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(she has however published several children’s picture books in English, beginning with Mae among the Stars; Ahmed and Burrington 2018). The novel is not alone in this. Indeed, hardly any novels about contemporary (post-1960s) immigration by authors with migrant backgrounds have been translated from Norwegian into other languages, and there is a general impression that Norwegian migration literature has yet to receive recognition on the scale of that given to Swedish authors such as Jonas Hassan Khemiri or Johannes Anyuru, or the Danish poet Yahya Hassan (cf. Barkve 2018: 33). The reviews of Forberedelsen sometimes make comparisons to Khemiri or various other migration literature celebrity authors in the United Kingdom (Kristiansen; Brekke; Bulie; Farsethås). Many of the reviews establish a collective temporal and epistemological border crossing of Norwegian literature into the realm of the ‘multicultural’ with the publication of Ahmed’s novel. This horizon of expectation is formulated as high expectations – often disappointed – in the reviews (Kristiansen; Brekke; Kroneberg; Bulie; Farsethås; Larsen; Skaaret; Hult). The publication of Forberedelsen was preceded by media hype on the part of the publishers (Gyldendal) and coincided with a debate about the search for ‘the great Norwegian immigrant novel’.14 In Barkve’s overview (2018: 32–36) of the trajectory of this concept, one of the earliest references is to a three-page feature article in the national daily Aftenposten by Mala Wang-Naveen, journalist and subsequent author of the migration novel Desiland (Naveen 2010), published under the title ‘Jakten på den umulige roman’ (‘The Hunt for the Impossible Novel’) on 20 April (Wang-Naveen 2008), just as Forberedelsen was being launched. Barkve (2018: 34–36) traces the use of the term through a number of reviews over several years, beginning with two reviews of Forberedelsen (Schäffer; Brekke). The concept is also used in other reviews of the novel (Kristiansen, Farsethås; Skaaret). Frode Johansen, in his review for the leftist daily Klassekampen, attacks the publishers for ‘cynical market thinking’ in their ‘premature publications’, writing that ‘[t]he publication says something about the publishers’ hunt for so-called alternative voices’.15 The border crossing from diasporic experience into the public sphere is deferred, with Ahmed’s novel read as a signal of things to come (Kristiansen; Rø; Brekke; Skaaret; Stenstad; Riiser), complicating that border crossing further. In her review for the important regional paper Bergens Tidende, however, Anne Schäffer argues that there is little point in ‘waiting for the all-encompassing immigrant novel’, but that we should rather ‘listen to a low-key and different heimat writing’ (‘heimat writing’ or heimstadsdiktning being the writing of home, place and local community). Schäffer states that this ‘is already here’,16 implying that Forberedelsen provides an example. Without making direct reference, the reviews tend to reduce the complexity of an encounter between different norms for relationships to a Romeo and Juliet narrative. Most of them implicitly acknowledge complexity in their focus on existential decisions, transgressive breaks with normality and the crossing of bodily

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borders, for instance through the motif of female genital mutilation. They also point to the crossing of temporal borders through the character of the grandmother, the motif of memory and the narrative of broken-off preparations for a wedding. Reviews refer to internal borderings within diasporic communities by way of the novel’s critique of traditional cultural norms. What, then, is reduced or ignored in this preliminary corpus? What are its absences? As I have shown above, the reviewers show little awareness of their own role in othering the experience of migration, border crossing and diaspora, thus cementing barriers around the public sphere. Only one reviewer mentions the question of class and privilege (Farsethås). Reviewers make no mention of the crossings of topographical or national borders by the protagonist as she travels between Oslo, London and Paris, ignoring the transnational dimension of the Somali diaspora and Zara’s cosmopolitanism. They do not mention the crossing of borders of style or genre in the novel, or the semantic isotopy traced by the border figures of mermaid and seaman. Only two (Schäffer; Langstrøm) mention the tales or fables included in the novel, though without dwelling on their significance. While many acknowledge Ayeeyo’s important or even complex role, they do not mention the narrative of transgenerational trauma, or the significance of the photographs as umbilical border objects and as an allegory of the function of the book as a ‘distribution of the sensible’ in Rancière’s terms (2004).

Mediatizations This analysis confirms the hypothesis that media reception tends to reduce the complexity of border figurations to split identities and a Romeo and Juliet narrative. This reduction is a product of mediatization through book reviews and their limitations, but also through adaptation to a presumed horizon of expectations. It is not only the novel that is simplified, but also the subject position of readers: by forming their discourse in a dialogic relationship to ideal figures of prospective readers and to a generalized horizon of expectation, reviewers often generalize and reduce reader identities to a majority ‘we’. There is no clear acknowledgement that some readers may not have the same expectations of the novel as the (probably majority population, non-racialized) reviewers themselves: for example, through belonging to the Somali diasporic community and having direct life experiences similar to those described in the novel. There is space for reviewers to develop a reviewing style that creates heterogeneous and inclusive subject positions for readers. Both book covers and book reviews are closely situated in time with the initial border crossing from private experience into the public sphere enabled by the novel’s publication. The focus on book reviews in this analysis has brought with it insight into this border where migration is concerned. The mirroring be-

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tween two kinds of aesthetic objects, novels and photographs, crosses the border between the outside and the inside of the book and allows us to see the book as a border umbilical object in itself, in line with the photographs in its storyworld. As a border umbilical object, the book becomes part of the extended (even transgenerational) border crossing of migrants into host societies and cultures. This extension and dissemination of the border-crossing act into a series of multiple border crossings over time and different kinds of space complicates the border, making it not a single line, but a complex zone of relationships and entanglements. This borderscape of reception would no doubt appear even more complex and entangled had my analysis also included the many author interviews and commentaries accompanying the publication of Forberedelsen. It is important to emphasize that my comparison between a novel and its reviews is also an act of bordering, contributing to the private/public borderscape that regulates the impact of published migration narratives. Publication is not a final border crossing: the border between private and public spheres is also a zone of entanglement rather than a simple divide. Book reviews take on a mediating role, or the role of border guards regulating that crossing, but it is clear that the process of reception and remediatization is never-ending, constantly moving symbolic borders into the future. Underlying the reviews of Forberedelsen is a disjunction between, on the one hand, media attention and literary status, and on the other, a premature and unfinished status. The question the reviews construct is whether this potentially ‘great migration novel’, combining aesthetic value with a need to contribute to social debates, has fulfilled our expectations, or whether Forberedelsen is in fact a forberedelse, a ‘preparation’ on the way to an ideal novel of the future. The reviews mirror the aesthetic concerns of reviewers as people of authority on literary matters, but also their epistemological concerns, asking what one can learn from Ahmed’s novel about current social questions. Paradoxically, by implicitly confirming an identity based on the othering of the migrant reader, what they do not explore fully is the possibility of the novel confirming or negotiating the identities of migrant or non-migrant readers. The reviews acknowledge implicitly that the border between the private and the public can be crossed by migrant authors, but at the same time they shore up the borders between a presumed non-migrant reader and migrants, forming a non-inclusive public ‘bubble’. Johan Schimanski is Professor of Comparative Literature and Research Head of the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo. His research interests include border poetics, Arctic discourses and literary museums. Recent publications include two volumes: Border Aesthetics (2017), co-edited with Stephen F. Wolfe, and Border Images, Border Narratives (2021), co-edited with Jopi Nyman. In 2020, a collection of his writings on border poetics appeared in German translation as Grenzungen: Versuche zu einer Poetik der Grenze.

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Notes Research for this chapter was carried out as part of the EU FP7 project EUBORDERSCAPES (FP7-SSH-2011-1, Area 4.2.1, project 290775). Many thanks are due to the reviewers and to Ulrike Spring for their helpful comments, to Ruth Hemstad for sharing her thoughts on the public sphere and to Natalia Igl for help with theoretical references. 1. ‘[N]orsk-somalisk familie’ (Ahmed 2009), a quote from Ingrid Brekke’s review (2008) in the newspaper Aftenposten. Translations from Norwegian are mine throughout. 2. ‘[E]t spennende glimt inn i livet til en norsk-somalisk familie’; ‘et tydelig litterært talent’ (Ahmed 2009: cover, quoting Brekke 2008). 3. ‘Konflikt mellom kulturer’; ‘som trekkes mellom to kulturer’ (Kroneberg 2008). 4. ‘Zara har eit liv som er på ein annan planet enn sine eigne røter’ (Kristiansen 2008). 5. ‘[I]kke interessant bare på grunn av temaet. Hun er også en tydelig litterært talent’ (Brekke 2008). 6. ‘Viktige temaer, uviktig roman’ (Bulie 2008). 7. ‘Fargerik’ (Langstrøm 2008). 8. ‘[G]løtt inn i en verden som er ukjent for mange av oss’ (Kroneberg 2008). 9. ‘Skarpt lys på mørke kroker’ (Hjulstad 2008). 10. ‘[T]unge dufter’ (Schäffer 2008). 11. ‘[L]ese . . . fra innsiden’ (Brekke 2008). 12. ‘[F]ørstehåndskjennskap’ (Bulie 2008). 13. ‘[U]kjent for mange av oss’ (Kroneberg 2008). 14. ‘[D]en store norske innvandrerromanen’ (e.g. Schäffer 2008). 15. ‘[K]ynisk markedstenkning’; ‘premature utgivelser’; ‘[u]tgivelsen sier noe om forlagenes jakt på såkalt alternative stemmer’ (Johansen 2008). 16. ‘[V]ente pa˚ den ene altomfattende innvandrerromanen, men lytte til en lavmælt og annerledes heimstaddiktning. Den er her allerede’ (Schäffer 2008).

References Ahmed, R. 2008. Forberedelsen: Roman. Oslo: Gyldendal. ———. 2009. Forberedelsen. Oslo: Gyldendal. Ahmed, R., and S. Burrington. 2018. Mae among the Stars. New York: Harper. Althusser, L. 1971. ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)’, in B. Brewster (trans.), Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: NLB, pp. 121–73. Amelie, M. 2010. Ulovlig norsk. Oslo: Pax. ———. 2014. Takk. Oslo: Pax. Andersen, T.R. 2012. ‘Judging by the Cover’, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 53(3): 251–78. Arendt, H. [1958] 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aronsson, M. 2012. ‘La réception sur Internet de Kiffe kiffe demain de Faïza Guène’, in E. Ahlstedt et al. (eds), Actes du XVIIIe congrès des romanistes scandinaves/Actas del XVIII congreso de romanistas escandinavos. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, pp. 63–80. Badaracco, C.H. 2001. ‘George Salter’s Book Jacket Designs, 1925–1940’, Design Issues 17(3): 40–48.

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Barkve, M.A. 2018. ‘The Other Mother: Motherhood Tropes in Norwegian Diaspora Literature’, PhD Dissertation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin. Benjamin, W. 1969. ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, trans. H. Zohn, in H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, pp. 253–64. Brednikova, O., and E. Nikiforova. 2019. ‘“Familiar Others”: Russian-Finnish and RussianEstonian Borderscapes in the Russian Media’, in J.P. Laine, I. Liikanen and J.W. Scott (eds), Post-Cold War Borders: Reframing Political Space in Eastern Europe. pp. 112–28. Brekke, I. 2008. ‘Trøblete kjærlighet’, Aftenposten, 30 March, 16. Bulie, K. 2008. ‘Ulykkelig kjærlighet’, Dagbladet, 1 April, 35. Casanova, P. 2004. The World Republic of Letters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Castillo, D.A. 2007. ‘Borders, Identities, Objects’, in J. Schimanski and S. Wolfe (eds), Border Poetics De-limited. Hannover: Wehrhahn, pp. 115–48. Dagbladet. ‘FAKTA Mest solgte debutanter 2008’, Dagbladet, 26 January, 44. Diome, F. 2003. Le ventre de l’Atlantique. Paris: Editions Anne Carrière. Engebrigtsen, A., and Ø. Fuglerud. 2009. Kultur og generasjon: Tilpasningsprosesser blant somaliere og tamiler i Norge. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Fagerlid, C. 2020. ‘When Author Meets Audience: The Potentiality of Literature to ReNarrate Selves, Belonging, and National Community’, in C. Fagerlid and M.A. Tisdel (eds), A Literary Anthropology of Migration and Belonging: Roots, Routes, and Rhizomes. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 71–96. Fangen, K. 2008. Identitet og praksis: Etnisitet, klasse og kjønn blant somaliere i Norge. Oslo: Gyldendal akademisk. Farsethås, A. 2008. ‘Frihetens øyeblikk’, Dagens Næringsliv Morgen, 29 March, 76. Genette, G. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. J.E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gripsrud, J. (ed.). 2017. Allmenningen: Historien om norsk offentlighet. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Guène, F. 2004. Kiffe kiffe demain. Paris: Hachette. Habermas, J. [1962] 1991. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hjulstad, G. 2008. ‘Skarpt lys på mørke kroker’, Trønder-Avisa, 11 April, 21. Hult, K. 2008. ‘Tam tekst om viktig tema’, Stavanger Aftenblad, 17 June, 30. Ibsen, H. 1879. Et dukkehjem: Skuespil i tre akter. København: Gyldendalske boghandels forlag (F. Hegel & son)/Græbes Bogtrykkeri. Jaspers, K. 1956. Philosophie II: Existenzerhellung. Berlin: Springer. Jauss, H.R. 1982. ‘Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory’, in T. Bahti (trans.), Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3–45. Johansen, F. 2008. ‘Uforberedt debutant’, Klassekampen, 16 April, 45. Kristiansen, K.R. 2008. ‘Liten innvandrerroman, stort tema’, ABC Nyheter, 21 May. Kroneberg, B. 2008. ‘Konflikt mellom kulturer’, Adgerposten, 28 October, 36. Kongslien, I. 2007. ‘New Voices, New Themes, New Perspectives: Contemporary Scandinavian Multicultural Literature’, Scandinavian Studies 79(2): 197–226. Labov, W. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Langstrøm, H.W. 2008. ‘Fargerik oppvekstroman’, Fædrelandsvennen, 16 April. Larsen, T. 2008. ‘Litt blekt fra tokulturelt Oslo’, Dagsavisen, 29 March. Mazzara, F. 2019. Reframing Migration: Lampedusa, Border Spectacle and Aesthetics of Subversion. Bern: Peter Lang. Naveen, M. 2010. Desiland: Roman. Oslo: Aschehoug.

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Pears, P. 2007. ‘Images, Messages and the Paratext in Algerian Women’s Writing’, in N. Matthews and N. Moody (eds), Judging a Book by Its Cover: Fans, Publishers, Designers, and the Marketing of Fiction. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 161–70. Phillips, A. 2007. ‘How Books Are Positioned in the Market: Reading the Cover’, in N. Matthews and N. Moody (eds), Judging a Book by Its Cover: Fans, Publishers, Designers, and the Marketing of Fiction. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 19–30. Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds. 2016. ‘Writers Make Worlds’. Oxford: The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities. Retrieved 12 December 2019 from https://writersmake worlds.com. Rancière, J. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. G. Rockhill. London: Bloomsbury. Riiser, L. 2008. ‘Hvite løgner, svart samvittighet’, Vårt Land, 19 April, 18–19. Rosello, M. 2005. France and the Maghreb: Performative Encounters. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Rø, M.Å. 2008. ‘Mellom barken og veden’, Adresseavisen, 7 April, 7. Santos, D., and A.R. Ferreira. 2019. ‘Norway Seen from a Portuguese Vantage Point: There and Here’, in E. Khachaturyan and Á. Llosa Sanz (eds), Scandinavia through Sunglasses: Spaces of Cultural Exchange between Southern/Southeastern Europe and Nordic Countries. Berlin: Peter Lang, pp. 197–210. Schimanski, J. 2006. ‘Crossing and Reading: Notes towards a Theory and a Method’, Nordlit 19: 41–63. ———. 2017/2018. ‘Frontières de verre/Glass Borders’, antiAtlas Journal 2: 1–27. ———. 2019. ‘Migratory Angels: The Political Aesthetics of Border Trauma’, in K. Horsti (ed.), The Politics of Public Memories of Forced Migration and Bordering in Europe. Cham: Palgrave Pivot, pp. 37–52. Schäffer, A. 2008. ‘Ung, norsk og fremmed’, Bergens Tidende, 3 June. Skaaret, L. 2008. ‘Roda Ahmed: Forberedelsen’, Fredriksstad Blad, 20 April. Statistisk Sentralbyrå/Statistics Norway. 2019. 05183: Immigrants and Norwegian-born to Immigrant Parents, by Country Background, Contents and Year. Oslo: Statistisk Sentralbyrå/ Statistics Norway. Retrieved 13 December 2019 from https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/ table/05183/. Stenstad, F. 2008. ‘Presset mellom to kulturer’, Tønsbergs Blad, 5 April. Tisdel, M.A. 2020. ‘Narratives of Competence and Confidence: Self, Society, and Belonging in Norway’, in C. Fagerlid and M.A. Tisdel (eds), A Literary Anthropology of Migration and Belonging: Roots, Routes, and Rhizomes. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 125–56. Wang-Naveen, M. 2008. ‘Jakten på den umulige roman’, Aftenposten, 20 April, 14–16.

Chapter 5

REFLECTIONS ON TRANSITIONAL BORDERSCAPES Performing the Migrant Self in Written and Audiovisual Testimony

F Ana Belén Martínez García

This chapter addresses two key concerns of the present volume: discourse performativity and border aesthetics. It does so by highlighting the ways in which migrants perform and define themselves in their own terms via written and audiovisual testimony. It focuses on a particular migrant figure who has become both an author and an activist as a clear example of the trend in contemporary times to narrate migration in Europe not from the outside, but from the inside, attending to the experiences of migrants themselves and to how they seek to cross geographic, ideological and psychological borders. Nujeen Mustafa is an exemplary case study in this chapter. As will be seen, her memoir and her TEDx talk complement the kaleidoscopic vision that may be created across ‘medial borders’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 164). Faced with the so-called ‘migration, migrant or refugee crisis’, which has been so contested by scholars as an inadequate term (see De Genova 2016; De Genova and Tazzioli 2016; De Genova, Garelli and Tazzioli 2018; Siegel and Nagy 2018), countries have failed to attend to the particularities of each of these bordercrossing individuals, deploying instead an aggressive language intent on relaying mass invasion that might facilitate border-closing. This chapter argues that this lack of attention to migrants themselves and their self-experiential stories needs to be redressed. Thus, I look at how migrants perform a self by following closely the performative act of the ‘I’ every time it invokes and recreates itself: ‘the narrative “I” is reconstituted at every moment in which it is invoked in the context of the narrative itself ’ (Butler 2003: 46). Through migrants’ repeating of conscious

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versions of their identity, what one might call a ‘migrant self ’ emerges. Migrants attempt to negotiate their identity in the process of constructing a narrative of their own border-crossing experiences. This is vital in understanding their rejection of terms that would lead to their perception as passive subjects. Rather, border-crossers wish to remove the barriers laid out by processes of commodification and traverse the ethical distance needed to close the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’. A growing number of such texts, both written and audiovisual, are yet to be analysed in depth. To what extent do these texts depend on each other? Do these testimonial projects emphasize difference, or do they focus on the common features of human societies, experiences and feelings? To deal with these research questions, this chapter will examine two texts by refugee activist Nujeen Mustafa – her co-authored memoir, first released in 2016 as Nujeen: One Girl’s Incredible Journey from War-Torn Syria in a Wheelchair (Mustafa and Lamb 2017), and the testimonial TEDx talk she gave in Exeter in 2017 – ‘I Am Not a Number: A Refugee’s Tale’ (Mustafa 2017). Together with ‘border aesthetics’ (Rosello and Wolfe 2017: 6), the framework of the chapter is built on the long-standing field of testimonial life narratives (Smith and Watson 2012; Whitlock 2015; Douglas and Poletti 2016). The role of online and offline media and mediation will be assessed, as well as the emphasis put on gender and age. In particular, I look at the strategic repetition of certain terms that, though meant to be denied or criticized, serve a clear purpose – constructing the self. The audience or reader of Mustafa’s testimonial texts needs, therefore, to take the word ‘refugee’ as one charged with emotional power but devoid of political implications. Chiara Brambilla and Holger Pötzsch (2017: 72) have addressed this problematic ‘in/visibility’ whereby subjects are at once categorized in public discourse but ‘do not gain a standing or voice in processes of public deliberation’. All in all, the idea of navigating the past and traversing tensions in identity is a mirror image of the multiple borders – physical or not – that Mustafa-as-activist also crosses.

The ‘Migrant Crisis’ and the Question of ‘Borders’ The vast number of migrants in 2015 and the years that followed made European authorities wary of their policies towards them. Thus, it is urgently necessary to explore the concept of ‘borders’ not only as traditionally understood in ‘fixed’ terms ‘as lines of demarcation’, but also as ‘cultural and discursive processes . . . produced through negotiation . . . flexible entities, . . . ambivalent and Janus-faced’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 149). The difficulty in defining the term substantiates the view that borders are performatively constituted, in physical and psychological encounters: ‘A focus on the performativity of bor-

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ders goes hand in hand with a questioning of which comes first: the border or its performative engendering’ (Rosello and Wolfe 2017: 2). Within the field of migrant literature, borders have been famously studied by postcolonial theorists. Homi K. Bhabha (1990: 210–11) saw ‘liminality’ as opening ‘the possibility of articulating different, often incommensurable cultural practices and priorities’, and as a potentially disruptive counter-hegemonic ‘third space’. Drawing from Bhabha, Rosello and Wolfe (2017: 9) define ‘liminal space’ as ‘a location of contact, the negotiation of cultural values and of relational identity’. In turn inspired by them, this chapter envisions a bridge between various academic disciplines that approach borders from diverging angles, as it seeks to build a bridge between cultural studies, identity politics and aesthetics grounded in sociopolitical issues. Henk Van Houtum and Ton Van Naerssen (2002: 125) see the term ‘bordering’ as correlated to ‘ordering’ – as in ‘(b)ordering’ – and ‘othering’, thus emphasizing the interplay between the need to control and to reject whatever and whomever does not conform to the rules. In this light, that which I suggest calling ‘b/orders’ from now on would seem to have a violent component. Which borders, then, pertain to the study of migrant autobiographical narratives? There are many, but this chapter deals with those that demarcate access to certain zones, including those outside the physical realm – ‘epistemological borderings’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 151) such as barriers regarding gender and age, ethnicity, and cultural bias towards the unknown that forecloses the possibility of understanding. If one agrees with Rosello and Wolfe (2017: 12) that ‘narrative and figural representations are a central element in border formation’, then turning to narratives produced by border-crossing individuals becomes not only necessary to assess the very concept of ‘border’, but to understand how it evolves and both shapes and is shaped by these border-crossers.

Life Writing for Testimonial Purposes as a ‘Borderscape’ Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith (2004: 31) had argued in Human Rights and Narrated Lives that personal ‘storytelling has become a potent and yet highly problematic form of cultural production, critical to the international order of human rights and movements on behalf of social change’. A common feature of these texts is their use of a collective ‘I’ that, though focusing on details of traumas experienced, speaks for the wrongs committed against a ‘community of endangered people’ to which it belongs (Smith and Watson 2012: 594). All human-rights life narratives share with the testimonial genre some discursive traits (Martínez García 2016). For instance, the deployment of rights discourse and of a first-person narrator works towards achieving an ethical response. As Kate Douglas and Anna Poletti (2016: 93) assert, ‘These texts are affective; they

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may have a consciousness-raising, social justice agenda – carrying testimony which might otherwise not be heard or comprehended. These texts can shift the margins of global citizenship and social suffering, to address and implicate, and call for response’. This ethical call, Gillian Whitlock (2015: 67) suggests, engages readers and audiences of testimonial texts as witnesses, a key role if the texts are to be effective: In testimonial narrative a narrator speaks publicly on behalf of the many who have suffered, and lays claim to truth and authenticity in accounts of social suffering. . . . Testimony struggles to give witness to the unspeakable and indescribable trauma of many to those who bear witness – spectators who are privileged, possibly beneficiaries and complicit in exploitation and oppression in other worlds.

Provided the reader or audience acts as a moral witness, the text realizes its aim. To do this, it must strive to trigger ‘an array of complex emotions’ (Martínez García 2019b: 262), be they shame, hate, pity or something else. Life writing – and testimony as such – is itself a blurring of literary genres, so the life-writing text itself is also a border-crossing act. Even in broad terms, as Marlene Kadar (1992: 152) puts it, life writing ‘has the potential to cross genre boundaries and disciplines’. In the case of testimony, the blending of genres is particularly evident. Furthermore, testimony may not be a genre at all, but ‘inscribed’ (Felman 1992: 7) in a ‘diversity of works and genres’. It may thus encompass autobiographies, diaries, letters, personal essays, memoirs, oral histories and so on. Given the sociological and psychological impact of testimonial acts, testimonial texts are driven by the need to express what the self – and the other – has suffered, in so doing creating an identity in times of crisis. Such testimonial self-construction is vital, as it seeks to combat the dissolution of the self that might be entailed by forgetting or the oblivion of history. The divide between fiction and nonfiction is no longer easy to see in the recreation of events as the witnessing subject remembers them. Boundaries that may have been clear in traditional genre settings are increasingly indistinct, blurred and traversed in testimonial texts. Testimony may therefore be read as a ‘borderscape’: ‘a space that is not static but fluid and shifting; established and at the same time continuously traversed by a number of bodies, discourses, practices, and relationships’ (Brambilla 2015: 19). The borderscape is not a physical space, but the contestation of pre-existing master narratives, and the tension between resistance and acceptance. The identity of border-crossers is ‘performatively produced’ (Butler 1997: 138), so the life-writer urges the public to pay attention to how they see themselves and, in so doing, challenges notions of how others see the border or seek to define it – and, by extension, them.

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A Girl Migrant Narrating Herself – Nujeen Mustafa This chapter focuses on Nujeen Mustafa’s testimonial texts. Nujeen Mustafa is known for having escaped Aleppo when she was 16 years old with the help of her relatives. Born with cerebral palsy, she had not had access to the childhood other girls her age would have had. She was homeschooled and for the most part self-tutored, leading a solitary life in semi-confinement, given the prejudice against her condition among her own Kurdish people. She made headlines when she crossed the Mediterranean in her wheelchair, travelled across Europe and finally settled in Germany, where she is now living. In what follows, I undertake a close reading of her two main texts – one traditional written memoir (Mustafa and Lamb 2017) and one audiovisual testimonial text (Mustafa 2017). Mustafa’s coming into the public arena deserves careful consideration, as it has to do with the paradoxical notion of ‘visibility’, explained by Brambilla and Pötzsch (2017: 71): ‘visibility can oscillate between an empowering pole (visibility as recognition) and a disempowering pole (visibility as control)’. This applies to Nujeen Mustafa’s ‘visibility’ in Syria, along her journey and eventually in Germany. The more of a voice she is given in the media, the more she may be commodified and reified. The more visible she becomes as a migrant, the more invisible she becomes as a citizen. The more visual markers of her identity are released (e.g. her wheelchair, her glasses, etc.), the more difficult it becomes for her to be known solely because of her political voice. As suggested by Brambilla and Pötzsch (ibid.: 81), the answer may well lie in the performance of the self that grants both voice and image to migrants – that is, audiovisual testimony: ‘discursive practices and technologies that articulate alternative subjectivities and points of view and thus afford the potential subversion and replacement of reified and sedimented frames and discursive positions’. Nujeen Mustafa’s written and audiovisual testimony exemplifies the strategic self-construction of a migrant who struggles to define who she is, but who does so with the intention of laying bare the inequalities of Western society and the hardship faced by migrants who lose everything and must start anew in a place where they are not welcome or recognized. Her texts, read side by side, are an expression of a self in the making and a claim to have the rights that everybody deserves. In both her memoir and her TEDx talk Mustafa crosses multiple ‘borders’, doing so via self-empowering border-crossing acts. Rather than focusing on the geographic and geopolitical nature of the borders she crosses, her texts examine barriers that are more to do with what one cannot see. Thus, the self that is constructed in her life-writing texts harnesses an ‘I’ that moves from being disabled to able, hidden (or invisible) to public (or visible), static to moving, victim to survivor and powerless to empowered, removing barriers from her very first step outside her home.

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Mustafa’s Co-Authored Memoir Disability is perhaps the most personal of the borders that Mustafa traverses. It is not just seen as an obstacle; rather, it is a borderscape she inhabits, one that has been with her for all her life and will continue to be. In her memoir, therefore, Mustafa devotes quite some time to explaining what she sees as positive aspects of her disability, such as what she calls ‘disability benefits’ – ‘my brothers and sisters all knew they weren’t supposed to upset me’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 46) – while also pondering the not-so-glamorous aspects thereof, such as the lack of intimacy she experiences: ‘The worst thing about being disabled is you can’t go away and cry somewhere on your own. You have no privacy’ (ibid.: 32). Her disability is such a prominent feature of constructing a sense of who she is that it must feature on the cover and open the narrative: ‘Back in Aleppo I had barely ever left our fifth-floor apartment’ (ibid.: 1). It is not until further on that Mustafa informs readers of her condition, ‘a kind of cerebral palsy’ (ibid.: 24) that prevents her from walking or even sitting upright without some constant movement of her arms and legs: ‘Basically my extremities are like those Chinese fortune fishes that curl up and then are impossible to straighten’. She resorts to black humour and irony to address her symptoms – ‘I tried to drag myself . . . I looked like a rabbit’ (ibid.: 26) – and subsequent treatment, in which they made her do ‘complicated things’ (ibid.: 27) and ‘[t]hey also strapped me into a device with bands fixed round my waist and down my legs . . . It looked like something that might have been in one of Assad’s torture chambers’. The affective power of a ‘girl life-narrator’ (Martínez García 2017b: 587) follows a well-known trend in life-writing circles. Brandishing the voice of a child ‘in need of saving’ (Smith 2006: 145), as previous narratives have done (e.g. those of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipović), the texts that this chapter explores seek to enlist readers in the fight against injustice. Being unable to move does not mean that Mustafa is mentally disabled, an assumption or ‘epistemological border’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 164) that she likes to bring up and challenge. In fact, she is proud to explain that she has an impressive memory – ‘I only need to hear something once to remember it exactly’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 11) – even though she is homeschooled and, for the most part, self-educated: ‘Once I could read, my world was books, TV and sitting on the balcony’ (ibid.: 28). The pride she demonstrates in her intellectual capacities, refusing the expected borderscape of a disabled young girl in a traditional, religious family and community, continues after she is forced to flee and seek shelter with some acquaintances, where she is humiliated by being treated as if she were not there: I’m in big trouble now, I thought, because there will be all this investigation about why I am the way I am . . . That’s the part I hate when I meet people for the first time. I didn’t say anything. I could have given a lecture about all the

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things I know. I could have told them how, because I couldn’t develop properly physically, I replaced it with intellectual development and learnt new information every day. But that would have been awkward. Instead I just stared at the floor, so they probably thought I was autistic. (Ibid.: 130)

Mustafa’s humour-filled treatment of her disability unsettles stereotypes by challenging the assumption that disabled people are less capable than able-bodied others. In fact, she would later become a guide for family and friends, translating from Arabic into English all the way until they reached Germany. Prior to her crossing of the Mediterranean, however, the wheelchair was a common object of discussion, as ‘everyone thought [it] would be too heavy for a dinghy, so I’m always the obstacle’ (ibid.: 133), and ‘[i]t was decided that if the wheelchair became a problem in the boat we would get rid of it. No one said what would happen to me’ (ibid.: 135). The lack of rights attached to a dependent, wheelchair-bound person provokes tension at an ethical and emotional level. Mustafa illustrates the plight of many other people who, like her, suffer from this level of dependence, yet she is grateful to be taken along, not left behind. The prologue, devoted to ‘The Crossing’, situates the reader as a secondary witness to a traumatic moment, conferring on them the responsibility to ‘share the testimony and become a co-witness or secondary witness of the memory that he or she helps to extend in space and time’ (Assmann 2006: 265). Crossing the Mediterranean is, on the one hand, the door to freedom. On the other hand, it deprives people who undertake the crossing of any status. Treated by smugglers like cattle, they are made to feel less than human. As a human rights activist, Mustafa advocates for the dignity lacking in this process. All lives are equally worth living, so one deserves not to be treated like an animal or a thing: ‘the grey dinghies were small and low in the water, weighed down with as many lives as the smugglers could pack in’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 1). The pronoun switches to the first-person plural to denounce what Mustafa and her group saw on that beach, calling on readers to bear witness to the injustice and the danger of the crossing, as well as to refugees’ well-founded fears: ‘We could see we were in the right place from a ripped cardboard box printed with the words “Inflatable Rubber Dinghy; Made in China (Max Capacity 15 Pax)”, as well as a trail of discarded belongings scattered along the shore like a kind of refugee flotsam and jetsam’ (ibid.: 2). Readers are thus faced with the reality of refugees, who are not only treated like cattle – packed in – but as commodities: the more people on board, the more money for smugglers. Mustafa insists on the economic transaction taking place and the little value placed on their lives: ‘they get paid even if the person drowns’ (ibid.: 135). The b/order between a life deserving of value and a non-deserving one calls to mind Judith Butler’s (2004: 150) theory of ‘precariousness’, whereby only ‘a life worth noting, a life worth valuing and preserving, a life that qualifies for recognition’ (ibid.: 34) might be mourned. Mustafa’s

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clever use of rhetorical questions is also very efficient in calling on the reader to be an ‘ethical witness’ (Whitlock 2007: 77). For example, she begs the question, ‘what kind of man sends someone to die and makes money from it?’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 136). Such strategic deployment of rhetorical questions calls to mind other activists’ life-writing projects, such as Malala Yousafzai’s (Martínez García 2019b: 257). In addition to denouncing smugglers, Mustafa paints a similarly unflattering picture of the Turkish authorities. The portrayal of their criminalization of refugees, left unexplained in the memoir, depicts them as heartless. Even before Mustafa undertakes the crossing, life in Gaziantep, where the family relocates after leaving Syria, is hopeless, with no right to work or study: ‘Once we had been proud Syrians from an ancient culture. Now we were refugees – nothing’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 115). Then, once they leave for Europe, it gets worse. With ‘a fierce Turkish sun beating down’, refugees are told to avoid roads ‘as we might be spotted and arrested by the Turkish gendarmerie who could put us in a detention centre or even send us back’ (ibid.: 3). This contravenes the ‘non-refoulement’ dictum of the Convention on the Status of Refugees, or CSR (UNHCR 2010). If they were sent back to Syria, where a war was at that time (September 2015) at its height, these people’s lives would have been in danger, which would have automatically turned them into what the United Nations considers ‘refugees sur place’ (UNHCR 1979), and thus made them eligible for, at the very least, UNHCR screening. Turkey, one gathers from this memoir, fails to facilitate those channels. Without that assessment, lives are rendered ‘publicly visible’ but politically ‘invisible’ (Brambilla and Pötzsch 2017: 72). Perhaps surprising to some readers is Mustafa’s sadness when her journey from Syria to Germany is coming to an end, as she wonders whether she will ‘go back to being the girl in her room’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 211). After having been mobile, moving from one place to another and crossing the b/orders of tradition and stereotypes, and having gained visibility in the media and been afforded a voice, Mustafa is understandably aware of the risks that being confined yet again entails, with its subsequent social – as well as physical – im/mobility and in/visibility. By the time the memoir comes to a close, readers know that this is far from the case, as she has become a famous activist, speaking out for the rights of migrants and disabled migrants in particular. Besides, she is learning how to come to terms with her disability: ‘The teachers here think I need to be realistic and accept how I am and get on with it, learn to eat by myself and move my chair, not keep talking of being an astronaut or walking’ (ibid.: 244). Without totally letting go of such dreams, ‘I am trying to be more independent. For the first time I get dressed myself and brush my own hair’ (ibid.: 245). Mustafa is crossing the border between disabled and able, between ‘invisible’ (Brambilla and Pötzsch 2017: 72) – having spent most of her life locked in a room, hidden from public view – and ‘visible’, as a travelling spokesperson unafraid to show who she is and

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what her rights claims are. As in the videos that Brambilla and Pötzsch (ibid.: 81) discuss, Nujeen Mustafa’s testimonial texts are an example of how ‘migrants challenge the invisibility of their lives’. The visual nature of her claims is backed up, as suggested earlier, by the book cover. The 2017 edition of her memoir features Mustafa being pushed by her sister as they travel on foot on a nondescript road. The image occupies half of the cover, while the other half features the title in big block letters – The Girl from Aleppo – and the subtitle in slightly smaller block letters – Nujeen’s Escape from War to Freedom (Mustafa and Lamb 2017). Apart from the book cover, in the text’s middle section, multiple images ‘make visible’ (Brambilla and Pötzsch 2017: 81) the previously invisible – that which had so far pertained to her private life. Such photographs are, arguably, affectively charged, as a means both to construct the self in the making and also to move readers ethically and politically, because a ‘political battle . . . is taking place in part through the medium of the visual image’ (Butler 2005: 827). Paradoxically, Mustafa’s actual movement, in the physical and metaphorical sense, has gone beyond the inaction of the authorities with the power to change the situation: ‘EU ministers kept having summits and meetings. But all they did really was talk and say how bad it was’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 125). Martina Tazzioli (2015: 70), also critical of border control practices, criticizes ‘the patchy regime of (in)visibility [that] corresponds to a likewise uneven hold on migrants’ movements, [a] “desultory politics over mobility”’. As an activist for the rights of refugees, Mustafa condemns Europe for its inaction and failure to provide efficient help. In her testimonial texts, im/mobility and in/action are b/orders to which attention must be paid. Mustafa emphasizes refugees’ humanity as opposed to the figures and percentages that populate the news. The degradation of migrants and refugees throughout the narrative – experienced or witnessed by her – is such that Mustafa seeks to highlight the inhuman treatment they receive as opposed to the human treatment they deserve. She destabilizes the bordering processes that divide people into those whose lives are ‘grievable’ (Butler 2003: 32) and those whose lives are not. Besides the ‘illegal’ detention of asylum seekers (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 122), Mustafa denounces the cramped and unhygienic conditions of camps, for instance in Bulgaria: ‘conditions were appalling, with refugees packed into crowded rooms not fit for humans and given little food and only cold water for washing. If you didn’t get picked up by police, there was also the risk of being beaten up by thugs from far-right parties who were demanding immigrants out’ (ibid.: 123). Moreover, she complains of opportunistic people who try to take advantage of migrants’ misfortune: ‘Often they turn us away or charge more because we don’t have papers. It’s like they think we are dirty or criminals – we are just the same as everyone else but we have lost our homes’ (ibid.: 162). The poignancy of losing her home is accompanied, on the other side of the page, by a picture of Mustafa’s parents ‘in traditional Kurdish dress’ (ibid.: 162), as if ad-

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vocating for their simple, rural way of life, as honest as any other working person no matter where they were born. The correlation between being human and having a home reappears later on: ‘We were human beings, we had had homes before’ (ibid.: 182). But becoming displaced does not equal being inferior or less deserving. Rather, moved by compassion, the reader may argue that the opposite might well be true. Losing one’s home makes a strong impact on people’s minds, especially if one considers that no one is free from suddenly being uprooted. Natural disasters, climate change and accidents aside, losing one’s home due to socio-economic and political forces, the spread of war, extremist hatred and violence, or armed terror is perhaps worse, due to the human element of these factors. The alternative, then, for those on the move is the instability and uncertainty of where they will sleep next. In Mustafa’s case, the paradox is that movement is a positive, welcome change for somebody like her, who used to be confined. Nevertheless, the stability physically and emotionally granted by having a home is a static notion that excites nostalgia in her even to this day. Each country treats migrants in particular different ways, and some of the screening procedures further degrade them as less than human. For example, Mustafa links the issue of homelessness with human rights, discussing their treatment in Hungary: ‘On Facebook you could see secretly filmed footage of guards treating people like animals, throwing food at them’ (ibid.: 182). As if a home would root one’s sense of identity and sanity, she denounces people who do not see nor treat migrants as humans. She complains about how she and her sister were treated in Croatia, taken to what looked like a hospital, ‘given a number on a piece of paper and photographed holding it up like criminals’ (ibid.: 188). Other negative misconceptions or ‘figurations’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 165) attached to migrants is that they may transmit diseases, which she counters in a very eloquent way: ‘honestly, we’re not a disease or an epidemic’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 217). Instead, she stresses migrants’ normalcy: ‘We are just people who are dying every day for the chance to brush their teeth in the morning and go to school’ (ibid.: 260–61). Again, routine, though seemingly static, is regarded with sadness at the loss of what was once normal. By far the most contested terms in her narrative are ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’, words that dehumanize border-crossing people: ‘In Germany they call us Flüchtlinge. Nasrine says it sounds like a bird, but I hate that word, just as I hate refugee and migrant’ (ibid.: 263). Mustafa insists that she is a person, with no labels attached: ‘now you have read my story I hope you see I am not a number – none of us are’ (ibid.: 268). Mustafa inhabits the borderscape between rejecting a word and representing what it stands for, struggling to cope with the admission that there is no fit word for what she and other people are: destitute, deprived of a home, yet also full of hope. She personalizes her border-crossing narrative in detail, while at the same time erecting herself as representative of that very collective – border-crossers, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers coming to Europe.

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Mustafa’s direct appeal to the ‘you’ of the intended reader attempts to cope with the need for the b/order ‘you’ vs ‘us’, while at the same time trying to demolish it by embedding both communities in a single ‘we’: ‘When you get to know us you will see we are not that different’ (ibid.: 266). There is a direct ‘call for empathy in . . . the shared humanity’ (Martínez García 2017a: 139) that the text brings to light.

Mustafa’s TED Talk Mustafa’s (2017) first words in her first ever TEDx talk – ‘I Am Not a Number’ – are aimed at crossing several b/orders at once: ‘When I first learned that I’m going to be speaking here today, I was like: “What am I going to say to England? Hey, I love Charles Dickens!”’. By making the audience laugh, Mustafa manages to disassemble the unspoken b/orders that might lead said audience to think that a poor, handicapped, wheelchair-bound Syrian girl cannot possibly know about Western literary figures and their work. Then she goes on to her main point: ‘I’m starting with a fact. Not a very pleasant one’, thus stressing how statistics related to global migration devalue the very concept of the human. After the grave tone she applies to discussing statistics, she resorts to humour: ‘When I left for Turkey, I was thrilled! I mean, no more ISIS, no more air strikes, no more cluster bombs and, most importantly, no more power cuts so I could watch my favourite TV series!’ (ibid.). Her half smile and her humorous tone lighten the mood while she lays bare the range of feelings she went through once she realized she might never go back home – sadness, anger, rage and depression, among others. Unsettling the balance between seriousness and humour, Mustafa’s discourse harnesses data to complain that it does not represent the reality of who migrants are and what their lives are like. Thus, Mustafa’s disarming argument is to identify herself as a refugee just as she stresses the inadequacy of the term. Educating the public, she is also crossing the b/order from (uneducated) victim to (educated) survivor, in fact turning the tables as someone who is arguably more informed than the average cultured Western European. Her testimonial text deploys an agent ‘I’, moving from the position of passive victim to that of active survivor and ‘empowered individual’ (Martínez García 2019a: 206). Wielding education in such a way, her question – ‘Did you know that one in 113 people in the world is now a refugee?’ (Mustafa 2017) – is directed at the hearts and minds of the audience, both in situ and online. Without waiting for an answer, she continues by providing the whole range of negative connotations awoken by the word: ‘Oh, how I hate that word! . . . it’s a word that has lost its meaning. It has become synonymous with a plague, a swarm, a disease that is feared to spread here in Europe’ (ibid., emphasis added). This calls to mind Giorgio Agamben’s (1995) article ‘We Refugees’, which, drawing on a similarly titled essay by Hannah Arendt (1943), points out the inherent

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paradox at the heart of international law and human rights: ‘precisely the figure that should have incarnated the rights of man par excellence, the refugee, constitutes instead the radical crisis of the concept’ (Agamben 1995: 116). And yet, in the absence of a better word, Mustafa carries on using it and identifying with it, trying to convey what it really means or should mean. Her wish to counter, or transcend, dehumanization permeates the talk, in which she raises her voice to perform an active role in shaping a new awareness of and towards refugees, opposing key terms such as ‘number’ and ‘person’: ‘we have become just a number on the news. But I am not a number. I’m a human, a person called Nujeen, a person who has [sic] never gone to school until the age of seventeen’ (Mustafa 2017, emphasis added). In performing a migrant self, migrants defy static notions of the border. Even if the self that Mustafa performs is vulnerable and ‘precarious’ (Butler 2004: 128), she is not a passive recipient from an outside category, but rather an agent whose subject-formation is in the making and whose narrative of ‘vulnerability’ (ibid.: 29) bears the potential and the responsibility for resistance and social activism: ‘we are first vulnerable and then overcome that vulnerability, at least provisionally, through acts of resistance’ (Butler 2016: 12). Such a fluid, transgressive self-configuration coalesces with the view of migrants – and refugees – as ‘embodiments of the permeability of borders’ (Yuval-Davis, Wemyss and Cassidy 2019: 22). In order to shed light on what is unique about her individual sense of self – what sets her apart from a homogenizing account of refugeedom – Mustafa resorts to presenting before the audience her childhood and life experience of growing up as a person with disabilities in the Middle East. To do this, she also emphasizes her first name, calling herself ‘Nujeen’: ‘I’m a human, a person called Nujeen’ (Mustafa 2017). ‘Nujeen’ also appears in the title of her celebrated memoir (Mustafa and Lamb 2017) as part of a coordinated strategy to reclaim the right and ‘the power of the name’ (Butler 1997: 29), thus crossing the b/order between anonymity and public personality, between one migrant among many and an individual worthy of human rights. This is in fact one of the key concerns in the fight against degrading, dehumanizing practices such as being numbered at border checkpoints and internally displaced person (IDP) and refugee camps. As in the case of her memoir, too, the photographic archive serves to reconstruct her life. The audience attends to her testimony in a multimodal immersive experience. While listening to her retelling of who she is – ‘I was left with books to read and facts to collect’ (Mustafa 2017), they are forced to bear witness to the girl in the photograph, a girl who is dressed in pink and sits sideways, avoiding the inquisitive gaze of the camera, wearing her huge, trendy sunglasses. The girl in the photograph therefore stands in stark contrast to representations of Muslim women as ‘veiled women’ (Whitlock 2007: 53) circulating as ‘commodities’. Once more, the ‘visual/verbal life narrative’ (Smith and Watson 2002:

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352) carries the affective weight of witnessing to a story of overcoming the odds. Mustafa’s disability – though a physical hindrance – as well as her age and gender, which seemingly turns her into a ‘vulnerable’ subject (Butler 2004: 30), do not imply that she is unable to speak up. Instead, these are b/orders she defies. Another border-crossing reflection is Mustafa’s revaluing of her own cultural past. Far from oversimplifying views of the East as a place in need of saving, she presents before the audience photographs of Aleppo’s cultural heritage, while she insists that Syrians had nothing to envy the British for: ‘we too had it all – our Old Souk, the Old City, the Citadel …’ (Mustafa 2017, emphasis added). The stress she places on ‘we too’ is intended as a summary of the overall aim of her talk – making the audience realize that refugees and migrants are not secondclass citizens, people to be pitied or afraid of. Rather, they are quite similar to people in the West. In her rescuing of Syria’s rich culture, she is blurring the b/order between Global South and Global North. Finally, Mustafa addresses the actual crossing of the Mediterranean, which for most migrants coming to Europe is one of the most harrowing experiences among all their various border-crossing acts: ‘All I heard was our group arguing over whether we should bring the wheelchair or not’ (Mustafa 2017). As if on cue, photographs provide the visual testimony that backs up her claims – at her mention of the tensions surrounding the potential decision to leave the metal obstacle behind, one can only wonder how difficult it must have been to be placed on that rubber dinghy together with her wheelchair, all the while thinking about whether a minor puncture might lead to the drowning of all those on board. Mustafa’s concluding words are a testimony to her current advocacy campaign to raise awareness about refugees: ‘First, I’m not a number; [I’m] a human. Second, I did not come here because I wanted to, I had to. Thirdly, different is not dangerous. And fourth and most importantly, we need your compassion as much as we need your shelter’ (Mustafa 2017). The word she stresses the most is purposefully reinforced: ‘human’. Mustafa, like other human rights activists before her, combines two distinct strategies: relying on universals that foster common ground, and insisting on the plight of a particular group of individuals far removed from the audience ‘so as to make her message more durable than if any of the strategies were used in isolation’ (Martínez García 2018: 495).

Conclusion Mustafa’s written and audiovisual testimonies complement each other. The format of a TED talk, condensing relevant information into just seven minutes and thirteen seconds in this case (Mustafa 2017), implies that not everything can be said. What the speaker chooses to say is just part of the story. Mustafa chooses to

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criticize the label ‘refugee’ and its connotations. She wants the audience to see her as a human being, an equal, eliciting an empathetic response that values the universal over the ethnically diverse. The purpose of the TED talk is accomplished, garnering support for Mustafa’s activism for refugee rights as human rights. The purpose of the book (Mustafa and Lamb 2017) is somewhat more complex. The narrative is intent not only on bringing about social change for refugees, but also on opening a dialogue among people of different backgrounds – independent of religion, sectarian identifications, political affinities, geographic setting or social class. Read side by side, these two testimonies, memoir and TED talk, serve to create a bigger picture of what it means to be a minority (disabled) in a minority (a girl) in a minority (a Kurd) in a minority (displaced) in a minority (Muslim in Christian-majority Germany). The texts do not need each other; however, they do profit from a shared reading. As a girl migrant activist, Nujeen Mustafa crosses many different borders, geographic borders being perhaps the least important for testimonial purposes. Societal and psychological borders are intangible yet of paramount importance in the constitution of a new self. Such borders are, among others, the ones that migrants traverse as they navigate the paths from childhood to adulthood, private to public sphere, b/ordered to borderless and collective to individual identities. Travelling between these borders is by no means easy or unidirectional, but rather fraught with tensions and subject to back-and-forth movements as well as to remaining static. The internet has made it possible for women to voice their concerns and to reach others far more easily than in previous generations. But the Global South is still on an unequal footing. Access to the internet and, by extension, to online tools, media and social platforms, is neither universal nor free. This boundary, then, is to be taken into account when considering the impressive number of girl and women activists that have come to the fore in recent years thanks to the digital paradigm. They have been able to cross the borders of anonymity, of deprivation, of technological poverty and of gender roles that might have assigned them a nondescript place in the home and little else. When girl migrants speak out, they defy the traditional gender roles in the patriarchal societies from which they come. Though at times they are not completely left behind, such stereotypes as the veiled or silent woman are boundaries that young women activists from the Global South try to cross. By their defiance of norms they may be considered to cross borders, disobey orders and erase – or at the very least blur – borders. The boundary between what is unique to the individual and to the social collective becomes blurred, as activists engage in acts of self-construction, affected by those who surround them and in turn affecting others. Self and other are inseparable, with the individual and the collective working together towards a healthy reconstruction of the recent past and of identity.

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Girl migrants narrating themselves – like Nujeen Mustafa in this chapter – inscribe themselves into history and the public sphere, transgressing the social norms of their home countries, the countries that they traverse and the receiving countries; this proves that self-performativity may act as a vehicle of selfempowerment, allowing young women to find their own voices and spaces. Nujeen Mustafa’s testimonial texts can be read as ‘borderscapes’ (Brambilla 2015) whereby her identity is performed and constructed. The b/orders she crosses are of various kinds: im/mobility, in/visibility, dis/ability, dis/empowerment, in/dependence, im/personality and sub/humanity. These b/orders, among multiple other ‘symbolic borders’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 159), are defied in the process of performatively constituting a new migrant self. Seeking to dismantle labelling processes heavily laden with identity politics (Butler 2004: 126–27) by uncovering the ‘power relations’ at their root (Butler 2009: 29), Nujeen Mustafa resorts to the term she despises, namely ‘refugee’ (Mustafa 2017), for lack of a better word. However, she constantly refers to how ‘language assists violence’ (Butler 1997: 6). Linguistic analysis of Mustafa’s life writing is thus compatible with a profound look at the sociocultural variables shaping her discourse, examining the ways that she redefines ‘the symbolic valences of material, behavioral, or linguistic markers of identification’ (Smith and Watson 2010: 57). The dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘them’, highly present in ‘bordering’ (Yuval-Davis, Wemyss and Cassidy 2019: 7) and ‘everyday processes of “othering”’ (ibid.: 17), is blurred in Mustafa’s migrant-self experiential testimony. Even if the texts, both written and audiovisual, emphasize some ethnic and religious differences, the fact remains that refugees are ‘first and foremost human beings’ (Mustafa and Lamb 2017: 9). Humanitarianism is the lens needed to read Mustafa’s and similar life stories, by acknowledging what is shared, even if identification may be impossible. Ana Belén Martínez García has a PhD from the University of Oviedo (2010) and is Associate Professor at the University of Navarra (Spain). She belongs to the Emotional Culture and Identity project at the Institute for Culture and Society at the same institution. Her research has focused on issues of identity, sociocultural, gender and performativity studies, and she is interested in young women on the move. She has been a research fellow at the Centre for LifeWriting Research, King’s College London (January–June 2017, January–June 2019) and published in journals such as a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, Life Writing, Prose Studies and Narrative, among others.

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References Agamben, G. 1995. ‘We Refugees’, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 49(2): 114–19. Arendt, H. 1943. ‘We Refugees’, Menorah Journal 31(1): 69–77. Assmann, A. 2006. ‘History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony’, Poetics Today 27(2): 261–73. Bhabha, H.K. 1990. ‘The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha’, in J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 207–21. Brambilla, C. 2015. ‘Exploring the Critical Potential of the Borderscapes Concept’, Geopolitics 20(1): 14–34. Brambilla, C., and H. Pötzsch. 2017. ‘In/visibility’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 68–89. Butler, J. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. ———. 2003. Giving an Account of Oneself: A Critique of Ethical Violence. Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum. ———. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. ———. 2005. ‘Photography, War, Outrage’, PMLA 120(3): 822–27. ———. 2009. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? New York: Verso. ———. 2016. ‘Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance’, in J. Butler, Z. Gambetti and L. Sabsay (eds), Vulnerability in Resistance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 12–27. De Genova, N. 2016. ‘The European Question: Migration, Race, and Postcoloniality in Europe’, Social Text 34(3): 75–102. De Genova, N., G. Garelli and M. Tazzioli. 2018. ‘Autonomy of Asylum? The Autonomy of Migration Undoing the Refugee Crisis Script’, SAQ: South Atlantic Quarterly 117(2): 239–66. De Genova, N., and M. Tazzioli (eds). 2016. Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of ‘the Crisis’ in and of ‘Europe’. Near Futures Online. Retrieved 16 March 2021 from http://nearfuturesonline .org/europecrisis-new-keywords-of-crisis-in-and-of-europe/. Douglas, K., and A. Poletti. 2016. Life Narratives and Youth Culture: Representation, Agency and Participation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved 21 February 2017 from King’s College London ProQuest Ebook Central: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/ detail.action?docID=4774034. Felman, S. 1992. ‘Education and Crisis, Or the Vicissitudes of Teaching’, in S. Felman and D. Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–56. Kadar, M. 1992. ‘Whose Life Is It Anyway? Out of the Bathtub and into the Narrative’, in M. Kadar (ed.), Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 152–61. Martínez García, A.B. 2016. ‘Narrative Emotions and Human Rights Life Writing’, in A. Ibarrola-Armendariz and J. Ortiz de Urbina Arruabarrena (eds), On the Move: Glancing Backwards to Build a Future in English Studies. Bilbao: University of Deusto Press, pp. 127–32. ———. 2017a. ‘Bana Alabed: Using Twitter to Draw Attention to Human Rights Violations’, Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism 39(2–3): 132–49. ———. 2017b. ‘Unearthing the Past: Bringing Ideological Indoctrination to Light in North Korean Girls’ Memoirs’, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 32(3): 587–602. ———. 2018. ‘TED Talks as Life Writing: Online and Offline Activism’, Life Writing 15(4): 487–503.

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———. 2019a. ‘Construction and Collaboration in Life-Writing Projects: Malala Yousafzai’s Activist “I”’, Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 12(1–2): 201–17. ———. 2019b. ‘Empathy for Social Justice: The Case of Malala Yousafzai’, Journal of English Studies 17: 253–75. Mustafa, N. 2017. ‘I Am Not a Number: A Refugee’s Tale’, TEDxExeter, TEDxTalks, 12 May. Retrieved 26 March 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3r4gnSouqQ. Mustafa, N., and C. Lamb. 2017. The Girl from Aleppo: Nujeen’s Escape from War to Freedom. London: William Collins. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 1979. ‘Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees’. Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Retrieved 29 February 2020 from http://www.unhcr.org/4d93528a9.pdf. ———. 2010. ‘Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees’. Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Retrieved 29 February 2020 from http://www.unhcr.org/protection/basic/3b66c2aa10/conventionprotocol-relating-st atus-refugees.html. Rosello, M., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Introduction’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–24. Schaffer, K., and S. Smith. 2004. Human Rights and Narrated Lives: The Ethics of Recognition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schimanski, J., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Intersections: A Conclusion in the Form of a Glossary’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 147–70. Siegel, D., and V. Nagy (eds). 2018. The Migration Crisis? Criminalization, Security and Survival. The Hague: Eleven International Publishing. Smith, S. 2006. ‘Narratives and Rights: “Zlata’s Diary” and the Circulation of Stories of Suffering Ethnicity’, Women’s Studies Quarterly 34(1/2): 133–52. Smith, S., and J. Watson. 2002. Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. ———. 2010. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, 2nd edn. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. ———. 2012. ‘Witness or False Witness? Metrics of Authenticity, Collective I-Formations, and the Ethic of Verification in First-Person Testimony’, Biography 35(4): 590–626. Tazzioli, M. 2015. ‘The Desultory Politics of Mobility and the Humanitarian-Military Border in the Mediterranean: Mare Nostrum Beyond the Sea’, REMHU: Revista Interdisciplinar da Mobilidade Humana 23(44): 61–82. Van Houtum, H., and T. Van Naerssen. 2002. ‘Bordering, Ordering, and Othering’, Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 93(2): 123–36. Whitlock, G. 2007. Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2015. Postcolonial Life Narratives: Testimonial Transactions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yuval-Davis, N., G. Wemyss and K. Cassidy. 2019. Bordering. Cambridge: Polity.

Part II

EUROPEAN MIGRATION REPRESENTED IN THE MEDIA

F

Chapter 6

THE VISUALIZATION OF THE ‘REFUGEE CRISIS’ OF 2015–2016 A Case Study of a Croatian Online News Source

F Ljiljana Šarić

During the so-called refugee crisis of 2015–16, European societies were faced with dramatic images of refugees, published in traditional and new media, that shaped public perceptions and political discussions perhaps more intensely than verbal messages (see e.g. Fehrenbach and Rodogno 2015; Giannakopoulos 2016; Ibrahim and Howarth 2016). An example is the images of Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in the Aegean Sea on 2 September 2015. In relation to the role that such images can play, researchers even speak of a ‘pictorial turn’ (see Bleiker 2018; Mitchell 1994), stressing the importance of images to how people construct their social reality. Largely through images, some events (e.g. the 9/11 attacks) acquire immense symbolic dimensions. Images have been produced since prehistoric cave paintings; importantly, ‘the politics of images’ – their circulation speed and reach – has drastically changed in relatively recent times (see Bleiker 2018). The transformative power of widely circulated, iconic images in traditional and especially social media has frequently been emphasized (e.g. Fehrenbach and Rodogno 2015; Ibrahim and Howarth 2016), in addition to their impact on reporting on refugees (see Chouliaraki and Zaborowski 2017) and such phenomena as election results and mobilization among citizens (Koca 2016). The emotional power of images, frequently addressed in everyday life and research alike, is perhaps because they have an immediate effect in creating emotional responses and attitudes (Bleiker 2018; Hansen 2011: 55). Research in neuroscience links the emotional impact of images, and specifically empathy, to brain architecture: ‘Our ability to identify with and imagine someone else’s point

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of view is deeply ingrained into the architecture of our brain. Photography plays a unique role in triggering the network of brain regions that underlie empathy’ (Sariñana 2014: 2). Images of suffering that immediately relate to compassion and empathy have been addressed from a variety of perspectives (Chouliaraki 2013; Höijer 2004; Zelizer 2010), including the assumption of ‘compassion fatigue’ (see e.g. Moeller 1999; for a critique, see Campbell 2012). How viewers actually process images of suffering or other phenomena depends on various factors, such as viewers’ individual contexts and histories, what type of ‘visualizer’ they are, and their pre-existing values, conceptualizations and feelings: all of these can influence image interpretation (Domke, Perlmutter and Spratt 2002). Furthermore, images are always ‘read’ in a historical and sociopolitical context (Campbell 2004: 62–63), and are ambiguous in the sense that different audiences perceive and interpret them differently. Diverging interpretations may relate to familiarity with an issue and the image’s usage context (Hansen 2011; Mitchell 2005). The meanings of images are always ambivalent, and their power is thus elusive (Stocchetti 2011: 14). The majority of our knowledge about migration is mediated. Through their messages, media shape the understanding of attitudes to and responsibilities towards refugees. Other sources of information about migration (e.g. refugees’ voices) are, as a rule, less visible or invisible in media representations. Even when represented, the complexity of migrant voices is often simplified and limited to victim and villain frames (Crawley, McMahon and Jones 2016). For these reasons, visuals (and the multimodal messages that they frequently are part of ) matter: the way that people or groups are visually represented in the media may associate them with a humanitarian challenge, a benefit for society or threats to its security: certain ‘dehumanizing visual patterns’ reinforce the politics of fear (Bleiker et al. 2013), influencing not only the way that refugees are publicly framed, but also political responses to migration (see also Martínez Lirola 2017). This study is related to the specific national context of Croatia, a ‘transit’ country that was part of the so-called Balkan route. The policies of Croatia regarding refugees in 2015 and 2016 were partially influenced by the country’s status as an EU member state and partially by the fact that Croatia and other countries in the region (e.g. Serbia and Slovenia) were seldom refugees’ final destinations because of economic factors: the Balkan countries face economic emigration by a large number of their own citizens. The Croatian Social Democratic government generally advocated a human(itarian) approach to the ‘crisis’: Župarić-Iljić and Valenta (2019: 374) link this approach to the policy of enabling a humane ‘transit’ process – refugees were ‘welcomed into the country on a temporary basis only’. Among a few local factors influencing Croatian discourse during the ‘crisis’ were tensions with neighbouring countries (Slovenia and Serbia) related to handling the refugee situation after the complete closure of the border between Serbia and Hungary in September 2015. A significant problem was the lack of communication and coordination among the countries along the Balkan route,

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which resulted in refugees being held at border crossings without appropriate protection and aid and people being trapped between two countries with no shelter or assistance (see Sisgoreo 2016). A very important local factor influencing Croatian citizens’ attitudes towards the refugee situation was Croatia’s own relatively recent experience with forced migration in the 1990s, when a large number of Croats were refugees for years. Settlements along the Serbian–Croatian border that were the ‘entry points’ for refugees in 2015 were severely affected by the wartime conflicts in the 1990s, when many people had to leave their homes. The refugee experience of the local populations influenced their empathy and humanitarian attitudes, which were especially important in the early stages when the state failed to effectively deal with the ‘crisis’. I claim that this past experience also greatly contributed to the general image of the refugee as a suffering individual and one of ‘us’, and to the overall representation of refugees in the Croatian media, including the Croatian public broadcaster’s online portal (hereafter HRT). However, a different attitude was also represented by some political groups. The first months of the ‘crisis’ were a time of pre-election debates, in which some political groups raised negative sentiments concentrating on the large numbers of refugees and national security. However, this never became the dominant attitude, neither in political circles nor among the general population. The new conservative Croatian government elected in November 2015 continued a discourse of responsibility and humanity. Some analyses identified a shift towards a securitization discourse in Croatia after the Paris terrorist attacks and Cologne harassment incidents (see Šelo Šabić 2017b; Župarić-Iljić and Valenta 2019) in statements by some members of the political elite, including the president (Jakešević and Tatalović 2016; Mulalić 2015). I examine whether such a shift can be traced in the HRT data. Visuals representing refugees during the ‘refugee crisis’ were not uniform in the entire European area. I argue that they were dependent on, and shaped by, specific national contexts, in addition to being part of a broader European and even global migration discourse. The extensive visual data published on HRT in the six months of the refugee ‘crisis’ from 2015 to 2016 reveal not only HRT’s representation patterns, which contributed to shaping collective imaginations of the refugee situation, but also a broader picture, because HRT is representative of other mainstream, non-tabloid Croatian media.

The Refugee as an Anonymous ‘Other’ and Threat versus the Refugee as an Individualized Suffering Individual in (Visual) Media Representations Many studies have identified negatively framed reporting and stereotyping in the representation of refugees in the media (e.g. Bleiker et al. 2013; Elsamni 2016;

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KhosraviNik 2010; Martínez Lirola 2017). Securitization discourse (occasionally discussing visuals) that frames migrants as a security threat has been identified in a number of countries: for example, France (Sweet 2017), Slovakia (Androvičová 2016) and the United States (Demata 2017). However, the situation is often more complex and characterized by the interweaving of multiple discourses (Caviedes 2015; Colombo 2018). Other discourses on refugees include victimization, humanitarianism, multiculturalism and integration as dominant frames (see Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017; Korteweg 2017). Visual strategies employed frequently in representations of refugees produce what Chouliaraki and Stolic (2017: 1169) label ‘visibility as threat’ (see also Bleiker, Campbell and Hutchison 2014; Bleiker et al. 2013). However, relatively recent analyses also reveal some more varied visual representations that imply tolerance (e.g. Permyakova and Antineskul 2016). Visual representations that challenge the dehumanizing approach and can trigger empathy1 have also been found in contexts discussing photographs of refugees’ suffering, trauma and deaths (Giannakopoulos 2016; Ibrahim and Howarth 2016; Lenette and Cleland 2016). Despite growing literature on the visual representation of refugees, there is still a lack of empirical research based on larger data sets. Moreover, the discourses of the ‘transit’ countries are still underexplored. Research on the discursive construction of the refugee ‘crisis’ in Croatia is relatively scant. Jakešević and Tatalović (2016) and Šelo Šabić (2017a) provide a general overview of political discourse; Sicurella (2018) concentrates on the discourse of Serbian and Croatian public intellectuals, and Felberg and Šarić (2017) focus on Croatian and Serbian public broadcasters’ verbal discourse. This study considers a news source representative of the Croatian government’s official discourse and complements previous research by systematically examining a large amount of visual data that provides a solid quantitative foundation for the qualitative study that was carried out.

Theoretical Framework This analysis is informed by social semiotics (see e.g. Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006; Van Leeuwen 2008) and psychological research on ‘the identifiable victim effect’ (Ariely 2008). Of further relevance are studies of European news, specifically a typology of the visibility of the crisis developed by Chouliaraki and Stolic (2017), who suggest that each visibility type situates refugees within a different regime and relates to different actions, whereby visibility as biological life is associated with monitorial action, visibility as empathy with charitable action and visibility as a threat with state security. Visibility as hospitality is associated with political activism and visibility as self-reflexivity is associated with a posthumanitarian engagement with people like ‘us’.

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In social semiotics, images are systematically characterized in terms of their interactive meanings. It is assumed that images – that is, some of their visual features – can create involvement and empathy, whereas other features contribute to creating emotional detachment in viewers. Relevant categories related to interaction are gaze, frame, and horizontal and vertical angle (see Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006). According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (ibid.: 122), the gaze of the actors represented in an image directed at the viewer ‘creates a visual form of direct address’: such images are ‘demand images’, and their opposite is ‘offer images’ in which the actors represented do not gaze at viewers. These images disable social interaction: the people are simply ‘offered’ to readers’ gaze (Van Leeuwen 2008: 140). Social semioticians relate types of shots to various degrees of social distance: close shots in which the faces of the actors represented can be seen imply intimate distance. With medium shots, the social distance is greater, whereas long shots indicate impersonal distance (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006). This is in accordance with the embodied world view: one cannot interact with people who are far away spatially. If people are depicted from a considerable distance, one cannot perceive their individual characteristics. The vertical angle in the social actors’ representation relates to power. A low angle implies the power of the social actors represented, whereas a high angle stands for the power of the viewers. Another important theoretical notion for this analysis, the ‘identifiable victim effect’ (Ariely 2008), is used in psychological research examining how people react to catastrophes and what affects people’s empathy, philanthropy and donations. This research (e.g. Jenni and Loewenstein 1997) indicates that a single identifiable individual is more likely to arouse empathy or sympathy than a group (Ariely 2008). One experiences much empathy for individual victims, but not when catastrophes, including large-scale migrations, affect many people (Slovic 2010). The identifiable victim effect implies that visuals showing individualized persons or a few persons only (see e.g. Lee and Feeley 2016) are likely to arouse compassion and empathy (Ariely 2008: 1). These important findings relate to social semioticians’ assumptions about individualization and assimilation (Van Leeuwen 2008: 37): visuals showing individuals and small groups individualize social actors, whereas those showing large groups assimilate them, often by aggregating them (i.e. concentrating on large numbers). Applied to visuals representing refugees, the single victim effect implies that the number of people represented matters. Whether large groups, medium-sized groups, small groups (e.g. families) or single individuals are represented is of great relevance in addition to the gaze, shot type and angle. Images of individuals and small groups in which the represented participants interact with viewers are more likely to evoke compassion than images of large groups. The larger the group and the less clearly identifiable the faces, the greater emotional distance in viewers. These assumptions underlie the principles for coding the HRT visuals, which are explained in the next section.

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Analysis of the HRT Visuals Data and Method The visuals analysed are from the internet portal of the Croatian public broadcaster (HRT).2 HRT follows the official government policy, as explained above. As with all online sources, the object of the analysis was dynamic, and part of the material tended to disappear after some time. The data was collected in a search performed in September 2016 on the portal’s site, using its search function to look for Croatian equivalents of the keywords refugee, migrant, migration, migration crisis, refugee crisis and migrant crisis. The sorting criterion was ‘relevance’. The time frame of the material was 15 August 2015 to 15 March 2016. These months were characterized by intense media attention given to migration. The headlines, subheads and ledes of all the texts were read to establish the main topic; in unclear cases, the entire text was read. Only the texts with migration as their main topic were included in the final data set, which consisted of 150 texts with 56,031 words and 887 images.3 These images are embedded in the multimodal online journalistic ‘texts’,4 the majority of which are condensed online versions of TV news. A smaller number are from other genres, such as opinion articles and interviews. These polyvocal texts incorporate, refer to and recontextualize discourse by refugees, politicians, humanitarian organizations, police, non-governmental organizations and other social actors from Croatia and other European countries. They also represent journalists’ and editors’ voices. Typically, HRT’s online news starts with a large image, which in some cases is the only one in the opening part of the text. In other cases, two to five5 small images arranged horizontally below the large image follow. If one clicks on it, each of these small images appears in a large format and as the first in the row. A headline and a lede follow, and then the remainder of the text. Video clips (whose number varies) from the main news programme are embedded in the texts, and sometimes additional (e.g. Twitter) images are as well. The videos start with a still image, which was included in the data analysed. Videos themselves were not analysed.6 The 887 images included all of those from the openings of the texts (one to [the first] five per text), and all of the other still images embedded in various parts of the texts. Some images are from HRT’s main news programme Dnevnik (the word Dnevnik appears in the lower left corner), and some are from different news agencies. The photographs that accompany the news stories on the HRT portal represent various social actors and their actions (see Figure 6.1 for a few examples). They mostly use perceptual realism as a mode of presentation, showing, for example, refugees sleeping, walking or entering trains (see Figure 6.2), politicians talking to journalists and humanitarian organization members distributing food.

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FIGURE 6.1. Examples of HRT’s images. Source: HRT. http://izbjeglice.hrt.hr/304448/do-15-sati-u-rh-uslo-3513-izbjeglica, 22 October 2015; http://vijesti.hrt.hr/295739/hrvatska-spremna-ako-migranti-krenu-prema-nasim-granicama, 19 August 2015; https://vijesti.hrt.hr/298750/na-hrvatsku-se-nece-preliti-izbjeglicki-val, 14 September 2015; https://www.hrt.hr/299638/vijesti/opatovac-kamp-za-4000-izbjeglica, 21 September 2015. Photos: © HRT and Barbara Vid, used with permission. (I gratefully acknowledge kind permission from the copyright holders, HRT and Barbara Vid (represented by Andreja Arežina Grgičević), to reproduce these four images, originally published on hrt.hr. All the links to the HRT articles referred to in this study were active in July 2018, when I worked on the draft. At some point, a lot of the material was removed, and almost all the links were inactive in August 2021; however, all of them were accessible at web.archive.org.)

FIGURE 6.2. The represented activities of refugees. Created by Ljiljana Šarić. Standing, waiting: 29%; Walking: 22%; Sitting, lying down, or sleeping: 16%; Traveling on buses/trains/ boats: 14%; Talking to journalists: 6%; Refugees in pain or receiving help: 5%; Protesting: 3%; Other: 5%.

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A large number of images depict border-related artefacts and various transitory spaces. These are often depicted alone or in strong focus, and they sometimes produce aesthetic effects.

Coding and Categorization The photographs were coded by two persons7 following the main question of who or what was depicted and how. Who were the foregrounded social actors; that is, did the photographs emphasize refugees, politicians, the police and army, or some other actors? If the photographs showed refugees, did they depict groups (and were these large, medium or small) without focusing on single individuals, or did they emphasize individuals? Did the photographs avoid representing social actors and show objects instead? The main categories that emerged and their quantitative relations are shown in Table 6.1 and Figure 6.3. The categorization was made by determining either (a) who or what was exclusively represented, or (b) who was clearly in focus. The identified categories indicate which social actors and actions were foregrounded and backgrounded and which were excluded. Although all of the material had refugees as its main topic or one of the main ones, refugees were visually salient in only around 40 per cent of the photographs. Other actors represented were those that directly or indirectly influence or produce (or both) representations (e.g. politicians).

TABLE 6.1. General distribution of 887 images: who or what was exclusively represented or strongly emphasized. Social actors

Imagesa

%

Refugees

349

39

Journalists

146

17

Politicians

99

11

Police and army

72

8

Experts, volunteers, humanitarians, citizens

67

8

Mixed groups

38

4

‘Subjectless’ photographs (no social actors visible or hardly visible actors)

116

13

Total

887

a

Some images – still images from the videos – showed two overlapping images. These were classified according to the more dominant image.

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FIGURE 6.3. General distribution of 771 images. Created by Ljiljana Šarić. Refugees: 45%; Journalists: 19%; Politicians: 13%; Police and army: 9%; Experts, volunteers, humanitarians, citizens: 9%; Mixed groups: 5%.

Findings Representation of Medium-Internal and Medium-External Social Actors (Excluding Refugees) In the entire period analysed, journalists, correspondents and thus the broadcaster as an institution were given a high presence. The personalization of text producers was high. The share of the photographs showing journalists was considerable, indicating that the news source was engaged in its own positioning. It did this by featuring journalists as the most salient social actors, either commenting from the TV studio, reporting from the ground, interviewing migration experts or talking to refugees. The share of the photographs showing national and foreign politicians was relatively high. Strong personalization of politicians was observed. The politicians were represented talking either to the press or to each other, and visiting refugees. Close-ups and medium shots were used in almost all of these photographs, focusing on politicians’ personalities and functions. Politicians and journalists were shown more frequently than the army and police, whose presence in migration-related images could be related to securitization discourse. Securitization refers to the process of treating a political issue

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as an urgent threat in order to legitimize extraordinary measures, and is based on the use of ‘security language’ and speech acts.8 Images of police and the army may suggest a link between security and migration; however, the relevant factor is whose army and police are represented. In the majority of the images on HRT, the Hungarian and Slovenian army and police (securitizing actors) were shown,9 not Croatian equivalents. The actions against refugees performed by the police of neighbouring countries were frequently explicitly criticized by verbal means in the texts with visuals showing the police.10 Some images, illustrating a humanitarian discourse that portrayed refugees as vulnerable people in need of ‘our’ help, showed humanitarian workers and volunteers helping on the ground. Though absent, refugees in such visuals were framed as subject to the humanitarian benevolence of the West (see Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017; Vaughan-Williams 2015).

Representation of Refugees When coding visuals representing refugees, a distinction was made between photographs showing groups versus photographs showing individualized refugees. Groups were further classified into three categories according to their size (one to five people, six to fifteen people and sixteen or more). The group size distinction emerged from the frequent patterns observed in the data. Table 6.2 and Figure 6.4 present the distribution of images by group size, indicating the relation between individualization and collectivization. The categories that emerged on a close examination of the photographs showing groups were (1) photographs of small groups (up to five people) in which no individuals were in focus (this category, often depicting families with children, was particularly prominent in the data); (2) photographs of medium-sized groups (six to fifteen people) with no individuals in focus; and (3) large groups (sixteen or more) with no individuals in focus. Category 4 included images that focused on individual adult refugees: these individuals were sometimes part of smaller groups, but viewers could nevertheless clearly see refugees’ faces, and single individuals stood out. Finally, a certain share of the photographs (Category 5) clearly focused on refugee children, framing them as individuals, although they were sometimes parts of groups. In Categories 4 and 5, people were represented as individualized subjects with distinct features.

Photographs of Refugees in Groups In the photographs in which refugees were foregrounded or exclusively represented, groups of various sizes were shown in 56 per cent of all cases: within that share, large groups of refugees dominated (around half ), medium-sized

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TABLE 6.2. Refugees’ photographs: coding categories.

Category

Photographs (n)

%

Blurred faces, long distance (photographs [n])

1. Small groups (one to five); no individuals in focus

33

9

19b

2. Medium-sized groups (six to fifteen); no individuals in focus

62

18

26b

3. Large groups (sixteen or more); no individuals in focus

100

29

49b

4. Individuals: adults in focus

69

20

0

5. Individuals: children in focus

85

24

0

Total

349

b The group was photographed from behind or the picture was taken from a long distance (consequently, faces were hardly recognizable).

FIGURE 6.4. Photographs of refugees: collectivization and individualization. Created by Ljiljana Šarić. Large groups: 29%; Medium-sized groups: 18%; Small groups: 9%; Refugee children: 24%; Adult individuals 20%.

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groups followed and small groups were least frequent. Interestingly, with large and medium-sized groups, almost 50 per cent of the photographs were taken from behind. Alternatively, people’s faces were not clearly visible. In some cases, people were photographed from a long distance. One would expect more personalization in photographs showing small groups; interestingly, the share of the photographs showing people from behind and photographs in which faces were not clearly visible was even higher in photographs of small groups compared with other photographs showing groups. Such photographs highly constrain or disable interaction (see Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006; Van Leeuwen 2008). The size of the group depicted was thus not the only important factor. Additional decisive factors were the aforementioned front versus rear view and the light in the photographs. Many photographs were taken at night: these were rather dark and people’s faces were not clearly visible, which resulted in a lack of personalization. In photographs showing groups, either a large number of people were exposed to the viewers’ gaze, or, if the number of refugees represented was smaller, viewers could hardly identify them as individuals with distinct features because the photographs were dark, taken from behind or used a long shot (or a combination of these factors was present). This representation mode reduced the possibility of viewers’ involvement with the subjects represented; it depersonalized these subjects and transformed them into objects and an indivisible mass. Only in a few photographs were refugees shown from a bird’s-eye view; they were ‘below’ the viewer. Photographs showing refugees in groups were, as a rule, offer images that depicted an indirect gaze; people looked away from the camera. A smaller number were a mixture of demand and offer images in which some people looked at the camera but others looked away. Photographs with an indirect gaze were less interactive. Moreover, frequent representations in which subjects’ backs were turned towards the camera, or their faces were not visible (or both), constituted an additional category: absence of eye contact (Durrani 2018: 72). Photographs of large and medium-sized groups without any focus on individuals conveyed the idea of assimilation, which was also often expressed through verbal means. For example, one still video image from Dnevnik in a text published on 13 September 2015 showed a large number of people in a boat photographed from above and from a large distance. The text in the lower part of the image read, ‘Refugee wave persists’.11 Some of the images of large groups were metaphorical, suggesting the metaphors migration is moving water and people are scattered objects. In these images, people – moving, sitting or standing – were shown from a very high angle, and for that reason they appear as colourful dots and lines. In the former cases, very long columns of people walking along a road resemble a river,

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and in the latter, single individuals standing or sitting in smaller groups, in a large, open space, resemble scattered objects.12 The representation strategies in texts employing group photographs were distancing and objectification. The refugees were not close to ‘us’. The only ‘fact’ that viewers and readers knew was that there were many refugees. They were conceptualized as a distant mass or numerous objects for scrutiny, just about to continue their journey. Frequently, the groups were shown entering buses and waiting at train stations. These visuals contributed to framing Croatia as a transit country.

Photographs in Which Single Adults Were in Focus and Photographs of Children Lenette and Cleland (2016: 79) indicate that in recent times, visual representations of migrants have focused more directly on individuals or small groups and their vulnerability rather than on faceless groups. They see this as ‘a shift in intent toward re-humanizing efforts’ (ibid.). Photographs emphasizing individuals that are likely to produce ‘the single victim effect’ – that is, evoke compassion in viewers – have been frequently employed by HRT, which is in line with the tendency noticed by Lenette and Cleland (2016). The share of photographs emphasizing refugees as individuals was significant (44 per cent). In the images showing individualized and personalized adults and children, these individuals were either the sole subject represented, or were ‘singled out’ from the group that they were part of. In most cases, a medium shot or close-up was used, implying less social distance (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006) between them and viewers. This individuation, a close-up perspective, ‘has the potential to offer a more humanised representation of refugees’, as noted by Chouliaraki and Stolic (2017: 1168). The verbal sections of news items of which these photographs were part frequently described refugees represented (e.g. children and families) as vulnerable humans in an extraordinary and difficult situation. For instance, in a news item describing the situation at the Idomeni detention centre, the headline read, ‘Refugees in mud, children sick, women at the end of their tether’.13 One of the four images showed a small group of children walking through the mud, and another showed children in small tents. Two images employed close-ups of children. HRT frequently employed the emblematic imagery of children, conveying the idea of refugees in need of help. Children were represented as sleeping, walking, smiling, playing, crying, being desperate, looking happy and waving – in short, as distinct individuals in a number of ‘everyday’, though extraordinary, situations. A few photographs showed children behind fences, metaphorically looking imprisoned.14 Children were often carried by adults. Photographs that focused on newborn babies with their mothers were also represented. HRT, like

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many other news sources in Croatia, paid special attention to several refugee babies born in Croatia.15 In the news items thematizing newborn babies, personalization was also realized through verbal means. In some texts, children were the focus of entire galleries of photographs; for instance, a text published on 28 August 2015 (headline: ‘HRT in Kanjiža with refugees – moving stories’)16 was entirely devoted to refugees’ tragic situations. The text was rather short; the video (inactive at the time of the analysis) seemed to be its main part. In all of the photographs embedded in this text, children were individualized, looking at the camera and interacting with viewers. Children (smiling or waving) established eye contact with the reader in these demand images, as they did in many others. Offer photographs with medium shots or close-ups – children not looking at the camera, and seemingly not interacting with viewers – were also represented. However, in these photographs, children were also identifiable individuals (e.g. interacting with their parents) that viewers could perceive and acknowledge as such. Some photographs with children and individualized adults explicitly showed suffering: for instance, after the Slovenian police used pepper spray at the Slovenian–Croatian border, a photo embedded in the news item showed a medium shot of two people lying on the ground with their eyes covered by a cloth.17 HRT frequently used ‘ideal victim images’ that were likely to evoke compassion: Höijer (2004: 521) claims that compassion is dependent on such images. Images of individuals in general are open for compassion because people’s faces and emotions are easily identifiable, and viewers can interact with them. However, even when its dominant discourse seemed to be victimizing refugees, HRT often offered a more complex image beyond framing them as prototypical victims (e.g. smiling children were shown in a context in which many other elements, visual and others, connoted suffering).18 The variety of visual discourses suggested by the photographs discussed so far becomes even more complex with photographs (13 per cent) with no visible social actors, or photographs in which certain objects were given prominence.

Photographs with No Apparent or Visible Social Actors Some photographs showed various objects only. In others, people were present but were backgrounded to the extent of not being recognizable. Borderline cases were metaphorical photographs that did formally show people, but did so from an extremely high angle. These photographs were in clear contrast to the photographs of large groups of people and those of individualized refugees. As for their content – that is, the objects exclusively shown or foregrounded – a few subcategories were identified: (a) border signs, checkpoints, fencing and razor wire; (b) infrastructure for detention; (c) graphs, charts and maps; (d) trans-

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portation for refugees’ travel (e.g. trains); (e) objects belonging to refugees and things left behind (e.g. toys, drawings, tents and trash); (f ) vehicles belonging to the police and military; (g) national and supranational symbols (e.g. flags); and (h) humanitarian aid (e.g. food). Categories (a) and (b) were most frequent, followed by categories (c), (d) and (e). These images focused on objects that indirectly referred to the refugees’ situation, using metonymy (the dominant device), symbols and metaphors. The domain of the metonymies employed was refugees (e.g. a toy is shown instead of a child to whom the toy belongs) or a field of action by some other social actors (e.g. the domains are humanitarianism or security measures respectively when blankets and police cars are shown: blankets stand for humanitarian aid and police cars represent security measures). Some subjectless images that used metonymy (showing e.g. feet in mud) denoted refugees’ suffering, whereas other metonymic images (showing e.g. waste left behind) evoked a representation of refugees as cultural ‘others’. In some of the photographs showing border-related objects, the camera angle and shot type (or both) produced an aesthetic effect: the material objects explicitly shown, and the border represented through them, appeared beautiful or ugly. As Rosello and Wolfe (2017: 5) explain, aesthetics in the context of borders is ‘the language that articulates the subject’s sensory perception of a given world, including what counts as art or politics, true or false, beautiful or ugly’. A selection of material objects, such as fences, is employed in the frequent visualization of borders (i.e. the visual ‘sensing of borders’; ibid.). Said sensing of borders includes metonymy: borders are represented through border signs, checkpoints, fencing and razor wire. In some visuals, border-related objects are the main or only object shown, but they are also frequently depicted in the photographs in which adult refugees or children are in focus. Borders in such contexts ‘organize symbolic differences’ (ibid.) between different countries as well as between migrants and transit or host countries. Important artefacts shown in many photographs were fences.19 As clear symbols of power and control, fences often included barbed wire and razor wire. In some photographs, one could see people through fences at a distance, and in others the razor wire was the foregrounded element. In some, the fence was a border between a viewer and a crying child (shown in close-up) behind the fence.20 Depending on other elements in the immediate and broader context, the photographs with fences could be interpreted either as a plea for humanitarianism or as support for the politics of exclusion; in the latter case, they symbolically visualized the (invisible) refugee as a threat. However, the plea for humanitarianism was foregrounded during the entire period analysed: the fences shown were Hungarian and Slovenian. Many photographs of reception centres were ambiguous: on the one hand, they related to humanitarian actions – providing a temporary shelter – and metonymically represented Croatia’s humanitarian approach, but, on the other, they also related to a specific form of confinement (Jovičić 2017).

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Focusing on metonymy, metaphor and symbol in ‘subjectless images’, Vezovnik and Šarić (2018) identified different types of metonymy as the dominant device; the share of metaphors was significantly lower. Following the approach developed there, a photograph showing, for example, lower parts of legs and shoes in mud21 is metonymic, that is, synecdochic (body parts stand for a person). However, it can also be interpreted as a derogatory metaphor with mud as the source domain, and something else (migration?) as the target domain.

Discussion and Conclusion The analysis of a large set of photographs from a source that can be considered representative of the dominant, official Croatian view on the ‘refugee crisis’, and of the representation strategies of mainstream, quality Croatian news sources in general, reveals an interplay of several discourses and frames, and at times a somewhat cacophonous representation of the refugee situation. Many of the photographs of refugees showed large groups of people, supporting the over-aggregation and over-spatialization expressed verbally (see Felberg and Šarić 2017) and disabling the ‘identifiable victim effect’ (Ariely 2008), which suggests that visuals showing individualized persons, especially children, are likely to arouse compassion and empathy (see e.g. Lee and Feeley 2016). Nonetheless, individualization and personalization in photographs showing children and adults were also regular representation patterns. Many of the photographs of groups depicted deindividualized, ‘faceless’ people; however, these groups were rarely depicted as a threat. Only in a very few images (e.g. in some showing very large numbers of refugees walking) could traces of ‘visualities of threat’ or scare tactics (Van Dijk 1993) – connoting that ‘our’ social order is disturbed by cultural ‘others’ that threaten ‘our’ safety – be identified. Because some of these photographs might be interpreted metaphorically, metaphor played a role in deindividuation. In some images, migrant subjects were almost invisible, or substituted by various objects and transitory locations. Although various transitory spaces (e.g. border regions and railway stations) in metonymic and metaphorical representations apparently relate to mobility, they strongly signify entrapment and confinement. The majority of the group photographs, together with other elements of the multimodal texts, conveyed an image of unfortunate, desperate people on the long path from their war-torn countries of origin to Europe.22 In these images, refugees were situated within the visual regime of biological life (Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017: 1167–68): their subjectivity was reduced to their moving, sitting and sleeping, that is, to elementary activities and the needs of their bodies. An (extreme) reduction of subjectivity was also visible in some of the subjectless

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images; those showing humanitarian help connoted refugees’ humanity as being reliant on Western emergency aid (ibid.). As indicated, many of these photographs employed metonymy. Some others occasionally generated metaphorical and symbolic meanings. In HRT’s photographs focusing on individualized adults and children, the refugee situation was often visually constructed as individualized suffering, making possible the identifiable victim effect. These visuals illustrate what Chouliaraki and Stolic (2017: 1168) label a ‘regime of empathy’. Child imagery, as the authors also claim, is conducive to infantilizing refugees: such imagery may aim at mobilizing empathy, but it also portrays refugees as children in need and deprives them of agency and voice. That interpretation, in turn, is context-dependent: in many of HRT’s news items, refugees were actually given a voice (though a variety of social actors also spoke about and for them); their past stories and future plans were told in their own (short) narratives embedded in the news items.23 In such narrative sequences, refugees were not represented as acted upon, but as acting with ‘us’. Refugees were therefore not deprived of agency: a range of their activities were actually given visibility. However, that range was limited by the general, most frequently represented scenario in HRT: spatial movement and being in transit. Two visibilities addressed by Chouliaraki and Stolic (2017) – the visibility of biological life and the visibility of empathy – dominated HRT’s visuals. The visibility of threat was hardly represented. No shift towards securitization discourse could be noticed: humanitarian issues were most prominent in the entire period analysed. This can be related to a few local factors mentioned earlier, including the specific situation of Croatia as only a ‘transit country’ and not a final destination. The Croatian government’s representatives were engaged during the entire period in positioning themselves as humane actors – although showing that Croatia could control its borders because it aspired to join the Schengen area was also important. Also of considerable relevance for this overall positive and humanitarian approach was the experience of a great number of Croatians of displacement and being refugees in the 1990s, and later after the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. Narratives by Croatian citizens, linking their own refugee experiences with the refugee situation of 2015–16, were often embedded in HRT’s news stories.24 Ljiljana Šarić is a professor of South Slavic Linguistics at the University of Oslo. Her research areas are discourse analysis (specifically, the discursive construction of cultural identity), cognitive linguistics, and South Slavic languages, literatures and cultures. Her publications include Contesting Europe’s Eastern Rim: Cultural Identities in Public Discourse (2010), Transforming National Holidays: Identity Discourse in the West and South Slavic Countries, 1985–2010 (2012) and Metaphor, Nation and Discourse (2019).

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Notes This chapter derives in part from a previously published article entitled ‘Visual Presentation of Refugees during the “Refugee Crisis” of 2015–2016 on the Online Portal of the Croatian Public Broadcaster’, International Journal of Communication 13(2019): 991–1015, under Creative Commons licensing. Original article available at: https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/ view/10186/2581 (accessed 12 August 2021). 1. These visibilities of empathy are problematic (see Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017) because the humanitarian discourse in which refugees are shown as victims strips them of agency; see also Antony and Thomas (2017). 2. This can be reached via: http://vijesti.hrt.hr/ (accessed 12 August 2021). 3. The texts collected in the search were not the only ones published in that period. It was not possible to influence the search function in any way. The material can therefore be considered a random sample. 4. Broadly understood, and for the sake of this chapter, ‘texts’ are understood as comprising all available semiotic resources. 5. Up to five photographs appear automatically as part of the texts upon opening them. The number of images is, however, much larger in some articles. 6. In the summer of 2018 (when a first draft for this study was being written), most videos were inactive. 7. The coders agreed in more than 97 per cent of all cases. 8. For the theory of securitization, see Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde (1998). 9. For example, see http://vijesti.hrt.hr/296511/tisuce-izbjeglica-na-srbijansko-maarskojgranici, 26 August 2015. 10. For example, see http://vijesti.hrt.hr/299245/slovenija-primila-150-migranata-cerar-ne ma-koridora-stitimo-schengen, 18 September 2015. 11. See http://vijesti.hrt.hr/297391/orban-migranti-su-njemacki-problem-izbjeglicki-val-pri jeti-europskim-krscanskim-korijenima, 3 September 2015. 12. For metaphors in this particular material – news photographs – El Refaie’s (2003) approach seems applicable: any visual depiction can be a metaphor if its use provokes a metaphorical thought. It is thus more appropriate to talk about ‘construing a metaphor’ or ‘interpreting something as a metaphor’ (Forceville 2016: 25) than to say that something ‘is’ a metaphor. 13. See http://vijesti.hrt.hr/325901/izbjeglice-u-blatu-djeca-bolesna-zene-na-izmaku-snage, 10 March 2016. All translations are mine. 14. See https://arhiv-www.hrt.hr/308337/vijesti/u-sloveniju-jucer-uslo-7600-migranata-aus trija-primila-5000, 13 November 2015. 15. For example, two babies born in Croatia whose parents named them Croatia and Muhammad Hrvoje (Hrvoje is a typical Croatian name), as a gesture of gratitude to the country. See http://vijesti.hrt.hr/321311/u-slavonskom-brodu-roen-sirijski-djecak-hrvoje, 9 February 2016. 16. See http://vijesti.hrt.hr/296817/hrt-u-kanjizi-s-izbjeglicama-potresne-sudbine, 28 August 2015. 17. See http://vijesti.hrt.hr/299245/slovenija-primila-150-migranata-cerar-nema-koridorastitimo-schengen, 18 September 2015. 18. E.g. http://vijesti.hrt.hr/296817/hrt-u-kanjizi-s-izbjeglicama-potresne-sudbine, 28 August 2015. 19. For example, http://www.hrt.hr/305728/vijesti/video-na-sentilju-tisuce-migranata-kojeaustrija-ne-moze-prihvatiti, 30 October 2015; http://vijesti.hrt.hr/323394/slovenskiparlament-odobrio-koristenje-vojnika-na-granici-s-hrvatskom, 23 February 2016.

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20. See http://izbjeglice.hrt.hr/305489/u-dobovu-stizu-vlakovi-na-sentilju-4000-migranata, 29 October 2015. 21. See https://www.hrt.hr/301079/vijesti/u-hrvatsku-uslo-vise-od-87-tisuca-izbjeglica, 30 September 2015. 22. The most frequent migrant activities represented in the data were standing, waiting, walking, sitting and travelling, accounting for 81 per cent of all the activities shown (see Figure 6.2). 23. For example, in the text of ‘Moving Images: In Darkness and Cold across the Sutla River’ (headline), 21 October 2015. 24. See http://izbjeglice.hrt.hr/304155/mjesec-dana-izbjeglicke-krize-snimljene-hrt-ovim-ka merama, 21 October 2015.

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Koca, B.T. 2016. ‘New Social Movements: “Refugees Welcome UK”’, European Scientific Journal 12(2): 96–108. doi:10.19044/esj.2016.v12n2p96. Korteweg, A.C. 2017. ‘The Failures of “Immigrant Integration”: The Gendered Racialized Production of Non-Belonging’, Migration Studies 5(3): 428–44. doi:10.1093/migration/ mnx025. Kress, G., and T. Van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Lee, S., and T.H. Feeley. 2016. ‘The Identifiable Victim Effect: A Meta-Analytic Review’, Social Influence 11(3): 199–215. doi:10.1080/15534510.2016.1216891. Lenette, C., and S. Cleland. 2016. ‘Changing Faces: Visual Representations of Asylum Seekers in Times of Crisis’, Creative Approaches to Research 9(1): 68–83. Martínez Lirola, M. 2017. ‘Discursive Legitimation of Criminalization and Victimization of Sub-Saharan Immigrants in Spanish El País and ABC Newspapers’, in J. Chovanec and K. Molek-Kozakowska (eds), Representing the Other in European Media Discourses. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 136–54. Mitchell, W.J.T. 1994. ‘The Pictorial Turn’, in Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 11–34. ———. 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moeller, S.D. 1999. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death. New York: Routledge. Mulalić, L. 2015. ‘Croatia: Securitisation of the Refugee Issue by the Political Elites’, X-Pressed: An Open Journal, 27 October. Retrieved 20 April 2020 from http://www.x-pressed .org/?xpd_article=croatia-securitisation-of-the-refugee-issue-by-the-political-elites. Permyakova, T.M., and O.L. Antineskul. 2016. ‘“Immigrant” in Russian and French Print Media’, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 45(4): 319–37. doi:10.1080/174 75759.2016.1194309. Rosello, M., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Introduction’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–24. Sariñana, J. 2014. ‘Photography and the Feelings of Others: From Mirroring Emotions to the Theory of Mind’, PetaPixel, 25 October. Retrieved 20 April 2020 from https://petapixel .com/2014/10/25/photography-feelings-others-mirroring-emotions-theory-mind/. Šelo Šabić, S. 2017a. ‘Humanitarianism and Its Limits: The Refugee Crisis Response in Croatia’, in M. Barlai et al. (eds), The Migrant Crisis: European Perspectives and National Discourses. Münster: LIT Verlag, pp. 93–106. ———. 2017b. ‘The Impact of the Refugee Crisis in the Balkans: A Drift toward Security’, Journal of Regional Security 12(1): 51–74. doi:10.11643/issn.2217-995X171SPS80. Sicurella, F.G. 2018. ‘The Language of Walls along the Balkan Route’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16(1–2): 57–75. doi:10.1080/15562948.2017.1309088. Sisgoreo, T. 2016. ‘Refugee Crisis in Croatia’. Borderline-Europe. Retrieved 20 April 2020 from https://www.borderline-europe.de/sites/default/files/background/Refugee%20Crisis %20in%20Croatia%20Report.pdf. Slovic, P. 2010. ‘The More Who Die, the Less We Care’, in E. Michel-Kerjan and P. Slovic (eds), The Irrational Economist: Making Decisions in a Dangerous World. New York: Public Affairs Press, pp. 30–40. Stocchetti, M. 2011. ‘Images: Who Gets What, When and How?’, in M. Stocchetti and K. Kukkonen (eds), Images in Use: Toward the Critical Analysis of Visual Communication. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 11–38. Sweet, E. 2017. ‘The Securitization of Migration in France’, MA dissertation. Ottawa: University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

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Van Dijk, T.A. 1993. Elite Discourse and Racism. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications. Van Leeuwen, T. 2008. Discourse and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Vaughan-Williams, N. 2015. Europe’s Border Crisis: Biopolitical Security and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vezovnik, A., and L. Šarić. 2018. ‘Subjectless Images: Visualization of Migrants in Croatian and Slovenian Public Broadcasters’ Online News’, Social Semiotics 30(2): 168–90. doi:10 .1080/10350330.2018.1541117. Zelizer, B. 2010. About to Die: How News Images Move the Public. New York: Oxford University Press. Župarić-Iljić, D., and M. Valenta. 2019. ‘Refugee Crisis in the Southeastern European Countries: The Rise and Fall of the Balkan Corridor’, in C. Menjivar, M. Ruiz and I. Ness (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 367–88.

Chapter 7

CROSSING THE BORDER BETWEEN TWO SPACES Narration about the Migrant Crisis of 2015–2016 in Italian Newspapers

F Elizaveta Khachaturyan

In recent decades, discourse on immigration in Italian mass media has been the object of several studies situated in various frameworks (e.g. Sciortino and Colombo 2004, which gives an overview; see also Allievi 2014; Colombo 2018). Here, I consider newspaper articles discussing the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ of 2015–16 (see Šarić and Felberg 2019)1 as a narrative text and analyse them within the theoretical framework of border aesthetics. In this perspective, migrants are seen as border-crossers, and borders as ‘places of crossing and waiting’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017: 149) play an important role in the narrative, because they ‘are always imagined and therefore represented, aestheticized’ (Rosello and Saunders 2017: 25). My aim is to show how borders – which, on the one hand, divide space and, on the other hand, are crossed by border-crossers – are represented in the narrative on migrants as constructed in Italian newspapers. Following the definition proposed by Rosello and Wolfe (2017: 5), I understand aesthetics as ‘the language that articulates the subject’s sensory perception of a given world, including what counts as art or politics, true or false, beautiful or ugly’. This definition leads to two important considerations concerning the material analysed in this chapter and the approach applied to the analysis. First, in a newspaper article, there are two possibilities for articulating the ‘subject’s sensory perception of a given world’ (Rosello and Wolfe 2017: 5): words (i.e. verbal information) and photographs (i.e. visual information). This study concentrates on both levels: it analyses which words are used to describe the process of crossing borders and which images are used to show this process

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at the visual level. This type of material can be seen as constituting multimodal texts. Following the definition given by Šarić and Felberg (2019: 206), ‘text’ is understood here ‘in a broad sense and include[s] all available semiotic resources, such as layouts and photographs’. In line with this, I am interested in discovering the various semiotic means – as Šarić and Felberg (ibid.) propose – used to depict the process of crossing the border. Second, if one defines aesthetics as a language, the cognitive approach proposed in linguistic studies can be applied (i.e. Pavlenko 2006; Baron et al. 2019). Just as one may distinguish in language between universal and language-specific properties that can be interpreted as elements connected to the speaker’s cognition, the same distinction can be made when interpreting the aesthetic properties of a text that is seen as narrative. One of the definitions describes narrative as ‘a perceived sequence of non-randomly connected events’ (Toolan 2001: 6).2 The events connected and subjectively perceived generate a representation of reality. Based on the origin of the events that are narrated, a distinction between fictional and non-fictional narrative can be made: ‘fictional narratives are constructed, imagined creations whereas non-fictional ones report stories which have a genesis in real lived experience’ (Mason 2019: 31). At the same time, similar aesthetic principles are important for any type of narrative. The representation of reality produced by the narrator (an author or a journalist in the case of newspapers) for the listener (or reader)3 is based on certain universal aesthetic principles, but it also contains some culture-specific components. As Rosello and Saunders (2017: 25) state, ‘[d]epending on which period, area, language or culture we focus on, our conceptualization of borders and nature . . . will change’. The culture-specific components that one can detect in narrative are due to a similar perception of the world, based on the shared knowledge of the interlocutors and their similar cultural background, which leads them to similar assumptions and interpretations. This common vision of the world shared by members of the same society is clearly formulated in the description of national identity proposed by Ruth Wodak et al. (2009). These features can be described as follows: ‘we assume “national identity” to imply a complex of similar conceptions and perceptual schemata, of similar emotional dispositions and attitudes, and of similar behavioural conventions, which bearers of this “national identity” share collectively and which they have internalized through socialisation (education, politics, the media, sports or everyday practices)’ (ibid.: 4, emphasis added). This means that the author of a narrative is normally aware of a variety of interpretations that can be given to it. The philosophy of dialogue and the place of the ‘Other’, conceptualized by Mikhail Bakhtin (1975), become an important background for the analysis of various discourses created in a society by its members and addressed to its other members. One can presume that the variety of interpretations given to narrative will depend on the reader’s national identity. In

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this case, the authors and readers of journalistic texts published in Italian newspapers are connected by the same national identity,4 and they thus share the same ‘perceptual schemata’ (Wodak et al. 2009: 4), in particular in their perception of space and borders. Similar shared knowledge and a perception of the world leading the individuals (journalists and readers) to similar expectations and interpretations are the fulcrum of migration-related narratives. It is shown below how these elements interact in the narration about migration created in Italian newspapers.

Metaphors The main object of this analysis is metaphors used at both the verbal and visual levels. Metaphors play an important role in narration because they allow ‘us to understand a relatively abstract or inherently unstructured subject in terms of a more concrete, or at least more highly structured, subject matter’ (Lakoff 1993: 245). At the same time, when we choose a metaphor, ‘we signify things through one metaphor rather than another, [and] we are constructing our reality in one way rather than another’ (Fairclough 1992: 194). The choice of a metaphor can be interpreted as an aestheticized view of reality because this choice is based on our senses, perception and cognition – three components on which aesthetics is focused (ibid.: 149). Cognition and perceptual schemata are connected to some conventions and assumptions shared collectively and ‘internalised through socialisation’ (see Wodak et al. 2009: 4). Thus, the metaphors used to describe migration can be divided into universal and culture-specific ones. This division is in line with Lakoff’s (1993: 245) statement that ‘metaphorical mappings vary in universality; some seem to be universal, others are widespread, and some seem to be culture-specific’. In several studies on immigration discourse in mass media, two main metaphor scenarios are described: the space-container and movement scenarios (see e.g. Musolff 2016). The space-container scenario leads to metaphors such as fortress Europe and wall, seen as an obstacle dividing two spaces or protecting the inside space (Silaški and Durovič 2019). The movement scenario is often conceptualized through a water metaphor: flows or a wave of migrants. In Italian public discourse, according to the website Parlare civile5 (Speaking Civilized), four expressions are frequently used when describing the migration crisis: tsunami umano (‘human tsunami’), ondata migratoria (‘migration wave’), esodo (biblico) ‘(biblical) exodus’ and apocalisse (‘apocalypse’). Two of these are part of a water metaphor, and the two others belong to biblical lexis. Metaphors with the words tsunami 6 and ondata (‘big wave’) can be seen as a universal metaphor used to describe a large movement of people connected to water (e.g. Catalano 2017). The use of the two other words, esodo (‘exodus’) and apocalisse

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(‘apocalypse’), is more culture-specific. They belong to biblical lexis, the use of which is quite common in Italian public discourse, and in political discourse in particular (Gualdo 2012). The use of these four expressions can be explained by some common features characterizing journalistic style and by some culturespecific properties typical of Italian society.

Journalistic Style According to the main values applied in choosing and presenting the news, some common features of this process are: negativity, prominence, consonance, impact, novelty, superlativeness and personalization (Bednarek and Caple 2012). The four expressions analysed here contribute to describing the news in terms of ‘superlativeness’ (ibid.: 104). The impact of the internet in recent decades has caused changes to newspapers’ position in everyday life and imposed a different way of presenting information. Because it has become possible to share news in real time, a newspaper article more often presents elaborated comments or an analysis of what has happened (Antonelli 2007). The function of photographs and titles is to connect the news (already introduced by another source) to its analysis in newspapers. The readership has become used to following some events online and to receiving updates and concrete information about what is happening. In this case, metaphors can be used as keywords that catch readers’ attention, help them to follow the news and describe abstract concepts in more concrete terms (see Lakoff 1993). Moreover, the use of the internet and mobile phones makes it easy for journalists to share the same photographs and to update information (Bednarek and Caple 2012; Caple 2013). The narration about the migrant crisis of 2015–16 in the European mass media often used very similar information, in particular similar photographs; for instance, photographs with children were used to personalize the events. Photographs of women and children – a very frequent visual metonymy showing a part for the whole – were intended to create a feeling of empathy towards migrants and to ‘convey the idea that migrants are in need of help’ (Šarić and Felberg 2019: 227). On the one hand, one can claim that the crisis has been presented through the lens of international agencies, and thus based on universal principles. At the same time, the choice of photographs and the description of events depend on the journalist (the bearer of a national identity) and on the (political) orientation of the newspaper. Besides these common features, journalistic style in each country contains some culture-specific properties. Studies of Italian newspapers usually emphasize several features characterizing Italian journalistic style. First of all, a newspaper in Italy is seen as an instrument of struggle and persuasion in which analysis and

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interpretations of facts are more important than the presentation of facts as such (Gatta 2015: 306). The Italian press has been accused of having an elitist character and of neglecting information in favour of a political reading of events (ibid.: 306). This position of the newspaper in Italian society leads to the importance of individuals: the editor-in-chief and the journalists, each with their own personal style. The concept of a giornale personale (‘personal newspaper’) is opposed to a giornale collettivo (‘collective newspaper’). In this case, ‘personal’ refers to the important role that one or several people (persone in Italian) play in the development of the newspaper. The ‘personal newspapers’ are considered important actors in different historical periods: ‘they made their time’ (ibid.: 309).7 This type of newspaper has been chosen for the present analysis. Another important feature of Italian newspapers is also connected to the place of newspapers in society. Italy is a country where newspaper reading is well below the European average. Television has been the main competitor of newspapers since the 1950s (Antonelli 2007). This competition shows the importance of visual information (photographs), which often recalls the event or attracts attention to it: ‘Photography, therefore, has the task of recalling known news; the title can briefly refer to the event and add a comment’ (Gatta 2015: 298).8 The choice of metaphors in Italian newspapers depends on how the events are represented, or, in other words, on the aestheticized view of reality, where the ‘aestheticized’ signals a connection to the reader’s senses, perception and cognition. In this regard, the comments on the word esodo (‘exodus’) given on the website Parlare civile are quite interesting. According to Parlare civile, the word esodo was used in 2011 to describe arrivals from North Africa to the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa. From the very beginning, the term has been considered an exaggeration, because the process was still in its initial phase and there were no clear estimations of any concrete numbers. Scholars from the Osservatorio di Pavia9 have defined this word as ‘epochal lexis’ (lessico epocale) and have explained the definition as follows: on the one hand, its extraordinary sense (straordinarietà) attracts readers’ attention and, on the other hand, it characterizes the narrative style of Italian newspapers (online) (Parlare civile n.d.). Both observations are important for this analysis. First, they mention the narrative style of Italian newspapers. Second, by saying that this term is typical of Italian style, they implicitly accept a culturally specific perspective that can be applied to discussing the choice of words. In spite of the common universal features of journalistic style (mentioned above), some words, expressions and images used in newspapers may be seen as bearers of a specific ‘social and cultural meaning’ shared by the members of a society (Kramsch 2000: 9). Their interpretation and perception by the reader may vary due to differences in the latter’s perceptual schemata. These considerations lead to the main question in this study: how has migration (referred to as an ‘exodus’ in the Italian press) been presented to the Italian readership in Italian newspapers in 2015–16, considering their culture-specific

136 • Elizaveta Khachaturyan

style? To answer this question, it will be important to consider some universal and culture-specific properties of spaces and borders that may have influenced journalistic choice.

Crossing the Borders That Divide Space The definitions of the term migrazione used in various fields (e.g. sociology, biology, etc.) always include two main components: movement and the space in which this movement takes place. Because movement is seen as occurring from one place to another, space is not uniform. It is divided into two parts (at least): one part (space 1) belongs to the subject that moves (non-European migrants, in the case at hand) and the second part (space 2) belongs to the Other (the Europeans, in this case). Representations of space and the line of separation traced through space may vary in a narration, depending on the cultural conventions and traditions in a society. Therefore, it is important to understand how space is perceived in a given culture and how the line of separation between two spaces is seen. This consideration follows the approach outlined by Rosello and Wolfe (2017: 5) in the introduction to Border Aesthetics: ‘aesthetics is essential whenever we need to recognize and appreciate the criteria that define borders (inside and outside, threshold spaces and in-between zones, classification and control, legitimate denizen, resistant border-dweller or undocumented migrant)’. I assume that the criteria used to define the border and to represent it in a narrative can have some universal properties and some culturally specific ones. The universal properties of borders and, thus, of their representation in a narrative can be explained, first of all, by the core meaning of the word ‘border’ in various (at least European) languages. Independently of language, the image of the border contains a line dividing two spaces that belong to two different subjects. These two spaces are described as countries or properties in dictionary definitions (e.g. one definition of the English word ‘border’: ‘1. the line that divides one country from another, 2. a narrow strip of ground around a garden, usually planted with flowers’; Cambridge Dictionary 2020).10 At the same time, each language may have different nuances that can be deduced from the analysis of the word’s etymology, linguistic contexts of its use and the cultural habits and traditions characterizing a particular society. Movement from one space to another implies crossing a separation between them. This separation is perceived as a line (representing a border) that divides different spaces represented at verbal and visual levels. In Italian, this kind of line separating two spaces can have two denominations: confine or frontiera. Both of these terms are used almost interchangeably in the newspapers analysed. Because the semantic differences are not relevant for the purposes of this article, I do not discuss them here. Rather, I focus on how the two spaces and movement from

Crossing the Border between Two Spaces • 137

one to the other are represented. It is useful to first describe how space and its borders are perceived in Italy.

Space and Borders In the Italian landscape, there is a clear division between flat space (pianura padana, ‘the Po Valley’), the mountains (the Dolomites and Apennines) and the sea. In particular, the division between land and water is always evident and very important. Because Italy is a peninsula, almost every Italian region (fourteen of the nineteen) has access to the sea, so the sea is part of the regional landscape. The waterline corresponds to a natural, visually marked division between these two areas – land and water. In the natural landscape, the line dividing the sea from the land is important. It is often not just a simple thin line, but a lungomare (‘promenade’): a sort of road along the sea, used for taking walks. It is a public space where people meet each other, talk and exchange news. The lungomare is originally only a line that divides two spaces, but in Italian culture it has been reanalysed as a public, shared space where individual features characterizing the spaces of the land and sea are mixed. People’s origins or their belonging to a place are less important when they move in this shared space, because all of them are seen as part of it. The lungomare can be compared to the piazza (‘square’), interpreted as a public, shared space, for instance, in studies in cultural anthropology (see Di Renzo 2012). At the administrative level, Italian territory is divided into regions. The borders between the regions are visually marked by green signs on the road. Moreover, the distinction between regions is perceived (even without any visual markers) and can be described, for example, in terms of economic differences (between north and south) and linguistic differences influencing standard Italian in different regions (different accents that one can hear in standard Italian and even different words – the phenomenon called geosinonimi or ‘geographical synonyms’ in Italian lexicology). Space is also characterized by the people that live there and belong to it. Due to the historical and cultural divisions of Italy, belonging to a place is an important feature that characterizes members of society. It can be emphasized by an accent, a surname or even by visual differences that one can observe between Italians from the north and the south. Seen from this perspective, it is not so easy to trace a line of separation between two spaces, because many people feel themselves to belong to several. This can be explained in two ways. First, until 1861 (the year of Italian unification), Italy was fragmented into several states, and in the process of unification the Italian government tried to remove the borders between regions and mix people (Italians from the north had to do their military service in the south and vice

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versa, while teachers were sent to teach in regions other than their own). Second, in the twentieth century, economic differences between the south and the north led to internal migration. Today, Italian society can be described as a society on the move. The borders that separate regions and cities are continuously crossed, for example, by students travelling to university cities from other regions, by various workers (intellectual and manual) who change regions because of jobs and by Italians going to or from the sea, where other family members often live. This continuous movement has led to an almost complete dissolution of the borders. Public holidays (Christmas, Easter and the summer holidays in August) are characterized by the movement of an enormous mass of people going from one space, where they belong, to another, where they may also belong (because they originate from one region but live in another). These periods are often referred to in the newspapers as an esodo (‘exodus’). The movement from space 1 to space 2 assumes an important status, because it is only in this dynamic process that the line of separation can be seen. However, the line of separation stretches and becomes another space that belongs to everyone who moves from one space to another. Roads and railway platforms are not only the lines dividing two spaces; they also become a shared space where each individual is seen as part of the movement, without any connection to the space they come from. This is similar to the situation of the migrants shown in newspaper photographs: we do not know their origins (space 1, point of departure), but we can hypothesize about their destinations (space 2). The analysis below shows how people on the move in a shared space are represented, and how the two other spaces (space 1, the starting point, and space 2, the destination), as well as the distinction between them, are depicted.

Data Analysed The articles analysed here were collected from three Italian newspapers, presented in Table 7.1. As can be seen, the choice was not motivated by the political orientation of the newspapers (for this reason there is no right-wing newspaper), but mostly by the number of copies and by the position of the newspaper in the society: these are newspapers that ‘made their time’, following Gatta’s (2015: 309) definition. The comparison of different political orientations may be an interesting topic for future analysis, but this study focuses on the culturally specific Italian approach to presenting the migration crisis. For this reason, the individual style of each newspaper is not discussed here; nevertheless, I do mention some interesting differences between the three newspapers. I chose the two biggest newspapers (Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica) and one of the most modern newspapers, Il Fatto Quotidiano, founded in 2009. The Corriere della Sera (CdS), founded in 1876, is the biggest and one of the oldest

Crossing the Border between Two Spaces • 139

TABLE 7.1. Newspapers analysed. Corriere della Sera (CdS)

La Repubblica (LR)

Il Fatto Quotidiano (FQ)

Founded

1876

1976

2009

Copies (paper + digital)a

293,201

202,665

43,839

Political orientation

Liberal, centrist

Centre-left

Populist, anti-corruption

a Data obtained from Accertamenti Diffusione Stampa (ADS), roughly translated as ‘press release checks’, accessible at http://www.adsnotizie.it/. (Retrieved 27 January 2020).

Italian newspapers. La Repubblica (LR) was founded a century later, in 1976. It brought with it new tendencies, had a different approach to language and information and became the main competitor of CdS: it has a ‘livelier and more spoken style [and] narrative formulas’ (Gatta 2015: 311).11 The third newspaper used for this analysis – Il Fatto Quotidiano (FQ) – was selected for several reasons. FQ can be described as a newspaper of the twenty-first century: it is an analytical newspaper that selects interesting or breaking news and addresses its comments to a more interested and critical reader (Gatta 2015). It does not belong to any particular geographical area, like many other newspapers that have more readers than FQ according to the official statistics (Data 24 News n.d.) – such as Il Resto del Carlino in Bologna, Il Messaggero in Rome or La Nazione in Florence – nor does it represent any specific owner (in the way that Il Giornale represents the Berlusconi family or La Stampa belongs to the Agnelli family). Articles are constructed in a different way in FQ when compared to CdS and LR: they are shorter and are followed by a sequence of photographs, whereas in CdS and LR only one or two photographs are added to the text. For this chapter, articles from August 2015 to March 2016 (i.e. the period frequently referred to as the ‘migrant crisis’) were analysed. Papers and photographs from the papers have been selected by searching for the main designations for migrants in Italian newspapers: migranti (‘migrants’), rifugiati (‘refugees’) and profughi (‘asylum seekers’). I collected approximately twenty articles for each month in which the migration crisis was in focus. The analysis below is focused on how the four main expressions describing migration are used in Italian multimodal texts.

Analysis at the Verbal Level All four words mentioned on the website Parlare civile represent the process of migration in terms of ‘superlativeness’ (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 104), which

140 • Elizaveta Khachaturyan

is interpreted as ‘alarmism’ on the website and can be defined as hyperbolization in narration. These four expressions – the starting point of the research – represent movement in space from two different points of view: compared to water (through a water metaphor) or compared to biblical events. Only the word apocalisse (‘apocalypse’) does not contain any idea of movement or space. Table 7.2 presents some quantitative data. Among the words described by Parlare civile as frequently used in Italian migrant discourse, the word apocalisse is never used in the material analysed here, tsunami is quite rare, and esodo (‘exodus’) and ondata (‘big wave’) are more frequently used. It is interesting to observe that all these designations are very rare in FQ, which has an approach to the news that is more informative than narrative.12 From a semantic point of view, all three designations have several common features: they are used to describe a large quantity of people that moves to another space. For the words ondata and esodo, this meaning is also mentioned in dictionaries. The word esodo means: ‘1) emigration of an ethnic group caused by political and religious reasons,13 and 2) final displacement of a mass or group of people’ (Dizionario di Italiano 2018). This second metaphorical use developed recently: the Treccani encyclopaedia of 1934 does not give any definition of it. The word esodo is associated with the Bible. At the same time, it is quite frequent in Italian newspapers, where it indicates the displacement of a large mass of people in general – for example, esodo dei dipendenti (‘exodus of employees’), esodo dei tifosi (‘exodus of fans’), esodo dei bambini dall’asilo (‘exodus of children from nursery school’) and esodo di Ferragosto (‘mid-August holiday exodus’). In the definition of ondata, two meanings are described: ‘1) a large wave and mostly a violent one; a motion of the sea produced by a wave; and 2) (figurative) influx, often a sudden influx of a large quantity of things and people’ (ibid.). For the word tsunami, only one meaning is mentioned in the dictionary: ‘a high and violent wave caused by an underwater earthquake’ (ibid.). TABLE 7.2. Migrant discourse in Italian media from August 2015 to March 2016. Corriere della Sera

La Repubblica

Il Fatto Quotidiano

Total

Number of words

48,616

75,285

32,005

155,906

apocalisse (‘apocalypse’)

–

–

–

–

esodo (‘exodus’)

6

12

2

20

tsunami (‘tsunami’)

1

3

–

4

ondata (‘big wave’)

12

15

4

31

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In the material analysed here, the words esodo and ondata are often used in a quantitative construction with the preposition di (‘of ’): esodo di migranti or esodo delle persone (‘exodus of migrants, exodus of people’), un’ondata di arrivi, di migranti or di profughi (‘a big wave of arrivals, of migrants, or of refugees’). The difference between esodo and ondata can be explained by different connotations involving different focus on the space and the movement. Movement conceptualized through the water metaphor stresses danger (e.g. Šarić and Felberg 2019): water is seen as something uncontrollable and unpredictable that occupies another space (land). Being associated with a danger, it evokes a sense of anxiety and fear. The use of biblical lexis establishes a parallel with events that are remote across time and space. This comparison can arouse religious feelings in the reader and, thus, a series of positive emotions, such as compassion or forgiveness. The words ondata and tsunami evoke water, another substance that crosses the line of separation between two spaces (the sea and the land) and occupies the land (i.e. another space). Phrases with the word wave (‘ondata’) often contain an indication of space 1, where the migrants come from. This space is interpreted by the reader as another space not belonging to Europe, one that is unfamiliar and far away. For example: (a) ‘the wave of refugees coming mostly from Syria’14 (Valli 2015, emphasis added); (b) ‘the first line of the wave of migrants coming from Africa and the Middle East’ (Franceschini 2016, emphasis added).15 The word esodo is used with an indication of the point of arrival, or space 2: verso l’Europa (‘towards Europe’), verso il confine sloveno (‘towards the Slovenian border’), verso la Svezia (‘towards Sweden’). It is interesting to note that sentences with the word ondata (‘wave’) and several other words explicitly articulate danger and anxiety, as exemplified in the following articles published by LR: (c) ‘Ankara agrees with Berlin’s fear of a new wave of refugees’16 (‘Migranti’ 2015a, emphasis added); (d) ‘The former Polish prime minister also added alarm at “the new wave” of at least one hundred thousand refugees’17 (‘Migranti’ 2015b, emphasis added). In texts using the word esodo, the temporal dimension is highlighted, as if the connection to history were taken into account. The adjectives used are epocale (‘epochal’), ormai infinito (‘now infinite’) and un esodo che continua ormai da un decennio (‘an exodus that has lasted for a decade’). The word ondata can also be characterized by attributes, but they only specify the main features of the group on the move: grande (‘big’) or umana (‘human’). The verbs used with the word ondata show movement from two perspectives: 1) from the perspective of a large wave that arrives – preme (‘presses’), non rallenta (‘does not slow down’); and 2) from the point of view of space 2 (belonging to the reader), where the wave is heading – per frenare l’ondata di rifugiati in arrivo (‘to break the wave of refugees that is coming’, CdS). In both cases, the opposition between two spaces is emphasized.

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In further examples from LR, the phrases with exodus describe movement without any focus on the concrete actions from different sides: (e) ‘In their case it is an exodus that defies any obstacle’18 (‘Germania’ 2015, emphasis added); (f ) ‘On the land front, the exodus of thousands of people to the Slovenian border continues’19 (‘Migranti’ 2015a, emphasis added); (g) ‘Europe has discovered the new exodus around the corner’20 (Ginori 2016, emphasis added). Tsunami is used with verbs that describe the crossing of a line that separates two different spaces in the following example from LR: (h) ‘A real, actual human “tsunami” that is crossing the line of the border at this time’21 (‘Applausi’ 2015, emphasis added). Moreover, the idea of occupation can also be explicitly introduced with the verb inondare (‘flood’), as in this example from CdS: (i) ‘After flooding the Balkans for twelve days, climbing over big and small walls in Hungary and Macedonia, here it comes: the tsunami’22 (Battistini 2015, emphasis added).

Analysis at the Visual Level From the analysis of metaphors at the verbal level, it emerged that esodo, ondata and tsunami are used to describe migration as a movement of a large number of people from one space to another. Different components of movement can be explicitly mentioned at the verbal level: space 1 (the point of departure) or space 2 (the point of destination). This section focuses on how space and the movement of migrants across this space are shown at the visual level. The main attributes of a border, as a line of separation between two countries, are usually associated with border guards and boundary stones, but these elements are never shown in the data analysed. Barbed wire appears very occasionally in some photographs (e.g. to show the process of crossing the border).23 It has negative connotations and can be interpreted as a line of separation that evokes difficulties to overcome or a hostile attitude (or both). The line in the photographs is a road. It can be interpreted at several levels. First of all, there is a concrete connection between real events and the photographs. The crisis of 2015–16 took place on the road. The main actions consisted in waiting at the railway station, trying to catch a train, or going through a country, trying to cross it and to arrive in another country. For instance, the events of 2018 referred to as the ‘odyssey’ of the Aquarius vessel (see Pacini 2018) are featured in the media not through representations of roads, but rather the sea. At the same time, a road in this case can be seen as a concrete representation of migration, described as movement from space 1 to space 2. It is a line that takes the form of a space between two spaces (a point of departure and a point of destination). This line represents a shared space that belongs to nobody and, thus, everyone there can be seen as part of it. It can be compared to a piazza (‘square’)

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or to a lungomare (‘promenade’) in the Italian tradition, and therefore is potentially interpreted as a space open to others. In the photographs, people staying or walking on the road are often depicted. The separation between two spaces is often represented through contrasts (instead of concrete lines): for example, two different landscapes (e.g. the land and the mountains, or the land and the sea), people belonging to two different spaces (e.g. migrants opposed to the police) or even colour contrast. The majority of the photographs depict people. In migration studies, it has been demonstrated that to describe a large number of people, different images can be used: a crowd of people, a small group or even just a few people unified by the same goal (see Šarić and Felberg 2019). Moreover, distance, shot type (long, medium or close-up) and interaction with the viewer (e.g. eye contact) are the main strategies used to represent migrants in photographs (ibid.; Van Leeuwen 2008).24 In the data analysed here, another interesting strategy emerged: some photographs are completely filled with people, while others show people and empty space. This different composition of photographs can be interpreted in terms of movement. Photographs with empty space are perceived as more dynamic (even if people do not move), whereas a photograph full of people is more static. Dynamic photographs offer a wider perspective and are more focused on movement. One can argue that they present two different visions of space: space with people (i.e. occupied by people) and space free from people. From this opposition (people versus empty space) the idea of freedom emerges: free space can be occupied by somebody else, and the migrants can move because there is enough space. Static photographs show only space occupied by people. There is no possibility of moving or changing position. These types of photographs can evoke feelings of danger. Table 7.3 presents different elements used to shape the subjective perception of a photograph and their possible connotations. Different combinations of elements can strengthen or weaken the negative or positive effects: mixing elements from different rows of the table (e.g. women in dark colours or men in bright colours, occupying the entire photograph or not) may attenuate the negative or positive perception of the photograph. TABLE 7.3. Elements used for depicting movement and space. Elements in the photograph Negative connotation

Positive connotation

Main participants

Women and/or children

Men

Quantity

Crowd

Group of people, individuals

Colours

Dark

Bright/light colours

Composition

People completely occupy space

Space partially occupied (empty space)

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Conclusion Within the framework of border aesthetics, migrants can be seen as bordercrossers and the process of migration as a process of crossing borders. Therefore, the narration of migration created in a newspaper article becomes a story of the process of crossing borders where two different spaces are involved (space 1, the point of departure, and space 2, the point of destination) and where people belong to or represent these two spaces. These components of a narrative have universal and culture-specific properties. The universal properties may be explained by similar values applied in journalistic style to the choice and presentation of the news. The use of similar water metaphors when describing the so-called migration crisis confirms this universal approach. The culture-specific properties are based on different ‘perceptual schemata’ (Wodak et al. 2009: 4) that unify bearers of the same national identity. Therefore, two spaces and the line separating them can be perceived, and thus aestheticized, differently in different societies. Two main metaphors have been used in Italian newspapers to describe the process of crossing borders: ondata and esodo. Both of them describe a large number of people moving from space 1 to space 2. However, whereas ondata highlights the idea of occupation – people from space 1 cover (or occupy) space 2, which belongs to the others – esodo focuses on the movement of people that takes place between space 1 and space 2. In this way, the line separating the two spaces (i.e. the border) stretches to become a shared space belonging to everybody. This shared space – the point of encounter for people belonging to different spaces – is typical in Italian society; it can be associated with a piazza, a lungomare or a road. At the verbal level, the use of the word ondata creates a negative effect: the sentences where it is used highlight an opposition (using verbs of action and specification of the point of departure, far from the reader) and the anxiety is often explicit (see examples (c) and (d) above). The use of the word esodo evokes a temporal dimension. At the visual level, many photographs represent a large number of people that can be interpreted in terms of ondata (and thus occupation) or esodo (and thus movement). Among different strategies, the manner of filling the space in the photograph can be considered one of the most important. An opposition between empty space and occupied space transmits dynamism and, thus, a possibility to move and to open and share the space with others. A space completely occupied by people may be interpreted as static, without any prospects for moving or changing the situation. In the future, a contrastive analysis of newspapers in other languages, situated in the same framework of border aesthetics, could be useful for better understanding national differences. It would also be interesting to compare how

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the representation of migration crises has changed across time, analysing photographs and written texts from different periods (e.g. from the beginning of the twentieth century). Elizaveta Khachaturyan is Associate Professor of Italian Language and Linguistics at the University of Oslo (Norway). Her current research focuses on linguistic and cultural differences in various types of discourses. As part of the research project ‘Discourses of the Nation and the National’, she created a corpus (SILaNa) of thirty-two interviews about national identity conducted in Italy and in Norway. She has also edited a special issue of Oslo Studies in Language (OSLa 10(1), 2018) titled Italiano e norvegese: Studi di lingua e di cultura, and a collected volume (co-edited with A. Llosa Sanz), Scandinavia through Sunglasses: Spaces of Cultural Exchange (Peter Lang, 2019).

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

For critics of the label, see e.g. De Genova (2018); Lendaro (2016). For a more detailed description of narrative, see Mason (2019: 26–32). Regarding the place of the listener, see Ochs and Capps (1996). With rare exceptions, such as when the article has been translated from another language. However, these cases are not considered here. The aim of this project is to provide practical help to journalists and communicators in using correct language when speaking about sensitive issues involving a risk of discrimination. The project involves a book with the same title published by Bruno Mondadori (2013) and a website with more than two hundred keyword cards featuring explanations of etymology, current use, data, examples of good or bad usage in communication, and alternatives. According to the website Parlare civile, the first use of this word to describe migrants is attributed to Berlusconi, who used it in spring 2011 after the tsunami in Japan. ‘[H]anno fatto il loro tempo’. Translations are all mine. ‘Alla fotografia, dunque, è affidato il compito di richiamare una notizia nota; il titolo può rinviare sinteticamente all’evento e aggiungere un commento’. The Osservatorio di Pavia (founded in 1994 by a group of social science professors from the University of Pavia) is an internationally recognized institute for analysing and studying mass communication and election campaigns. From the semantic point of view, it would be interesting to analyse the contexts of use of this word in different languages, but spatial limitations prevent that here. ‘[S]tile più vivo e parlato, formule narrative’. I also checked another metaphor scenario: space-container. The metaphor fortress Europe is used only once in CdS, in an article by the French journalist and philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy translated from French. When searching online, the combination fortezza Europa (‘fortress Europe’), whenever used, often appears in quotation marks. The word muro (‘wall’) is more often used to refer to a concrete construction. This was a real discussion in several countries that were planning to build a wall.

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13. It is interesting to mention that whereas the Italian word esodo is defined by the word emigration, the English word exodus, for instance, is defined only as ‘the movement of a lot of people from a place’ (Cambridge Dictionary 2020). 14. ‘[L]’ondata di profughi proveniente in larga parte dalla Siria’. 15. ‘[L]a prima linea dell’ondata di migranti proveniente dall’Africa e dal Medio Oriente’. 16. ‘Ankara condivide il timore di Berlino di una nuova ondata di profughi’. 17. ‘L’ex premier polacco ha aggiunto anche l’allarme per “la nuova ondata” da altri almeno centomila rifugiati’. 18. ‘Il loro è un esodo che sfida qualsiasi ostacolo’. 19. ‘Sul fronte terrestre, va avanti l’esodo di migliaia di persone verso il confine sloveno’. 20. ‘[L]’Europa ha scoperto il nuovo esodo alle porte’. 21. ‘Un vero e proprio “tsunami” umano che sta in queste ore varcando la linea di confine’. 22. ‘Dopo aver inondato per dodici giorni i Balcani, scavalcati muri e muretti d’Ungheria e Macedonia, ecco lo tsunami’. 23. It is worth mentioning that it appears more often in FQ than in the two other newspapers. 24. Due to limits on space, I cannot illustrate these strategies and their uses to represent people, but I take into consideration the people as part of movement from one space to another.

References Allievi, S. 2014. ‘Immigration, Religious Diversity and Recognition of Differences: The Italian Way to Multiculturalism’, Identities 21(6): 724–37. Antonelli, G. 2007. L’italiano nella società della comunicazione. Bologna: Il Mulino. ‘Applausi all’arrivo dei migranti a Monaco di Baviera e a Vienna: Germania e Austria aprono le frontiere’. 2015. La Repubblica, 4 September. Retrieved 17 April 2021 from http:// www.repubblica.it/esteri/2015/09/05/news/austria_e_germania_aprono_le_frontiere_ai_ migranti_dall_ungheria-122242775/. Bakhtin, M.M. [1953] 1975. Voprosy literatury i estetiki [Problems of literature and aesthetics]. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaja literatura. Baron, I., et al. 2019. ‘Présentation: Le lexique entre typologie, cognition et culture’, Langages 214(2): 5–17. Retrieved 24 September 2019 from https://www.revues.armandcolin.com/lettres-langues/langages/langages-no-214-22019/presentation-lexique-entretypologie-cognition-culture. Battistini, F. 2015. ‘Budapest, l’attesa di centinaia di profughi bloccati alla stazione’, Il Corriere della Sera, 2 September. Retrieved 17 April 2021 from http://www.corriere.it/esteri/15_ settembre_02/tra-profughi-bloccati-stazione-budapest-che-sognano-germania-aad4202c5138-11e5-addb-96266eadb506.shtml. Bednarek, M., and H. Caple. 2012. ‘“Value added”: Language, Image and News Values’, Discourse, Context & Media 1: 103–13. Cambridge Dictionary. 2020. ‘Border’. Retrieved 10 December 2020 from https://dictionary .cambridge.org/dictionary/english/border. Caple, H. 2013. Photojournalism: A Social Semiotic Approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Catalano, T. 2017. ‘When Children Are Water: Representation of Central American Migrant Children in Public Discourse and Implication for Educators’, Journal of Latinos and Education 16(2): 124–42.

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Colombo, M. 2018. ‘The Representation of the “European Refugee Crisis” in Italy: Domopolitics, Securitization, and Humanitarian Communication in Political and Media Discourses’, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies 16(1–2): 161–78. Data 24 News. n.d. ‘Top20 dei quotidiani piú venduti, al primo posto il Corriere della Sera: Ultimo Il Fatto Quotidiano’. Retrieved 13 August 2021 from http://www.data24news.it/media/ top20-dei-quotidiani-piu-venduti-al-primo-posto-corriere-della-sera-ultimo-quotidiano/. De Genova, N. 2018. ‘The “Migrant Crisis” as Racial Crisis: Do Black Lives Matter in Europe?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 41(10): 1765–82. Di Renzo, E. 2012. Anatomia dello struscio: Giovani e socialità in una moderna città di provincia. Roma: Universitalia. Dizionario di Italiano. 2018. Online edition of Il Sabatini Coletti. Retrieved 10 December 2019 from https://dizionari.corriere.it/dizionario_italiano/. Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Franceschini, E. 2016. ‘Migranti, l’Italia la spunta: Via il Trattato di Dublino, ogni paese avrà una quota’, La Repubblica, 20 January. Retrieved 17 April 2021 from https://www.re pubblica.it/esteri/2016/01/20/news/migranti_l_italia_la_spunta_via_il_trattato_di_dubli no_ogni_paese_avra_una_quota-131627706/. Gatta, F. 2015. ‘Giornalismo’, in G. Antonelli, M. Motolese and L. Tomasin (eds), Storia dell’italiano scritto III. Italiano dell’uso. Rome: Carocci, pp. 293–347. ‘La Germania sospende Schengen: Naufragio in Grecia: 34 migranti morti, strage bambini’. 2015. La Repubblica, 13 September. Retrieved 17 April 2021 from https://www.repub blica.it/esteri/2015/09/13/news/migranti_12mila_arrivi_ieri_a_monaco_nuovo_record_ in_ungheria_4mila_in_24_ore-122779533/. Ginori, A. 2016. ‘Migranti: Calais, viaggio al termine dell’Europa’, La Repubblica, 31 January. Retrieved 17 April 2021 from https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2016/01/31/news/ calais_viaggio_al-132390208/. Gualdo, R. 2012. ‘Il linguaggio politico’, in P. Trifone (ed.), Lingua e identità: Una storia sociale dell’italiano. Rome: Carocci, pp. 235–62. Kramsch, C. 2000. Language and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G. 1993. ‘The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor’, in A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 202–51. Lendaro, A. 2016. ‘A European “Migrant Crisis”? Some Thoughts on Mediterranean Borders’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 16(1): 148–57. Mason, J. 2019. Intertextuality in Practice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Marazzini, C. 2004. Breve storia della lingua italiana. Bologna: Il Mulino. ‘Migranti, ancora morti nell’Egeo: Migliaia di profughi entrano in Slovenia’. 2015a. La Repubblica, 18 October. Retrieved 17 April 2021 from https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2015/10/18/ news/migranti_ancora_morti_nell_egeo_a_migliaia_entrano_in_slovenia-125354304/. ‘Migranti, Austria costruisce barriera al confine con Slovenia: Il ministro: “Per controllare flusso”’. 2015b. La Repubblica, 28 October. Retrieved 17 April 2021 from https://www.repubblica .it/esteri/2015/10/28/news/emergenza_migranti_recinzione_austria-126053157/. Musolff, A. 2016. Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury. Ochs, E., and L. Capps. 1996. ‘Narrating the Self ’, Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 19–43. Pacini, M. 2018. Epocalisse: Appunti di un cronista pessimista. Milano: Mimesis. Parlare civile. n.d. ‘Esodo biblico’. Retrieved 13 August 2021 from http://www.parlarecivile.it/ argomenti/immigrazione/esodo-biblico.aspx. Pavlenko, A. (ed.) 2006. Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression, and Representation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Rosello, M., and T. Saunders. 2017. ‘Ecology’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 25–49.

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Rosello, M., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Introduction’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–24. Šarić, L., and T. Felberg. 2019. ‘Representations of the 2015/2016 “Migrant Crisis” on the Online Portals of Croatian and Serbian Broadcasters’, in L. Viola and A. Musolff (eds), Migration and Media: Discourses about Identities in Crisis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 203–37. Schimanski, J., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Intersections: A Conclusion in the Form of a Glossary’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 147–69. Schmiedtová, B., C. von Stutterheim and M. Carroll. 2011. ‘Language-Specific Patterns in Event Construal of Advanced Second Language Speakers’, in A. Pavlenko (ed.), Thinking and Speaking in Two Languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 66–107. Sciortino, G., and A. Colombo. 2004. ‘The Flows and the Flood: The Public Discourse on Immigration in Italy, 1969–2001’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 9(1): 94–113. Silaški, N., and T. Durovič. 2019. ‘The Great Wall of Europe’, in L. Viola and A. Musolff (eds), Migration and Media: Discourses about Identities in Crisis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 187–201. Toolan, M. 2001. Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. London: Routledge. Valli, B. 2015. ‘Sul dolore dell’Europa l’ombra lunga dell’emergenza profughi’, La Repubblica, 18 November. Retrieved 17 April 2021 from https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2015/11/18/ news/lo_scenario_dieci_mesi_fa_dopo_l_attacco_a_charlie_hebdo_le_piazze_si_riempiro no_oggi_l_atmosfera_non_e_piu_quella_in_m-127611279/. Van Leeuwen, T. 2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. Wodak, R., et al. 2009. The Discursive Construction of National Identity, 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Part III

EUROPEAN MIGRATION REPRESENTED IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN CINEMA

F

Chapter 8

BORDER, SPACE AND THE BODY IN THE FILMS BIUTIFUL AND VICTORIA

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The border is a rich and extensively problematized notion. It is, at the same time, both linear and nonlinear, visible and invisible, a place and a metaphor. From Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) Borderlands/La frontera to more recent studies such as Johan Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe’s (2017) Border Aesthetics, the concept of the border has been subject to fruitful theoretical discussion and has served as a tool with which to explore various artistic manifestations. In this chapter, I adopt a wide and flexible approach to the notion of the border, an approach that, rather than setting limits, will open the door to our study of two films: Biutiful (2010), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Victoria (2015), directed by Sebastian Schipper. These two films share a connection to the Spanish-speaking world and both, though quite differently, represent migration. Biutiful tells the story of Uxbal, an ex-husband, father and former drug addict who lives in Barcelona and is dying of cancer. Uxbal, who lives with his two children, earns his living as the contact between clandestine Chinese manufacturers and Senegalese migrants, who sell black market goods illegally on the streets. Victoria, on the other hand, follows the encounter between Victoria, a young Spanish woman living in Berlin, and four young men: Sonne, Boxer, Blinker and Fuss. The film starts with a chance late-night encounter in which the characters get to know each other, but quickly evolves into an adrenaline rush when Victoria is unexpectedly dragged into robbing a bank and ends up fleeing under gunfire from a police patrol. At the end of the film, Victoria watches Sonne die, takes the bag with the money they have just stolen and leaves the hotel where they were hiding, walking away from the camera that has been following her throughout the film in one long, non-stop take.

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This chapter will carry out a comparative analysis of these two films. Taken together, the films are very different in their uses of genre, time, photography and script. They are different too in their portrayal of migration. Whereas Biutiful typically focuses on Uxbal and portrays the migrant experience through its contact with this Spanish protagonist, Victoria puts the migrant – Victoria herself – at the centre of its action. The type of migration the two films represent is also different, Biutiful conveying a non-European and Victoria a European migrant experience. Despite their differences, Biutiful and Victoria share some common traits, which will form the basis for the following discussion and which have served as the criteria for our choice of material. Both depict the migrant experience. Both deploy subterranean and urban space, limbo and the body as key components and generators of meaning. Finally, both have a complexity that invites reflection and largely avoids the victimizing, stereotypical and one-sided images of the Other. The main aim of this chapter will be to study the role of the body and space, more specifically subterranean and limbic spaces, as carriers of metaphorical meanings linked to the notion of the border and migration in the two films. Methodologically, the analysis will rely on concepts related to subterranean space, limbo, border aesthetics and metaphor. In this chapter I will combine these tools and generate an analysis that derives from the areas where they inevitably and fruitfully merge and entwine. As we will see, both the body and limbo can be seen as both spaces and borders. The metaphorical meanings attached to these terms will help us attain a better understanding of the portrayal of migration in these films.

Urban Spaces: The Subterranean, Limbo and the Border The surface of the earth can be seen as a border between two spheres: the underground and the above ground. In her study ‘Rethinking Urban Space in Contemporary British Writing’, Holly Prescott (2011) draws attention to a variety of studies on urban subterranean space in literature. Of special interest to the present chapter is David Pike’s (2005) discussion of the rich metaphorical meanings accumulated through time and inescapably associated with any represented underground spaces. As Pike (ibid.: 5) puts it, a ‘primary set of associations persist from the medieval and early modern imagination of the underground’ – ‘an unimaginably rich, albeit inchoate and intoxicating, brew of other times, places and modes of being in the worlds’ (ibid.: 197). In a similar way, Rachel Falconer (2007: 3) refers to ‘this mixed inheritance of views about infernal journeys from Dante, Greek and Roman myth, Judeo-Christian theology, Freud’s theory of the unconscious and Marx’s theory of economic base and superstructure’. The underground is thus unavoidably attached to a series of meanings that originate in

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the long tradition of depictions of the subterranean, and in its connection, for example, to death, suffering, quests or the primitive. A series of dualities can be found in connection to subterranean space. One of these is indicated in Pike’s (2005: 7) reflection that underground spaces have been integrated into urban life, through the construction, for instance, of underground transportation, while at the same time functioning as a place for the ‘unfit’, for ‘the trash heap of the world above, the place to which everyone, everything and every place posing a problem or no longer useful is relegated’ (ibid.: 5). Prescott (2011: 168), in her analysis of Tobias Hill’s Underground, connects Pike’s idea to the notion of the migrant: Hill presents a subterranean London which yokes together both the capitalistdriven city-space with the strange, unsettling and uncontainable underground spaces home to those who have fallen into a life outside of the aboveground society . . . Casimir realizes that London’s Underground is not only a source of labour and livelihood for himself, but also for countless other immigrants like himself.

This association of the migrant with the underground, then, can be seen not as a passing reference or as specific to the films analysed here, but as a much more inherent phenomenon that connects the subterranean to the unwanted, the outcast and the exiled as a means of hiding away and thus blocking visibility and contact. Another duality relevant to this study is that which connects subterranean spaces to the material and the fantastic. The subterranean can be seen as integrated into the urban, capitalistic system, and in that sense, it serves a series of specific functions linked to production and materiality, such as warehousing and storage, the transport of goods or persons, and the removal or dumping of non-productive assets, such as the dead or the subversive. On the other hand, several theorists point out that there is a strong connection between the subterranean and the fantastic or supernatural (Fitting 2004: 7; Pike 2005: 11; Falconer 2007: 89). This will be especially relevant to our analysis of Biutiful, where, in a cellar in which a number of migrants died, their ghosts appear floating on the ceiling. Rachel Falconer (2007: 2), in her study of descent narratives, uses the term ‘katabatic imagination’, from the Greek katabasis (‘going down’), to refer to the long tradition of narratives about heroes’ descent into the underworld that includes, for instance, Orpheus, Homer’s Odysseus and Virgil’s Aeneas. As Graham Holderness (2007: 279) points out, these classical descent narratives ‘are either for the purpose of seeking information, or with the intention of delivering one of the dead from bondage in the underworld’. Also of note are Falconer’s (2007: 1) observations on the transformative effect of descent on the hero, and the internal process that descent narratives imply: a process of ‘destruction and rebirth of the

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self through an encounter with the absolute Other’. The underground is thus intrinsically attached to the notion of descent and to the construction of the self through the journey into it. The idea of travel and transformation through moving from one context to another adds a further dimension to the concept or border conveyed in these films. A close neighbour to the notion of the underground is limbo, which comes from the Latin limbus, meaning border or edge. In early Christianity, limbo was a place at the edge of Hell that contained innocent souls excluded from heaven (Planells 1986: 600). Limbo is thus connected to the idea of the subterranean, as well as the border, and has long been used to represent a place for waiting and a place whose main characteristic is that of being on hold or suspended (Mora 2014: 10). In that sense, limbo conveys some of the most central features of the migrant experience and the study of waiting in border studies.1 Another aspect of limbo that will be relevant to this study is its connection to the dead, the ghostly and life after death. Vicente Luis Mora (ibid.: 11) writes that limbo functions as a ‘narrative space-time, a place that needn’t be understood in a biblical way, but rather in a fantastic or, if you prefer, experimental way’ (my translation). Both the subterranean and limbo thus share this connection to the fantastic and its potential as a carrier of rich metaphoric meaning. Pike (2005: 16) writes that the underground ‘is a spatial metaphor as well as a material space of difference’, while Mora (2014: 9) describes how limbo can be used as a ‘political metaphor for displaced migrants’ (my translation). Visual metaphors, as relevant as they are to filmic studies, are not the only way to interpret the films analysed here. This chapter will also use metaphor in a wider, more inclusive and less film-specific way, following the cognitive theory of metaphor articulated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) in Metaphors We Live By. Joseph Grady’s (1999) notions of ‘correlation’ and ‘resemblance’ will also be used as a basis for this approach to metaphor. As for corporeality, this chapter understands the body as a space involved in a series of phenomena associated with migration. As Alba Marcé García (2018: 85) writes in her study on Biutiful, the subaltern body is ‘a space that serves as a reflection of the systemic inequalities of the global economy present in Barcelona’s urban landscape’ (my translation).

Cellars and Discos: The Multifarious Underground In the film Biutiful there is a varied and constant representation of the migrant. Some of the main characters are Chinese migrants, both empowered, such as Hai, the Chinese boss at the clandestine bag factory, and deprived, such as the girl Li, who works for Hai during the day but at night is locked up in a cellar under the factory, sleeping on a mattress on the bare floor together with the

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other Chinese workers. The other migrant group represented in Biutiful is Senegalese, whose members sell the products illegally manufactured by the Chinese on the shopping streets of Barcelona. The link between these two groups is Uxbal. Though seemingly native, Uxbal has several personal links to migration. His father fled Spain and died in Mexico before he was born. Uxbal does not speak Catalan, so it seems likely that he was born outside Catalonia and later migrated there from some other part of Spain, and was a charnego, as they are colloquially called in Catalonia (Azcona 2015: 8; DiFrancesco 2015: 32).2 His name, Uxbal, though it sounds Basque, was invented by the director, who was inspired by the name of a street in Mexico called Uxmal (DiFrancesco 2015: 36). As María del Mar Azcona (2015: 8) puts it, ‘Emigration, both within Spain and from Spain to Mexico, is part of Uxbal’s background, which brings his story close to those of the immigrants he comes across in the film even if he is now on the “other side” of the migratory movements’. Biutiful’s depiction of the exploitation, misery and exclusion attached to migrant experiences is mirrored in its use of space. There is a setting in the film that sticks out in this respect, and that is the cellar where the Chinese workers sleep. This space serves as a revealing container of the human price paid to maintain the existing economic system. The door of the cellar is a border between wealth and deprivation, and at the same time serves as a link between different worlds. As Prescott (2011: 145) writes, the underworld ‘at the same time mirrors yet is also “other” than the aboveground city’. The fake bags produced in the factory, located in some industrial area on the outskirts of Barcelona, are cheap copies, easily damaged and not allowed in the city centre. They can be seen as reflections of the clandestine workers, themselves also illegal and vulnerable. In a sense, however, these copies are a distorted reflection of the legitimate economic activity that takes place above ground, a tension that is highlighted in the film when the Senegalese are shown selling the fake bags against the background of the luxury boutiques in one of Barcelona’s main shopping streets, just some minutes before being hit by a brutal police raid. Uxbal has a dual role in this exploitation system: though aware of the enslavement of the workers, he takes his share of the profits. At the same time, seeing the poverty around him, he tries to help by installing gas heaters in the cellar for the winter. His decision to buy the cheapest heaters ends up killing the workers; their dead bodies are later found scattered on the floor of the cellar, asphyxiated by a gas leak. When Uxbal, who has the ability to see and communicate with the dead, descends into the cellar, he can hear the high-pitched hum in his head blending with the sound of anguished, unintelligible voices. Looking up at the ceiling we see, together with Uxbal, the ghosts of the workers in painful, petrified postures, looking down on him. The workers unfold into two spheres, becoming both visible and invisible, real and fantastic, quiet and loud, dead and living. The cellar in this scene works as a metaphor for hell and its various meanings.

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In a sense, this subterranean space has been a kind of living hell, a place for enslavement and deprivation. It stands both as a material hell and a fantastic hell, a place for suffering and exclusion both in life and death. It is revealing for our study of the subterranean that after his shocked and painful discovery of the cellar accident, Uxbal leaves the factory and, for the first and only time in the film, finds himself in a high, outdoor urban location – a bridge – as if through vertical ascent he could try and flee the horror he has just witnessed. Uxbal’s abilities to communicate with the dead and help them on their way are shown in an earlier scene in which, in his role as a medium, he is called to a funeral wake. He enters a church and descends some stairs into a room where the bodies of three children are laid out. Uxbal sits there alone, listening to the voice of one of the children, who then appears as a ghost sitting on a chair in the background. As Kathleen Honora Connolly (2015: 550) points out, Uxbal transgresses dualities ‘in his various roles as a medium and intermediary, shuffling between spheres and crossing the borders between those living in the shadows, and those in the light’. In this sense, border-crossing processes in the film take place in different spheres; they are linked to the migration of bodies and also of souls. Despite the cellar, the funeral wake and some short scenes in the subway, Biutiful is mostly set above ground. That said, many of these scenes have a cavelike feeling. This could be linked to Pike’s (2005: 3) notion of the ‘new underground’, which refers to a place that is ‘covered, windowless, or otherwise able to give the impression of being subterranean no matter where it may actually be located’. Pike (ibid.) enumerates a series of examples, such as the factory, the prison cell or the bunker. Some of the locations in Biutiful have this ‘impression of being subterranean’, such as the shacks where the Senegalese dwell, the morgue where Uxbal sees the exhumed body of his father, the Chinese factory and the church. The choice of colour in these scenes is often quite monochrome, with dirty yellowish or brownish walls. Uxbal’s home is a hybrid in this sense. In many night-time scenes, his flat appears dark, and instead of windows, we can see the reflections from his mirrors, so that this multiplication of the interior replaces the outside world and creates an underworld atmosphere. At other times his home is profusely illuminated by sunlight coming from various windows. This functions as a marker of the room’s above-ground position and at the same time serves as a visual metaphor for joy and hope. A clear example of this is the arrival of his ex-wife Marambra at Uxbal’s home. The scene in which she eats and chatters happily with her children is set in Uxbal’s otherwise gloomy dining room, but now it is daylight and the sun illuminates the scene through two windows, one at the back of the scene and one at the side. In a previous nighttime scene, this same room appears with gloomy tones and without Marambra, a character who, though mentally unstable, characterizes a search for happiness. Another female character bringing light to Uxbal is Ige, the Senegalese woman

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whom he welcomes into his home and who ends up taking care of him when he is near death. On several occasions towards the end of the film, she comes into his dark bedroom and opens the blinds to let in some light and wake him up. The whole film can be seen as a movement towards death, and at the same time towards rebirth or life after death. This is depicted in the first and last scenes of the film, which show Uxbal after he has died, meeting his father, also dead, in a foggy forest. I will come back to this scene when dealing with limbo. Another character who undergoes a rebirth of the self is Victoria, the main character in Schipper’s Victoria. The film starts in a subterranean disco, where the protagonist dances alone in a kind of trance. The disco appears to be a place of freedom, joy and leisure, but soon this border between underground and above ground comes to serve as a barrier that blocks the entrance of the four male protagonists of the film: Sonne, Boxer, Blinker and Fuss. Just as Victoria approaches the stairs on her way out of the disco, we see how these four young men are denied entrance to the club by some security guards. The stairs of this cellar thus serve as a kind of border that separates the two groups. The young men are not allowed in, ostensibly because they could not pay the cover charge; later on, however, the words of the bouncer – ‘Der Laden ist nichts für euch’ (‘this place is not for you all’) (1:31:40) – suggest that there might be other reasons behind their refusal. This scene thus deploys a contrary phenomenon to the one displayed in Biutiful, where the ‘trash’, as represented by these young men – and which Pike (2005) associates with the subterranean – is kept out. These four young men speak perfect German and yet their look, their names and the words of the security guards create a border around them and raise doubts about their origins. Victoria’s remark – ‘You don’t seem German at all’ (0:33:27) – is telling. Aware of this, once they have left the disco Sonne tells Victoria: ‘We are real Berlin guys . . . real Berlin is on the streets’ (0:10:57). These words have a double meaning. On the one hand, Sonne is asserting his identity as Berlin-born, while on the other hand, he is confirming his attachment to Berlin’s exterior sphere, the street or the outdoors, and claiming legitimacy and authenticity for it, in opposition to the indoor sphere of the office, shop or government that is so often associated with consumption, bureaucracy and power. He does not, however, say that he is German, and later on seemingly scorns German conventions when, in a lift with Victoria, he jokes about German people not talking in lifts. The film creates a confusion that blurs the concept of the migrant and the Other. Even if her geographic displacement makes Victoria the main migrant in this film, the four young men, also excluded and aware of their difference, represent a type of otherness that transcends nationality and is associated with unclear socio-economic factors. Victoria has two key subterranean locations, and their functions are very different. We have already seen how the action of the film starts in a disco, which serves as a border blocking certain individuals from a space for leisure consump-

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tion. In this sense, the disco is a typical non-place, following Marc Augé’s (1995: 94) definition of ‘spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure)’. The other subterranean space is the garage where Victoria and the four young men meet the criminal gang that will force them to rob a bank. These two places are a good illustration of the duality highlighted by Pike (2005: 19), according to which subterranean spaces often operate as integrated into the capitalistic, urban world above ground, while at the same time serving as a hideout for subversive activities. When the five characters in Victoria drive their car into the garage, they are not fully aware of what is waiting for them. From behind the wheel, Victoria can see bulky men armed with machine guns. There ensues a profuse display of violence and, in this new order, where guns and threats are the norm, the young protagonists are powerless. The leader of the gang demands a sum of money as payment for a favour done for Boxer during his time in jail. If they refuse to rob the bank, he will keep Victoria until Boxer repays the money. After this, the young men, forced to oblige, rehearse the robbery under the supervision of the gang leader. In a movement of both space and time, the underground setting of the garage becomes a reflection of the future above-ground setting of the bank, and the action that takes place below the ground mirrors what will happen later on the surface. Both spaces, the bank and the garage, display a focus on money. Whereas the bank is a part and instrument of the capitalist system, the garage is trying, by means of violence, to break the rules that dictate access to wealth. This descent into the garage is a turning point in the film, which now shifts from a light-hearted relationship story into a frantic action drama. The action of the film spirals upward, beginning with the drugging and arming of the protagonists and climaxing with the death of Sonne after he is shot by the police towards the end of the film. After her descent into hell in the garage, Victoria undergoes what Falconer (2007: 1) calls a ‘transformative passage, the destruction and rebirth of the self ’ often associated with descent narratives. The garage is, in this sense, a key to Victoria’s transformative passage. As Prescott (2011: 159) points out in her analysis of three literary portrayals of subterranean London, ‘the space beneath the city intervenes and disrupts all three protagonists’ attempts to master’ the capital. Something similar happens to Victoria when she is thrown into this quest. Her attempts to create a new life for herself are quickly jeopardized, but instead of becoming a victim, Victoria takes control in a way that she has not quite shown at the beginning of the film, where she mostly seems to follow the young men in their wandering around the city of Berlin. In this sense, Victoria’s contact with the underground, though traumatizing, forces her into action and has an empowering effect. Victoria is the one to encourage the others to complete their mission. She is the one who drives the car, who devises the plan to kidnap a baby in order to escape the police and who finds a hotel room where she can hide with the badly hurt Sonne after the robbery. Once Sonne dies, after a

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painful scene of mourning, it is Victoria who seems to ascend from the ashes. In the final scene she walks out into the daylit street and finally gains her freedom, leaving the camera behind as she moves away from the viewer. In a key scene in the film, Victoria plays a classical piece for Sonne on a piano in the café where she works. It is just the two of them. She plays intensely and Sonne looks both touched and surprised by Victoria’s skilful and self-absorbed performance, which seems to have transported her to her past in Spain where, as she tells Sonne, in her fruitless quest to become a professional pianist, she put aside friends and leisure. Victoria’s journey to Berlin can easily be seen as an escape from the past, and in a sense, her sadness after playing shows both a sorrow for her failure and an identity crisis. Space and subjectivity thus run parallel in Victoria, as the protagonist’s search for a new identity accompanies a change of space, the physical journey mirroring an internal one.

Bodies in Limbo or the Limbo of the Bodies There are two only scenes in Biutiful shot outside the city. The first one, already mentioned, is the scene in which Uxbal and his father meet in a forest – an scene that is shown identically at the beginning and end of the film. The other scene shows the corpses of the dead Chinese workers, who, after dying in the cellar, have been thrown out at sea and are now floating by the shore. The scene in the forest, where Uxbal meets his dead father, stands out for its use of light and colour. Whereas most scenes in the film are both dark and full of different elements in the background, the forest is covered with snow and fog. The white hue is only broken by some birch tree trunks, also partially white. The only people in this forest are Uxbal and his father. Uxbal, who throughout the film appears to be a complex and somewhat tormented figure, seems happy and full of expectation in his encounter with his father, and their looks are as expressive as their words. This scene breaks the rules of time and space, because the father is significantly younger than the son. Time has stood still for him, his body remaining as young as it was when he died after fleeing to Mexico after the Spanish Civil War. This scene represents a limbo in time as well as a spatial limbo. The whiteness and the fog blur the view, a sense accentuated by the position of the camera, which focuses on close-ups. We know that the characters are in a forest because we can see some tree trunks behind them, but the camera avoids showing what is above them (there is no view of branches or leaves) and the fog makes it difficult to see for more than a few metres. Nature is naked and bare in this scene, composed only of simple elements. Uxbal’s father stresses this feeling when he says that before, there was nothing in this space, only salt water: ‘Aquí antes no había nada, solo agua, salada’ (0:03:17, 2:10:46). These words, and a short tale that the father later tells, are replicated in the scene towards the end of the film, when Uxbal is

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lying in bed, dying, talking to his daughter. Right before that, we can see how Uxbal’s body starts to multiply, mirroring itself in different places throughout the house: we see him in a mirror in the bathroom, walking behind himself, and stuck on the ceiling (just as the Chinese workers had been before). At the end of this scene, the transition from life to death is represented by the shift in the take, which moves from filming the bed, where Uxbal is lying beside his daughter, to filming its reflection in a mirror, where we can see both Uxbal’s dead body lying in bed and his ghost sitting next to it on a chair. Even if both bodies look still, Uxbal’s voice talking to his daughter can still be heard. The body of Uxbal is thus reflected and multiplied, both visible and invisible, muted and audible. In this sense, what can be seen as a mere mirage, devoid of materiality, adopts bodily characteristics and the ability to make sound and communicate. Similarly, the souls of Uxbal and his father in the forest show corporeality. They look cold, slightly hunched in their coats, and they breathe out foggy air and light cigarettes. At the end of this scene, Uxbal asks his father what there is beyond this place: ‘¿Qué hay?’ (2:11:58). His questions, posed as the film closes and remaining unanswered, stress the transitional function of this forest – its role as a limbo and border between material life and another place that awaits. The sea is a space between countries – an element that enables transportation from one nation to another, and at the same time blocks such access and leads to death. In the film, Uxbal tells the story of his father’s journey across the sea to Mexico and how it soon ended with his death of pneumonia. The sea is even more strongly linked to death and migration in the scene in which the Chinese corpses are seen floating near the beach, some of them lying on the sand. From the beginning, the idea of throwing the bodies into the sea aimed to erase the physical bodies of the dead workers. However, this had the opposite effect. The invisible is finally made visible in several ways: the dead bodies hidden in the cellar, by rising to the surface and through the media attention that this attracts, make visible the otherwise invisible enslavement of these workers. The connection between the subterranean and the limbic is seen in the cellar scene, a scene with metaphorical implications. The bodies trapped on the ceiling – unable to find a way out, in a limbo between life and death and between the visible and the invisible – are a metaphor for the social limbo in which the Chinese workers have lived, out of sight, caught in the hands of exploitation and waiting in vain for a better life. Mora (2014: 10) points out the link not only between limbo and waiting, but also between limbo and in-betweenness, when he writes: ‘In as much as a place for waiting, limbo and purgatory are spaces between spaces, symbolic spaces whose essential characteristic is that of being in suspense’ (my translation). The Chinese workers display this limbic situation in a circular movement that passes through several liminal spaces: from the cellar (between earth and ground) where they are metaphorically buried alive, to the sea

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(between continents), then to the shore (between sea and land) and finally back to the subterranean, where they are most likely to be buried. In this journey, their identity, already blurred by the fact that they live clandestinely in Spain and have no residence permit, is definitively erased, as their lifeless unidentified bodies are found floating in the sea. A religious reading could show how Uxbal, partly responsible for the enslavement of the workers, is a sinner who enters his own purgatory once he discovers that he has terminal cancer. He tries to make things right, both by giving his ex-wife Marambra a second chance and by buying the gas heaters, but he only makes things worse. After the death of the Chinese workers, when Bea – Uxbal’s friend and medium – tells him to search for them and ask for their forgiveness, she is suggesting that he make contact with an alternative space-time construction, a limbo, so that he can ask for a double forgiveness, both for the workers’ life conditions in which he has been an accomplice and for his involuntary role in causing their deaths. Towards the end of the film, the message is more hopeful. Uxbal helps Ige, a homeless Senegalese woman, and her baby find a home, a generosity that is returned to him when, after his death, she stays at his home to take care of his children. Just as in Biutiful, the first scene in Victoria stands out in its use of sound and image. The film opens with loud techno beats and a blurred image that changes shape until it slowly becomes Victoria and the movements of her head to the music. This opening scene displays an audiovisual limbo, a kind of suspense as both speech and sight are rubbed out. However, more than limbic spaces, what is found in Victoria are limbic experiences. Another scene in which music is played in the film (other than the music added in post-production) is the one mentioned earlier in which Victoria plays the piano for Sonne. In a sense, this is a limbic scene, in which the piano puts time and space on hold and suspends the action. When she plays the piano, Victoria transforms herself, leaves her playful and light-hearted attitude aside and becomes both absorbed and emotionally distressed by the act of playing. Even though she is physically in the café with Sonne, her mind has crossed a border and placed her on an inward journey to her past in Spain – a past that she describes in terms of isolation, failure and futile competition. The body has a key role in the transmission of this limbic experience. Her facial and bodily expressions allow us to realize that something is happening in Victoria’s mind while she is playing. Like the dying characters in Biutiful, Victoria unfolds into two different dimensions: she is present in the café with Sonne, but her mind has travelled somewhere else. Victoria’s body thus serves as a reflection of her inward journey and the feelings that this journey has aroused. Johan Schimanski (2006: 42) questions the assumption that a border-crosser has to be ‘an individual human subject’, arguing that border crossing is not necessarily attached to the concept of a subject and can be done by a group or an

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object. In Victoria, what the piano scene shows is how the border-crossing agent is a portion, and not the whole, of the subject. A part of Victoria is a bordercrosser: while her body exists in this Berlin café, her mind is taking an active journey towards some kind of limbo, a place beyond space-time – an internal journey into memory that displaces a part of her into a parallel imaginary sphere. The connection of this limbo with the underworld becomes apparent when Victoria tells Sonne that she is playing Mephisto’s Waltz – a piece about the ‘devil’, as Sonne says – which makes her inward journey a katabatic experience as well. When she finishes playing, her body once again becomes the vessel of meaning about her border crossing. Her eyes are far away, not looking at Sonne, nor at the piano, but still trapped in the limbo she is experiencing. Her tearful expression conveys her sorrow both for her strenuous past and for something, a space and a time, that has been lost. In these two limbic scenes, the one at the disco and the other involving the piano, there is a communication between three elements: speech, music and the body. In the film as a whole there is a running dialogue, but in both of these scenes, speech is silenced by music. When this happens, the body takes over, interacting with the music in both a more passive way (as in dancing) and a more performative one (as in playing). In both scenes, the lack of speech implies an isolation, and Victoria, even though she is in the company of others, appears utterly remote. In a sense, both the film as a whole and the quest that the five characters undergo are limbic experiences. The film is made from one single take with no cuts whatsoever. The camera follows Victoria from the beginning, as her image is gradually unblurred, to the end. The film thus creates a border around Victoria, a barrier that keeps all of the elements that closely surround her in, excluding everything else. This bubble – where Victoria is trapped – is only compromised at the end of the film, when Victoria, for the first time, moves away from the camera and walks into the city. The whole robbery quest is also a kind of limbo that puts the action in suspense. The first part of the film shows five young people in a happy mood, flirting and getting to know each other, wandering around the city until they are interrupted by Boxer’s plea for help. Just as Uxbal in Biutiful has to redeem his sins, Boxer in Victoria has a past to come to terms with. After Boxer receives the phone call demanding that he come to the garage with a car and four companions, the action is put on hold. Victoria (who just before was planning to leave), Sonne (who was fully occupied in flirting with Victoria) and the other three young men who were celebrating Blinker’s birthday (Blinker included) have to set everything aside to help Boxer. Boxer’s sin and debt unite the five characters and put them into a world that seems strange to them: the world of hard criminality. When descending into the garage, the protagonists cross a border. The rest of the film is a nerve-racking struggle to accomplish their task, thus saving Boxer from the threat of the underworld.

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Final Considerations Migration is inherently connected to the notions of border, space and corporeality. As much as one can question the notion of the border and its artificial and random nature, the notion of migration relies heavily on the existence of a border that is being crossed. At the same time, as much as the border can be seen as a geopolitical construct, its connection to the spatial is unavoidable and twofold: it is a thin line that separates two or more spaces and a space in and of itself. Gloria Anzaldúa (1987: 3) distinguishes these two spatial spheres of the border by calling them ‘border’ and ‘borderland’, and she stresses their connection to a long-lasting trauma when she writes about an ‘open wound’ (my translation). The connection between the border and the body is also multifarious. The body is the key agent in the action of border crossing, not only because of the physical action of moving from one place to another but also because the body is the carrier of a series of marks that reveal its otherness. As Prem Kumar Rajaram and Carl Grundy-Warr (2007: xiii) point out, the ‘way people dress, speak, and socialize all have effects on recognition’ and all these are linked to the body. At the same time, the body constitutes an unavoidable thin border between me and the Other, as well as between the invisible (the psyche or the soul) and the visible (the material body). The body, however, is not only a border but also a space in itself, and as such it has a role in the transmission of a series of meanings. The role of corporeality in the metaphorical processes attached to underground and limbo recurs in both films and exposes phenomena linked to visibility/invisibility and speech/silence. Speechlessness is a recurring element in Victoria’s limbic experiences, when music takes over and interacts in different ways with the body. In the film the body is at one and the same time the vessel for and the expression of otherwise invisible processes, as Victoria’s internal journey in the piano scene makes clear. In Biutiful, on the other hand, corporeality splits into two spheres: the visible (the body) and the invisible (the soul). The camera reproduces Uxbal’s capacity to perceive human souls by making them visible to the viewer. This process of making visible, displayed within the film, mirrors the role of Biutiful in giving visibility to socio-economic processes attached to capitalist production and consumerism that often go unnoticed. The action of throwing the bodies of the Chinese workers into the sea is an attempt to silence the unpleasant. In that sense, the sea pushing the bodies onto the shore can be read as an indication that truth has a tendency to always finally come out, like an unrelenting natural force. By approaching the study of the subterranean, limbo and corporeality in Biutiful and Victoria, we have seen how these elements are intertwined and, through a system of metaphorical associations, play a central role in the portrayal of the migrant. In Biutiful there are a variety of subterranean and ‘new underground’ spaces associated with exclusion, exploitation, subversion, transformation and death. In opposition to these claustrophobic urban undergrounds, the

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film includes two scenes shot in natural scenarios – the forest and the sea – that represent the limbo of the souls and that of the bodies, both of which are transitional spaces associated with migrant waiting. There is a place, though, that unites the subterranean and limbo: the cellar where the Chinese workers sleep and die. The enslavement showed here mirrors an above-ground reality where human lives serve as the fuel for a ruthless production system. In Victoria, underground locations have an important function too. The film shows two main subterranean spaces: the disco, where the underground is integrated into the urban world above, and the garage, a place for subversion and the ‘unfit’. Victoria’s descent into this garage is a descent into hell and the beginning of a transformative passage for a character who is going through an identity crisis. Victoria’s geographical border crossing in her journey to Berlin mirrors a border crossing into a limbic sphere beyond space and time, a journey into memory. Both films show descents into the subterranean that are key to the development of the plot in general, and more specifically are central to the portrayal of migration and border crossing. However, these descents operate differently. In Biutiful, underground experience is linked to death and the fantastic. Uxbal’s growth throughout the film is attached to guilt, both in his role in the exploitation of the migrants and in his journey towards acceptance of his imminent death. Uxbal undergoes a process of self-development that involves the loss of control of his body and a journey across the border between life and death, and which echoes the experience of the Chinese migrants, both in their quest for a better life and in their sudden death. Victoria’s descent, on the other hand, is not linked to the fantastic but to the harsh reality of the criminal underworld. Her encounter with the subterranean has a disempowering effect, but at the same time, her journey shows her growing into a sense of control, as she takes command within the group and as she gains independence from the camera, walking away into the distance. As opposed to Biutiful, this last movement is a passage from death to life and suggests a migration back to her origins, to Spain and to life as a newborn – a stronger subject. Despite avoiding happy endings, both films have clear hopeful conclusions. In the last seconds of Biutiful, Uxbal’s father moves to show him the way, and we see Uxbal looking expectantly into the distance. In Victoria, the protagonist leaves the hotel where she has been hiding and walks away from the camera. In both cases there is uncertainty and hope, and in both cases, significantly, the journey is not over. Carolina León Vegas (PhD) is a lecturer in the Spanish Department at Dalarna University (Sweden) and teaches courses on literature, film, culture and academic writing. Her research focuses on the representation of migration and the portrayal of crisis in contemporary Spanish literature and film. Recent publications include: ‘Activismos insólitos: Locura, metaliteratura y la narración de una crisis’ (Narrativas precarias, 2019), ‘En busca del espacio perdido: La crisis y el es-

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pacio urbano en La habitación oscura y Animales domésticos’ (Revista de Literatura, 2019) and ‘Migración, espacio y exclusión en 2020 de Javier Moreno’ (Bergen Language and Linguistic Studies, 2019).

Notes 1. For a study on waiting and the border, see Henk Van Houtum and Stephen F. Wolfe (2017). 2. Alba Marcé García (2018: 88) suggests that Uxbal can be seen as coming from the south of Spain based on his use of Catalan, which she argues is limited and has a marked Spanish accent.

References Anzaldúa, G. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Augé, M. 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso. Azcona, M.M. 2015. ‘“We Are All Uxbal”: Narrative Complexity in the Urban Borderlands in Biutiful’, Journal of Film and Video 67(1): 3–13. Biutiful. 2010. Film. Dir. A.G. Inárritu. Menage Atroz, Mod Producciones, Focus Features. Mexico and Spain. Connolly, K.H. 2015. ‘Spirits and Those Living in the Shadows: Migrants and a New National Family in Biutiful’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 39(3): 545–63. DiFrancesco, M. 2015. ‘Facing the Specter of Immigration in Biutiful’, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literature 69(1): 25–37. Falconer, R. 2007. Hell in Contemporary Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Fitting, P. 2004. Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology. Hanover, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Grady, J. 1999. ‘A Typology of Motivation for Conceptual Metaphor: Correlation vs Resemblance’, in R.W. Gibbs and G.J. Steen (eds), Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 79–100. Holderness, G. 2007. ‘“The Undiscovered Country”: Philip Pullman and the “Land of the Dead”’, Literature & Theology 21(3): 276–92. Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marcé García, A. 2018. ‘Les “dues Barcelones” i el seu capitalisme gore: El cos de l’immigrant com a espai de tensió a Biutiful (Iñarritu, 2010)’, Catalan Review 32: 85–100. Mora, V.L. 2014. ‘Welcome to Limbo: Literatura hispánica entre lugares’, Diálogos Latinoamericanos 23: 6–24. Pike, D.L. 2005. Subterranean Cities: The World Beneath Paris and London, 1800–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Planells, A. 1986. ‘“Casa tomada” o la parábola del limbo’, Revista Iberoamericana 52: 591–603.

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Prescott, H. 2011. ‘Rethinking Urban Space in Contemporary British Writing’, PhD dissertation. Birmingham: University of Birmingham. Rajaram, P.K., and C. Grundy-Warr (eds). 2007. Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schimanski, J. 2006. ‘Crossing and Reading: Notes towards a Theory and a Method’, Nordlit: Arbeidstidsskrift i litteratur 19: 41–63. Schimanski, J., and S.F. Wolfe (eds). 2017. Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books. Van Houtum, H., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Waiting’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 129–46. Victoria. 2015. Film. Dir. S. Schipper. MonkeyBoy, Deutschfilm, Radical Media. Germany.

Chapter 9

ERRATIC BODIES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA A Radiography of Nations and Clandestine Bodies

F Laura Camacho Salgado

When crossing a border (imagined, constructed or geographic – if such a distinction can even be made), the body of the unwelcome migrant becomes both a reinforcement of that national border and proof of its fragility as shield of the nation. This act of trespassing results in two bodies that coexist and are transformed: the body of the nation, with its limits altered, and the body of the migrant, identified subsequently as the ‘Other’. Once within the border, the body of the migrant acquires a radioactive quality, producing a radiographic image of the body of the host nation, while simultaneously acting as a metaphorical (and sometimes even literal) transplanted organ, placed in the willing or unwilling body of the host nation. Erratic bodies, national bodies, atomized bodies, antibodies: these constitute the framework of my analysis of the screening of migrants in European cinema, through the medical metaphor of illness – an illness capable of transforming the body of the nation. This chapter analyses the depiction of the clandestine immigrant in three contemporary European films: Terraferma (2011), Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and L’intrus (2004), all of which generate an alternative space of representation of migrants that counterpoints the official voice, biased against ‘unwelcome aliens’ (Bauman 2002: 84). The study of these non-diasporic films will explore how screening foreigners is simultaneously a way to control the body of the immigrant and a bold strategy aimed at revealing the hidden face of Europe and exposing its own history of migration (Sassen 2006: 635).

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The Body of the Nation According to the 2018 report on Global Migration Indicators published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the current estimated number of international migrants worldwide is 258 million (Vidal and Tjaden 2018) – a figure that draws attention to the magnitude of human movements that continuously occur across the borders of imagined communities (Anderson 2006: 6). One such community is the European Union, whose representation by official voices (individual member governments and the EU itself ) is paradoxical: it is publicized as a place of hospitality while simultaneously erecting itself as a fortress, ready to defend against the new ‘Other’ represented by the threat of massive migration originating from poorer countries (Legrain 2009: 14; Gibson 2006: 697). On the one hand, European media and the official discourse portray ‘illegal’ immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees as an uncontrollable ‘wave’ that crashes against and negatively alters the face of Western Europe. On the other hand, tourism and intellectual migration are portrayed favourably and highly encouraged (Legrain 2009: 14; Loshitzky 2010: 2; Bauman 2002: 84; Gibson 2006: 693). The current surge in far-right parties and the support of their voters are symptoms of the belief in the homogeneous body of the nation and the need to protect it.1 That both outside influences and the racial, ethnic ‘Other’ are viewed as a threat reveals just how important migration is nowadays for what is essentially a self-constructed European identity. Attempting to establish where political Europe begins or ends is problematic, since its borders are constantly changing, as are all of its inhabitants, who do not share a single identity or recognize each other as equals. Moreover, the plasticity of those borders increases with the dynamics of the globalized capitalist world, where boundaries are transformed into porous webs of trade. The behaviour of these webs is, at best, unequal: the transit of bodies across boundaries is regulated, whereas the transit of commodities and goods is fostered and deemed a sign of progress. Furthermore, with regard to migration trends, the IOM underlines that staying within one’s country of birth remains overwhelmingly the norm: the number of international migrants represents only 3.4 per cent of the world population. Nevertheless, European discourse on migration continues to intensify, having reached its peak in 2015 with the humanitarian crisis brought on by Europe’s border policies, often referred to as the ‘refugee crisis’ – a language choice that is not arbitrary and has a connection with medical discourse, as highlighted by the New Keywords Collective (De Genova and Tazzioli 2016: 21): The very terms ‘migrant crisis’ and ‘refugee crisis’ tend to personalize ‘crisis’ and relocate ‘crisis’ in the body and person of the figurative migrant/refugee, as if s/he is the carrier of a disease called ‘crisis’, . . . the illegalized migrant or

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refugee’s physical presence and transgressive mobility delivers ‘crisis’ to the amorphous symbolic membrane surrounding amoeba-like ‘Europe’, whenever and wherever it is ‘violated’ by ‘foreign’ bodies.

Consequently, the issue of migration has become a key topic in both political debates and in the media, where its positive and negative impact has been constantly discussed. Demographic change, socio-economic ramifications (imagined or real) and the rollout of policies of economic austerity have played a decisive role in the construction of the discourse on immigration. In many cases, migrants have become the indisputable scapegoats of national insecurities because, as Dempster and Hargrave (2017) argue, the ‘threat narrative’ not only builds upon more ‘tangible circumstances’, but also feeds on people’s deepest and most intimate insecurities. In this context, fiction films offer the possibility of addressing, challenging and transforming widely held perspectives on migration, acting as an unofficial counterpoint to official immigration narratives. At the most basic level, by enacting the phenomenon of migration, cinema exposes Europe’s reactions to ‘Others’ and the new dynamics that arise in the context of migration. On the other hand, the screening of migrants reveals three problematic elements of the EU and its history: 1) the fragility of European self-constructed borders and identities (Petrie 1992: 1); 2) the challenge of confronting an obscured colonial past (Ang 1992: 26; Bauman 2002: 115); and 3) Europe’s reluctance to revise its own history of past migrations (Sassen 2006: 635). It is important to clarify that in analysing these three elements, this chapter limits itself to the image of the illegal immigrant as an unwelcome alien, as opposed to the tourist or the embraced guest (Bauman 2002: 84; Loshitzky 2010: 149). It is worth noting that the selected feature films are neither exilic nor diasporic. Their directors (and production companies) are Italian, British and French.2 However, countering Eurocentrism, I argue that the films do not ultimately portray the body of the migrant, but instead depict the immigrant as the physical manifestation of the discontinuity of the myth of the nation. Since the European production of films dealing with this subject is both prolific and constantly increasing, I determined the corpus of study based on release date and topic relevance. Two main events delimited the corpus. First, the year 2015, which marked the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ and resulted in a rise in the production of films addressing the topic – an increase that would require further study than can be accomplished here. Second, the year 2001 and, more specifically, the events of 9/11, crucial to understanding the general perception towards migration. Jacques Derrida (2003) and Jean Baudrillard (2003) argue that 9/11 is the prime example of the universality of the nation as a body, in which terrorism is the autoimmune response of the Other within. In this sense, the attack on the

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Twin Towers could be perceived as the visible physical wound (Baudrillard 2003: 62) of a nation that had long been considered the quintessential untouched body (Derrida 2003: 93). The wound is unique in that by leaving a physical scar, it reveals the fragility of the hegemonic system, its internal instability and its weakness (Baudrillard 2003: 55). Both scholars place the terrorists within the body of the US nation, as they were not only ‘welcome’ but also ‘trained by’ them. Zygmunt Bauman (2002: 112) affirms that 9/11 can be read as a gift to politicians because it allowed them to justify an increase in security measures. The discourse on immigration focused on employing terms like ‘safety’ and ‘security’, which rendered the involvement of new and harsh efforts logical in successfully shielding the body of each nation (Loshitzky 2010: 30; Gibson 2006: 694). The dynamic, language and approach of this discourse were echoed and reinforced in 2015. They also mirrored each other in their recurrent use of dehumanizing and fear-inducing metaphors when discussing migration (Arcimaviciene and Baglama 2018: 5), which play a vital role in justifying the need to protect the body of the nation.

Migration as Illness, Illness as Metaphor This chapter explores illness as a metaphor (Sontag 1979) and the metaphor of migration as a disease. Harper and Raman (2008) state that ‘[h]istorically, international migration has been associated with the transport of disease. Regardless of the evidence, metaphors of plague, and infection have circulated and been used to marginalise and keep out diaspora communities in host countries in an effort to “exclude filth”’. Thus, the body of the migrant in the films examined will be addressed as a potential contaminator of the body of the nation. As for the specific technique of screening foreigners, Yosefa Loshitzky (2010: 2) argues that it is a way of containing immigrants who could pollute and contaminate the body of the nation. In addition, as Michel Foucault (1975: 230) explains, control and the punitive gaze have been important strategies of regulation and differentiation of the ‘abnormal’ in nation states from the nineteenth century onwards. Therefore, one could argue that the act of containing the body of the migrant in an image reveals a desire to control it. It is therefore worthwhile to examine whether cinema can duplicate this dynamic of separation, between a European audience and a foreign body, by using the screen as a border. This desire to observe, associated with Foucault’s panoptic structure, is also present in the medical gaze, as Lisa Cartwright (1997: 20) suggests: it not only records or documents the body as an object of knowledge, but also attempts to transform and discipline it. José Van Dijck (2005: 7) underlines how this medical attempt to maintain the myth of the body’s transparency exposes its inner workings through the use of technologies of representation, actually revealing private

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physiological functions to the public eye and not just to the professional gaze (ibid.: 11). These concepts are particularly useful in exploring how the screening of foreigners could be a means of controlling and transforming the body of the immigrant, while also acting as a technology of representation of the internal dynamics of European nations.

Erratic Bodies Crossing Borders in Terraferma In order to explore the artificial distinction between the ‘welcome guest’ and the ‘objectionable alien’, I will begin with the analysis of Terraferma (2011). In this film, Emanuele Crialese frames tourists and illegal immigrants arriving simultaneously in Linosa, one of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Strait of Sicily. The physical frontier that the characters must cross is the Mediterranean Sea, both a paradisiac tourist destination and one of the largest migration borders in the world, which has seen the deaths of over twenty thousand migrants since 2014 (Dearden et al. 2020: 4).3 This reminds us that any border can be experienced in completely different ways depending on which of the two categories the body crossing that border is inscribed in: . . . if the figure of the refugee dying on a raft or on the shores of Southern Europe has become emblematic, it is of course because the Mediterranean is the political border of Europe. But the sea is not a natural obstacle that justifies the contours of political Europe. Given the right circumstances, a place can ignore it. Europeans have erected a wall that manifests itself as a re-appearing border, in airports and detention centres, when migrants are ‘randomly’ controlled or deported, or when they try to cross the Mediterranean. (Rosello and Saunders 2017: 40)

The cinematography of Terraferma emphasizes the concept of the reappearing border, visible to those who are not allowed to cross it. Because the artificial distinction between the tourist and the illegal migrant is not static and cannot be easily drawn, the film visually merges these two groups, thereby criticizing legislation and market laws that determine the grim fate of hundreds of lives. Despite highlighting the Italian case, the analysis of this film is intended to expose the process of redefinition of the Self as a consequence of the arrival of the unwanted Other, which can be extrapolated to other European contexts. The film opens (T: 00:01:13) and closes (T: 01:24:56) with a boat at sea. The opening scene is an extreme long shot, created by using an underwater camera at a low angle and in daylight; the last scene frames the same boat, also in an extreme long shot but from a high angle and at night. This striking change of angle while focusing on the same object could be interpreted as the film developing in a spiral fashion, where characters change while the liquid borders of the ocean

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remain the same. The boat represents the possibility that the border might be either torn down or reinforced. The character of Sara (Timnit T.) refers to the latter possibility when she says: ‘Boats see us, do not stop. Boats see, always go away’.4 In the opening sequence the camera moves towards the surface of the water through fishing nets (T: 00:01:42), which create an ephemeral and porous limit. The nets are a metaphor for the selectiveness of Italian coastlines, which act as firm boundaries that only transform into flexible networks of trade in the service of capitalism: ‘Travelling for profit is encouraged; travelling for survival is condemned . . . The globalised world is a hospitable and friendly place for tourists, but inhospitable and hostile to vagabonds’ (Bauman 2002: 84). The dynamics between the character of Ernesto (Mimmo Cuticchio) and the coastguard (Claudio Santamaria) embody these conflicting perspectives on migration. On the one hand, Ernesto represents the fisherman’s world, governed by the laws of the sea and human values alone. These are illustrated in the moment he decides to help some of the castaway immigrants, putting his own life at risk. Later, Ernesto asks the coastguard, ‘Should I have to let those Christians die at the bottom of the sea?’5 The coastguard, on the other hand, personifies the rejection of the sans-papiers by the modern state, in which ‘the body of the immigrant . . . is the carrier of the violation of the law and of the corresponding punishment (i.e. detention or expulsion)’ (Sassen 2012: 68). The diametrical opposition between the government’s attitudes towards tourism and towards clandestine migration is portrayed in the scene at the beach towards the end of the film (T: 01:07:50–01:09:05), in which the possibility of ‘cross-contamination’ between the two groups must be thwarted. In this scene, the quick contact between migrants and tourists is entirely haptic: the bodies touch each other and acknowledge the other’s existence, but the situation does not allow for a verbal exchange, which is why the images are accompanied by extradiegetic music. Later in this scene, tourists help some of the immigrants on the beach, and quickly the guards arrive with gloves and face masks and attempt to separate the two groups. The use of protective gear arises from the need for medical control, which suggests in turn that the body of the sans-papiers represents a threat of contamination from which the nation and the tourists need to be protected. Yet throughout the film, Crialese’s use of photography weakens the logic behind this division: shots of the bodies of the African migrants on the boat are mirrored by shots of the bodies of tourists diving into the sea twenty minutes later. While both types of migration are connected in the composition of the image, the plot and the extradiegetic music highlight the irony of the unbridgeable gap between the two groups. In this way, the film delicately voices fierce criticism of the policies that affect so many lives. Another connection formed through cinematography is one between aliens and hosts. At the end of the film, the camera shoots a close-up of Filippo (Filippo

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Pucillo)’s body while he sleeps on the beach – a body used throughout the film for the pleasure of the tourist’s gaze – and seconds later, it frames the almost-dead bodies of the illegal castaway immigrants. In this manner, even though they do not touch, these bodies come into contact with one another, revealing their unequal position in spite of being in the same geographical space. The relationship between alien and host is forged in a more direct way within the intimate and enclosed space of the garage and house. The Italian and Ethiopian families are filmed in low-key lighting, which reinforces the clandestine nature of their bond. With barely any words, the exchange of gazes connects and transforms all the characters. This is especially the case with Giulietta (Donatella Finocchiaro) and Sara, for whom close-ups and extreme close-ups operate as reflections of each other. In fact, the recurrent close-ups of these two characters generate a visual connection between white skin and black skin – a visual link intensified by shared motherhood, the wish to migrate and the desire to build a better future. The similarities between the two families allow their intention to migrate to become one: ‘The mainland is waiting for us’ (T: 01:17:32),6 says Ernesto during the ‘Last Supper’, before their first attempt to cross the sea together. This scene portrays the identification between both families as an encounter of gazes, a connection that is reiterated in the last scene, in which the Ethiopian family and Filippo look at each other in silence as they cross the maritime border. The film offers no closure, so it could be said that the mainland is also waiting for the spectator’s gaze.7

Exchanging Happiness: Trading Organs for Passports In Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Stephen Frears brings hidden London to light and denounces the market forces that determine the flow of migration. This process entails the commodification of the migrant body by way of its atomization, which acts as payment for legal existence in the host country. To explore the topic of organ trafficking, Frears chooses the Baltic Hotel as the main stage of the film, since ‘the hotel represents a public, commodified experience of hospitality subject to the logic of economic exchange’ (Gibson 2006: 694). In this film, the link between host nation and immigrant is characterized by the scene involving the heart in the toilet. The camera follows Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to a clogged toilet in room 502 – a common occupational hazard in the hospitality business. The use of extradiegetic music creates an atmosphere of suspense, thus highlighting the importance of this scene. When Okwe proceeds to unclog the toilet, there is a shift in point of view and the camera frames him from inside the toilet: a border of water and blood is drawn between us and him, and we are briefly placed in the position of the flushed human heart. Throughout the film, the discarded healthy organ reminds us of the place of the immigrant:

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‘This, the film implies, is what London and capitalism are doing: flushing human hearts in the toilet and treating the refugees like a form of waste. The heart of the migrants, Frears suggests, is the engine of the city’ (Loshitzky 2010: 71). Such an apparent paradox between ‘waste’ and ‘engine’ reveals a double reading of the atomized body of the migrant. The process of organ procurement for transplantation is presented not as a voluntary donation, but as part of an obligatory and asymmetrical exchange, disguised as a trade to obtain happiness. Juan (Sergi López) makes this explicit in the film: You give me your kidney; I give you a new identity. I sell the kidney for ten grand, so I’m happy. The person who needs the kidney gets cured. So he’s happy. The person who sold his kidney gets to stay in this beautiful country, so he’s happy. My whole business is based on happiness. (DPT: 00:49:20)

In this particular process, the politically dominant body will absorb the disempowered migrant (Rosello 2009: 18), thus questioning the relationship between donor and recipient. Nancy Scheper-Hugues (cited in Ezra and Rowden 2009: 215) observes that organ transplants not only represent a medical issue in the film, but also establish a model of circulation between the donor nations – usually located in the Southern hemisphere and the East – and the more affluent bodies, called recipient nations, located in the North and the West. In the film, once the procurement of the organ is complete, the migrant obtains a forged passport. As argued by Rosello (2009: 29), it is significant that the film features a kidney as the organ to trade, since the kidneys’ function in the body is analogous to the immigrant’s function within the hotel: cleaning and discarding waste. The body of the migrant, supposedly a contaminating agent, is charged with ensuring that the host nation is spotless. In all cases, migrants are required to clean but are denied interaction with the host body; for reasons of hygiene, contact will occur only while using gloves, which create a border between both bodies. In the film, the transformation of bodies is in the hands of Okwe, which may be interpreted as placing emphasis on the importance of immigrant agency in the process of migration, thus subverting the image of the immigrant as a passive body. However, it is only towards the end of the film, when the protagonists finally hold their passports in their hands, that both can say the words ‘I love you’ to each other, as if only this document had the power of allowing them to be full human beings, capable of existing beyond mere survival. Bauman (2002: 111) explains that once the alien presence establishes itself within the host country’s borders, whether or not it is considered a threat, it has to be submitted to the nation’s jurisdiction: Once inside, the settled or fresh aliens fell under the exclusive and undivided jurisdiction of the host country. That country was free to deploy the updated, modernized versions of . . . two strategies . . . The first solution boiled down

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to eating the strangers up. Either literally, in flesh -as, [sic] in the cannibalism allegedly practised by certain ancient tribes; or in a more sublime, modern metaphorical remake, spiritually – as in the power-assisted assimilation practised almost universally by nation-states so that the strangers are ingested into the national body and cease to exist as strangers. The second solution meant ‘disgorging the strangers’ instead of devouring them: rounding them up and expelling them . . .

In analysing these two possible solutions for dealing with the alien body, it is important to consider Michel Foucault’s theories. According to Foucault (1975: 230), the inclusion of the foreign bodies inside the body of the nation occurs in standardized places, with the aim of regulating their behaviour and preventing contamination. These places are constructed following the panoptic structure, based on the importance of the gaze. Thus, surveillance occurs simultaneously when the centre of power observes the abnormal, but especially when the abnormal has already internalized this punitive gaze. It is possible to argue, then, that regardless of whether nation states choose the anthropophagic or the anthropoemic way of assimilation, both solutions are governed by mechanisms of surveillance. In Dirty Pretty Things, the presence of surveillance cameras emphasizes Big Brother’s eye and its desire to control and screen the migrants, thus reinforcing the need for invisibility in the film. As a consequence, the migrant remains mobile, drifting between non-places of transit and waiting, in order to become invisible to the surveillance systems. The migrant as an organ transplant remains invisible but is fundamental for the functioning of the body of the nation. As Okwe says, ‘Because we are people you do not see. We are the ones who drive your cabs. We clean your rooms and suck your cocks’ (DPT: 00:23:44). When Okwe uses the word ‘We’ he is referring to the polyphonic portrait that Frears presents to the viewer, illustrating the complexity of the migrant.

Organ Transplantation: Revealing That the Intruder Is Already Inside Whereas Frears’s film is an easy-to-read narrative that portrays the ethical concerns behind organ trafficking as a hidden face of immigration, Claire Denis’s film L’intrus (2004) sheds light on the tragedy of the organ recipient, relativizing the idea of the body as a whole and allowing the audience to view a radiography of it. In doing so, the film addresses the three main implications of the body politic: a) the assumption that the body must be complex, as it can be taken apart (dismembered, disemboweled), b) a hierarchy of members: a mere toenail is not of the same importance/centrality as the heart, and c) a differentiation of states

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of health and sickness: in the latter case, a follow-up scenario of diagnosis and therapy (and/or death) is invoked. (Musolff 2010: 25)

Denis uses fragmentary aesthetics to tell the story of Louis, a sick European body (Michel Subor) who needs a heart transplant and is willing to pay for it. As the drama unfolds, the dichotomy between the wealthy and healthy body of the European and the poor and sick body of the migrant is constantly insinuated. Before the viewer’s eyes, the plot lines evolve continuously and become blurred. It is revealed that Louis is also possibly an intruder, an immigrant whose story recalls past European migrations. But inside Louis’s body lies another vital intruder: his new, illegally purchased heart, which, being an object of trade, is shown to be empty. The film is an adoption of Jean-Luc Nancy’s short text L’intrus (2000), in which the French philosopher, after having received a heart transplant, rethought and expanded concepts like identity, limit and body, all of which he had already explored in Corpus (1992). In L’intrus, Nancy (2000: 11) underlines the impossibility of fully assimilating a foreign body inside one’s own, because, he argues, in order to do so, an identity needs to be erased: There must be something of the intrus in the stranger; otherwise, the stranger would lose its strangeness: if he already has the right to enter and remain, if he is awaited and received without any part of him being unexpected or unwelcome, he is no longer the intrus, nor is he any longer the stranger. It is thus neither logically acceptable, nor ethically admissible, to exclude all intrusion in the coming of the stranger, the foreign.8

Thus, rather than understanding the process as an assimilation, one must think of it as a ‘being with’ the ‘intruder’. Nevertheless, allowing the intrusion to occur is not an easy task, since a transplant will inevitably trigger the immune system of the recipient body, paradoxically leading it to reject the organ without which it would be unable to function. The relation between the recipient body and the transplanted organ cannot be understood in a simple equation of bodies being forced to give and bodies comfortably receiving; in order to challenge this dichotomy, of chief importance is to acknowledge that the transplanted organ is not only life-giving but also an agent of contamination. In the case of L’intrus (2004) and Dirty Pretty Things (2002), the transplant metaphor is also connected to a postcolonial trace or a new kind of colonialism (Davis 2006: 55). It exposes the situation of the migrants who arrived in Europe from former French and British colonies.9 These migrants have been assimilated by the host nations over the years, and this allows for discussions about second- and third-generation migrants. However, the fact that we use words such as ‘second’ or ‘third’ is testimony to the impossibility of full assimilation, because these migrants are not considered fully British or fully French. Even though they

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were born on British or French territories, they are still seen as intruders, especially when they exhibit ethnic or religious traits that differ from the ‘norm’ of the host nations: ‘Postcolonial transplants in both British and French films tend to be imperfectly assimilated, achieving an uneasy status as resident “intruders”, admitted into the body politic only to be perpetually marginalized’ (Ezra and Rowden 2009: 226). Once more, this exposes the ethical failing within the body politic: independently of how urgently it is needed, the transplanted organ will be marginalized as a result of its inability to conform to the ideal of ‘Frenchness’ or ‘Britishness’ that the host upholds. This perception of the intruder is also mediated by the medical gaze, which transforms the body through the process of opening it: ‘[t]he once-private inner body has been transformed into a public sightseeing space’ (Van Dijck 2005: 73). The possibility of seeing through the body reveals its inconsistency, its lack of unicity: already inhabited by intruders, Jean-Luc Nancy will then argue that the enemy is located within (Nancy 2000: 34). This reasoning is based on the behaviour of two mutually exclusive and yet inevitably intertwined concepts: the foreigner can only be a stranger if it is inside the body, because, in order to exist, the Self (body) and the Other (alien organ) need to penetrate and touch each other: ‘My heart was becoming my own foreigner – a stranger precisely because it was inside’10 (ibid.: 17). Throughout L’intrus (2004), there are multiple references to organ transplants, which act as a metaphor for the fragmented identity of the human body and for the geopolitical body of the nation – both bodies haunted by the presence of intruders. I will examine the geopolitical portrait of nations as portrayed within the film, followed by an analysis of surgery as a creator of new boundaries within the body and, finally, an exploration of the fragmentation of the body of the film itself. In order to explore the geopolitical representation of the world in L’intrus, it is necessary to analyse the film visually. Agnès Godard’s cinematography underlines the importance of geography: the recurrence of images of open spaces throughout the different locations of the film, captured with wide-angle and aerial shots, conjures a borderless space. Yet this visual amplitude is contrasted with the existence of fences, roadways, border controls and other limits that fragment the frame into smaller closed spaces; this can be interpreted as a way of denouncing the artificiality of borders themselves. There is also a strong emphasis on security, which is personified by Louis’s guardian dogs, a continuous and fortified border. This preoccupation with protection against intrusion is magnified in the scene in which Louis, while having sex with his partner, leaves the bed to kill the intruder who has trespassed on his property. Throughout the first part of the film, Louis is portrayed as part of the landscape, his body blending with images of the French Alps (Beugnet 2008: 37). This portrays him to the audience as the ‘host’. However, once he is in the South-

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ern hemisphere, his body becomes the object of the Other’s gaze and his presence turns into an intrusion. Furthermore, the idea of the host itself is reshaped, because even though Louis appears to be part of the ‘imagined homogeneous body’ of the French nation, we later learn that he, too, is an intruder: his Russian passport and his knowledge of Russian are the key to his past. The representation of organ transplantation in the protagonist’s body introduces the topic of surgery and the medical question: we discover that Louis has undergone an organ transplant at the hands of the blind masseuse. For Denis, the woman’s touch acts as the surgical penetration of the transplant. The operation is preceded by two important scenes: the shot of the bodiless heart – a shot that calls to mind the image of the heart in the toilet in Dirty Pretty Things (2002) – and the encounter in which Louis hands money over to an enigmatic Russian woman (Yekaterina Golubeva), along with the request to find a ‘suitable’ heart: ‘We agree, a young heart, not an old man heart, not a woman’s heart’ (Louis, I: 00:43:20).11 The end of the film comes about with Louis’s recognition of a scar on his son’s body (Grégoire Colin) resembling his own, and it leaves the question of whether the transplanted heart belonged to his own son unanswered. In doing so, the film denounces the ethical issues involved in organ trafficking while also exploring the double meaning of the fragmented body: fragmentation as the separation from and the struggle against the transplanted organ, and fragmentation as the only possibility of connection. The transplant is presented as perhaps the only possible way of connecting father and son, a connection in the most literal of ways. The film explores the concepts of transplant and intrusion at yet a third level: it is not only a testimony of intrusion into the nation and into the human body, but also an example of filmic intrusion. Cinematographic fragmentation is created by inserting scenes from Paul Gégauff’s Le reflux (1965), in which Michel Subor was also an actor. This inclusion of a younger Louis (Subor in Gégauff’s film) is the grafting of an older cinematic support into a newer one, while the body of the older Louis embodies the possibility of ‘being with’, of being intruded upon. This filmic body, whose fragmentation increases with the presence of music, is an example of ‘haptic visuality’ (see Marks 2000: 164). The camera tracks bodies ‘like chemical bodies reacting to a series of contrasted environments, or like cells traveling through the body of the film’ (Beugnet 2008: 43), not bothering to follow a linear narrative, but rather through a montage that – forgoing all logical causality – aims at constructing a sensorial clash that will engage the attention of the viewer. In line with this haptic visuality, L’intrus can also be understood in its tactile form, as having a surface meant to be ‘touched’ by viewers: ‘it is most valuable to think of the skin of the film not as a screen, but as a membrane that brings its audience into contact with the material forms of memory’ (Marks 2000: 243). In fact, this notion of the porous boundary is an important part of the medical gaze,

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as noted by Cartwright: ‘Organs, including the skin, function less as boundaries than as permeable, overlapping screens of planar space’ (1997: 92). In cinema, and in L’intrus specifically, the porosity of this membrane can be understood as the possibility of contact between the film and its audience. Further still, as Derrida (2000: 129) points out in his reading of Nancy’s work, since touching is also the experience of being aware of our own physical limits, then demystifying the body (both biological and geopolitical) as a homogeneous and closed entity necessitates acknowledgement of the existence of one’s limits, just as it requires acknowledgement of the intruder in oneself. These films, then, show that it is not only the atomized body of the immigrant that is transformed through migration, but that the body of the recipient inevitably undergoes transformation in turn. The transplantation of organs therefore becomes more complex than the exchange that takes place between a coerced body and a passive one.

Crossways between Films Crialese, Frears and Denis all explore the possibility of using cinema as a political tool. Through fiction, they make it possible for the anonymous viewer to identify with the migrant, altering their perspective on their own identity and redirecting their gaze towards the underlying political issues, as seen for instance in Terraferma and Dirty Pretty Things. In addition, the cinematic medium allows the viewer to explore their own sensorial and emotional reactions to haptic visuality, as in the case of L’intrus. After watching the film, the viewer is transformed, because instead of acting as a source of objective information or merely as a spark for intellectual reflection, the film induces a sensory shock and provokes an emotional response. As already mentioned, the directors of the selected films are neither migrant nor diasporic. From this standpoint, and following Foucault (1975), the process of screening migrants might be perceived as dangerous, for it could result in the reproduction of unbalanced power dynamics. However, it is evident that the directors strive to avoid doing just that, and their films both denounce and deconstruct those dynamics between the object of the gaze and the observer. In Dirty Pretty Things this is achieved through a mise en abyme in which we see the migrants as seen by the cameras: the film denounces the process that transforms the body of the migrant into a framed, aseptic image, serving only to quench the need for surveillance and control. Therefore, it simultaneously explores the negative as well as the positive side of the ‘gaze’. On the one hand, the gaze objectifies the migrant, thus dehumanizing them, which makes it impossible for migrants to control their own representation. This introduces the issue of the power of the image – directors problematize the way in which using the image of the body in film can result in the construction of the gaze by the hegemonic observer. On

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the other hand, as touched upon earlier, the gaze may not attempt to contain the individuals within the body of the film in order to prevent contamination of the viewer, but rather to acknowledge their existence. This positive representation on screen translates into visibility that exceeds the political discourse and puts into perspective the biased voice of mainstream European media. The selected films also allow for the examination of the dichotomy between the ‘gaze’ and the subject or object of that gaze, portraying the body of the migrant as a potential mirror of the complex dynamics of globalized Europe (Terraferma) and of its hybrid body (Dirty Pretty Things). This exploration of the body of the migrant in film permits the viewer to see through the body of European nations and exemplifies how cinema can adopt the perspective of the silenced Other in order to rethink its own identity. The object of the gaze is thus transformed into a radioactive body that reveals and reflects the observer. The directors’ aesthetic choices contribute to an alternative representation of stories of migration; further, to avoid providing definitive answers while raising new questions, I intentionally selected films that employ different cinematographic approaches, averting any simplification of this complex panorama. As a generic hybrid, Dirty Pretty Things puts strong emphasis on dialogue and establishes a linear plot intended to facilitate the viewer’s reading and interpretation. With its symbolic photography enhanced by montage, Terraferma establishes contrasting visual connections that undermine the official discourse, while using photography and sound to build additional layers of meaning, without hindering the viewer’s understanding. The chaotic montage of L’intrus introduces the concept of film as a fragmented body and rejects any interpretation based on logical causalities or definite answers; its sophisticated portrayal of organ transplantation and the transformation of the recipient body demands deeper analysis and a more conscientious approach from its viewers. L’intrus has been analysed as the radiography of a body that is changed and will continue to change in response to an alien intrusion. I argue that it fulfils this function at many levels, showcasing how an extract from an alien film can exist within another film, transplanted into a new ‘host body’. Moreover, because the screened body is European rather than immigrant, it bluntly blurs distinctions and ultimately considers the possibility of a new, pro-migration but still unbalanced, dichotomy between the European ‘host/sick body’ and the migrant ‘Other/healthy body’. Without resorting to sociopolitical or anthropological studies, we can identify in the corpus a first level of portraying migration that illuminates unexplored stories, denounces obscured truths and presents an intricate, multifaceted image of immigrants, even including the role that they play in dirty jobs and organ trafficking. Additionally, the films screen the dynamics of globalization that encourage body commodification and voice the growing preoccupation with the ethical gaps in migration and globalization processes.

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Conclusion The body of the migrant has been explored in this chapter for its potential to cut open the European body, revealing existing fissures, hybridity and the need for the presence of the foreigner. The image of the migrant as a transplant made into the bodies of European nations is significant because it problematizes the idea of the assimilation of the foreigner without risking loss of identity. The films show not only that the atomized body of the immigrant is transformed, but that the body of the recipient inevitably undergoes change as well. In addition, they present the intrusion of the immigrant as indispensable for the European nation, just as a heart transplant is fundamental for the pumping of blood inside the body and is nevertheless susceptible to rejection by the immune system. In any case, both the donor and the recipient bodies are transformed as a result of the crossing of borders: walls, passport controls, fences, seas – and skin as the ultimate border to be trespassed. The fascination with screening bodies and creating radioactive autopsies of European nations confirms the importance of cinema as a political weapon. In fact, the analysis of these three films proves the need to use the concept of transnational cinema in order to investigate the new geopolitical body of nations affected by the dynamics of globalization. Cinema and images themselves are presented here as transnational objects of study that must be explored outside of the well-established boundaries of national cinemas, which would simply reinforce the borders that the films attempt to deconstruct. Laura Camacho Salgado is an independent researcher interested in body politics, migration studies and border aesthetics. A guest lecturer at the University of Oslo for the course ‘Borders, Bodies and Memories: Textual and Cultural Representation of Contemporary Migration in Europe’, her background is in literature, arts and cinema. Having studied at six universities in Colombia (Universidad de los Andes), the UK (University of St Andrews), France (Université Perpignan Via Domitia, Université Lyon 2) and Italy (the Universities of Bergamo and Genova), she has researched transnational representations of migrant bodies in different cultural narratives in Europe and Latin America. She is the international festival coordinator at Oslo World.

Notes 1. The recent ‘boom’ in voter support for right-wing and populist parties in Europe stems from the desire to protect that ‘homogeneous fortress’: Matteo Salvini, Minister of the Interior in Italy from 2018 to 2019, spearheaded the new government’s anti-immigration stance, turning away humanitarian rescue ships from Italian ports (Horowitz

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2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

2019). In 2019, for the first time since the reinstatement of democracy in 1975, the far-right entered the Spanish parliament when several politicians from the Vox party were elected (González 2019). The list of further examples is long and includes the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria, the Sweden Democrats (SD) and the National Rally, France’s third-largest political party, which espouses a far-right nationalist sentiment that includes economic protectionism and a strong anti-immigrant stance. This affirmation does not imply that the selected films are European simply based on the nationality of the directors. Each film contains the work of multiple people simultaneously (cast, crew, production, etc.). Therefore, the debate around the ‘nationality’ of the films goes beyond the scope of this chapter. Yet in this context it will be argued that the films present a European viewpoint – a viewpoint that is not static and is complex. It is also worth noting that in the cases of Emanuele Crialese and Claire Denis, although they may hold European passports, their biographies prove that the experience of migration is not alien to them. As stated in the IOM report, Dearden et al. (2020: 5) argue that those numbers can never be 100 per cent accurate because ‘[o]n routes which involve transit over water, such as the Central Mediterranean route, it is even more likely that people die without a trace’. ‘Barche vedere, non fermare. Barche vedere sempre andare via’ (T: 00:59:28). ‘Dovevo far morire quei cristiani in fondo al mare?’ (T: 00:42:57). ‘La terraferma ci aspetta’ (T: 01:17:32). Crialese tackles here the notion of the Italian migrant, a concept that he had already explored in Once We Were Strangers (1997) and especially in Nuovomondo (2006). Translated by Susan Hanson for the original: ‘L’intrus s’introduit de force, par surprise ou par ruse, en tous cas sans droit ni sans avoir été d’abord admis. Il faut qu’il y ait de l’intrus dans l’étranger, sans quoi il perd son étrangeté. S’il a déjà droit d’entrée et de séjour, s’il est attendu et reçu sans que rien de lui reste hors d’attente ni hors d’accueil, il n’est plus l’intrus, mais il n’est plus, non plus, l’étranger. Aussi n’est-il ni logiquement recevable, ni éthiquement admissible, d’exclure toute intrusion dans la venue de l’étranger’ (Nancy 2000: 11). In the case of Britain, they arrived aboard the Empire Windrush (1948), during the period of reconstruction and after the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962; in the case of France, this occurred during as part of the ‘Treinte glorieuses’ (1946–75). ‘Mon coeur devenait mon étranger: justement étranger parce qu’il était dedans’ (Nancy 2000: 17). ‘On est bien d‘accord, un coeur jeune, pas un coeur de vieillard, pas un coeur de femme’ (Louis, I: 00:43:20).

References Anderson, B. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Ang, I. 1992. ‘Hegemony-in-Trouble: Nostalgia and the Ideology of the Impossible in European Cinema’, in Duncan Petrie (ed.), Screening Europe: Image and Identity in Contemporary European Cinema. London: BFI, pp. 21–31. Arcimaviciene, L., and S. Baglama. 2018. ‘Migration, Metaphor and Myth in Media Representations: The Ideological Dichotomy of “Them” and “Us”’, SAGE Open 8(2): 1–13.

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Baudrillard, J. 2003. The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays. London: Verso. Bauman, Z. 2002. Society Under Siege. Cambridge: Polity. Beugnet, M. 2008. ‘The Practice of Strangeness: L’intrus – Claire Denis (2004) and Jean-Luc Nancy (2000)’, Film-Philosophy 12(1): 31–48. Cartwright, L. 1997. Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Davis, E.S. 2006. ‘The Intimacies of Globalization: Bodies and Borders On-Screen’, Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 21(62): 33–73. Dearden, K., et al. 2020. Calculating ‘Death Rates’ in the Context of Migration Journeys: Focus on the Central Mediterranean, GMDAC Briefing Series: Towards Safer Migration in Africa: Migration and Data in Northern and Western Africa. Berlin: International Organization for Migration. Retrieved 10 June 2019 from https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/ mortality-rates.pdf. De Genova, N., and M. Tazzioli (eds). 2016. Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of ‘the Crisis’ in and of ‘Europe’. Near Futures Online. Retrieved 16 March 2021 from http://nearfuturesonline .org/europecrisis-new-keywords-of-crisis-in-and-of-europe/. Dempster, H., and K. Hargrave. 2017. Understanding Public Attitudes towards Refugees and Migrants, June 2017, Working paper 512, Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Retrieved 6 November 2019 from https://www.refworld.org/docid/595f82e64.html. Derrida, J. 2000. Le toucher Jean-Luc Nancy. Paris: Galilée. ———. 2003. ‘Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides – A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida’, in Giovanna Borradori (ed.), Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 85–136. Dirty Pretty Things. 2002. Film. Dir. Stephen Fears. BBC Films, Celador Films, Jonescompany Productions. UK. Esposito, R. 2020. ‘“Cured to the Bitter End”: Coronavirus and Philosophers’, European Journal of Psychoanalysis, 28 February. Retrieved 1 May 2020 from http://www.journal-psycho analysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/. Ezra, E., and T. Rowden. 2009. ‘Postcolonial Transplants: Cinema, Diaspora and the Body Politic’, in M. Keown, D. Murphy and J. Procter (eds), Comparing Postcolonial Diasporas. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 211–27. Foucault, M. 1975. Surveiller et punir. Saint-Amand (Cher): Éditions Gallimard. Gibson, S. 2006. ‘Border Politics and Hospitable Spaces in Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things’, Third Text 20(6): 693–701. González, M. 2019. ‘Vox se convierte en tercera fuerza del nuevo Congreso’, El País, 11 November. Retrieved 1 May 2020 from https://elpais.com/politica/2019/11/10/actuali dad/1573408910_887506.html. Harper, I., and P. Raman. 2008. ‘Less than Human? Diaspora, Disease and the Question of Citizenship’, International Migration 46(12): 3–26. Horowitz, J. 2019. ‘Salvini’s Standoff at Sea Highlights Italy’s War on Rescue Ships’, The New York Times, 16 August. Retrieved 1 May 2020 from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/ world/europe/salvini-italy-migrants-open-arms.html. Legrain, P. 2009. Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. London: Abacus. L’intrus. 2004. Film. Dir. Claire Denis. Ognon Pictures, ARTE France Cinéma, Conseil Régional de Franche-Comté, Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), Pusan Film Commission. France. Loshitzky, Y. 2010. Screening Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Marks, L.U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Musolff, A. 2010. ‘Political Metaphor and Bodies Politic’, in U. Okulska and P. Cap (eds), Perspectives in Politics and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 23–42. Nancy, J.L. 2000. L’intrus. Paris: Galilée. ———. 2008. Corpus. New York: Fordham University Press. Petrie, D. 1992. ‘Change and Cinematic Representation in Modern Europe’, in D. Petrie (ed.), Screening Europe: Image and Identity in Contemporary European Cinema. London: BFI, pp. 1–8. Rosello, M., and T. Saunders. 2017. ‘Ecology’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 25–49. Rosello, M. 2009. ‘“Wanted”: Organs, Passports and the Integrity of the Transient’s Body’, Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory 32(1): 15–31. Sassen, S. 2006. ‘The Numbers and the Passions are Not New’, Third Text 20(6): 635–45. ———. 2012. ‘When the Center no Longer Holds: Cities as Frontier Zones’, Cities 34: 67–70. Sontag, S. 1979. Illness as a Metaphor. London: Allen Lane. Terraferma. 2011. Film. Dir. Emanuele Crialese. Cattleya, Babe Film, France 2 Cinéma, Rai Cinema, Canal+, CinéCinéma. Italy. Van Dijck, J. 2005. The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Vidal, E., and J. Tjaden. 2018. Global Migration Indicators 2018. Berlin: International Organization for Migration. Retrieved 2 January 2020 from https://publications.iom.int/ system/files/pdf/global_migration_indicators_2018.pdf.

Part IV

EUROPEAN MIGRATION REPRESENTED IN THEATRE AND ARTWORKS AS MIGRANTS’ COUNTER-DISCOURSE OR ARTIVISM

F

Chapter 10

INJURIOUS METAPHORS AND (NON-)ART AS ACTIVIST COUNTER-DISCOURSE TO GREECE’S ‘REFUGEE CRISIS’

F Olga Michael and Jovana Mastilovic

Greece’s so-called ‘refugee crisis’ has been articulated via metaphors in political discourse and humanitarian awareness-raising attempts initiated by inter- and non-governmental organizations, as well as by professional and amateur artists.1 In this chapter, we examine metaphors used in the 2012 pre-election campaign by the political party New Democracy, and we link them to the securitizing and policing practices under the operation ‘Xenios Zeus’ that the party initiated upon its electoral victory. We show how, together with instances of misappropriation of elements from Greek history and mythology, these metaphors may have (partly) justified state-initiated violence.2 Subsequently, we investigate the potential of visual and literary (non-)art to counter such depictions of the contested ‘refugee crisis’. In particular, we examine the use of the Lolita metaphor in a glossy magazine published by the Dutch branch of Amnesty International in 2018 to raise awareness about the reception and identification centre of Moria in Lesvos, as well as that of child metaphor in Christos Tsantis’s (2016) semifictional novel Migozarad, which addresses the Greek community with the aim of triggering ethical responses to refugees’ plight.3 We argue that through the metaphors they display, these attempts repeat, with differentiations, the power relations that they seek to counter by feminizing, infantilizing and at times silencing those orchestrated as ‘others’.4 We propose that the potential to counter such injurious representations of the ‘refugee crisis’, to voice the ‘other’ and to unsettle hierarchical ‘us’ versus ‘them’ power relations exists in amateur (non-)art from below, such as that created on Lesvos by locals and those seeking asylum there.

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Injurious Metaphors (I): New Democracy’s 2012 Pre- and Post-Election Rhetoric In ‘Metaphors We Discriminate By’, Elisabeth El Refaie (2001: 532) explains that Austrian newspapers referring to Kurdish arrivals in Italy in 1998 repeatedly used specific images to structure ‘asylum seekers as water, as criminals, or as invading army’. The repeated use of this imagery, she explains, ‘in relatively fixed lexical and syntactic forms’, led to the acceptance of such metaphors as the ‘natural’ way in which to talk about asylum seekers, ‘blurring . . . the boundary between the literal and the non-literal’ (ibid.). Metaphors allow for the understanding of something unfamiliar through the lens of something more familiar. Thus, the naturalization of negative images in talking about people entering Europe entails dangers because it can lead to a conflation between the source domain (invasion, threat, danger) that is used to describe and the target domain (asylum seekers, refugees or undocumented migrants) that is described through a given metaphor. The use of similar language and the dangers it entails can be identified in New Democracy’s pre- and post-election political rhetoric in 2012. In his 2012 pre-election campaign, the president of New Democracy and subsequently elected Prime Minister Antonis Samaras declared that ‘our cities have been occupied by illegal immigrants. We will take them back’, further noting that his government would take measures to ‘start moving illegal migrants to reception and hospitality centres outside the cities, and away from the neighbourhoods, where they pile up’ (‘Α. Σαμαράς’ 2012). Describing his party’s intention to stop ‘illegal’ migration flows in Greece, he also clarified that they ‘will not tolerate the country’s transformation into a fenceless vineyard’ (ibid.). Samaras thus erases refugees, asylum seekers and other stateless people from his speech, subordinating every individual under the umbrella of ‘illegal migrants’, whom he introduces as invaders occupying Greek cities. Furthermore, he uses the idiomatic expression ‘fenceless vineyard’, a spatial metaphor referring to situations ‘conducive to lawlessness and disorder’ in Greek (Antonopoulos 2006: 99), to describe the chaotic situation he aimed at combating. Samaras’s intention to move undocumented migrants outside cities, and to thus extend their invisibility, also evokes their perception as parasitical ‘stains’ on the image of the Greek city that needed to be removed. In a similar vein, the Minister of Citizen Protection, Nicos Dendias, declared: The country is being destroyed. Since the Dorian conquest four thousand years ago, never has the country faced an invasion of such a scale . . . This is a bomb placed in the foundations of the society and the state . . . Solving the problem of illegal migration is a challenge we must face as a nation. We are on the verge of destruction. Unless we form a holistic network to tackle illegal migration, we will collapse . . . Our society is facing the danger of complete

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erosion[.] Illegal migration is an issue more serious than the financial crisis. (‘N. Δενδιάς’ 2012)

Dendias turned to the archive of Greek history to draw parallels between the destruction of the Mycenaean civilization during the Dorian conquest, as described by Herodotus, and what he perceived as an equal threat to the contemporary Greek nation and civilization caused by ‘irregular’ migration. Like Samaras, he uses the first-person plural ‘we’ to highlight the dichotomy between the collective, civilized Greek self, with a centuries-long history and culture that is under threat, and the threatening ‘other’. Former Minister of Health Andreas Loverdos also referred to ‘the problem posed by a burgeoning population of undocumented migrants in central Athens as a ticking bomb for public health’, subsequently launching ‘compulsory health checks’ as reported in Ekathimerini (‘Compulsory Health Checks’ 2012). Such repeated metaphors of invasion, bombs, health hazards and erosion can cause fear against an unknown enemy, embodied in this case in the figure of the undocumented migrant. These metaphors, demonstrating the power of political discourse to predispose public opinion negatively, justify racist policing procedures targeting undocumented migration. Statements like those made by Samaras, Dendias and Loverdos fall within representations of the ‘refugee crisis’ that fail to distinguish between individuals, presenting them as a ‘single undifferentiated [threatening] mass [and depriving] them of their specificity as historical beings’ (Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017: 1164). As such, ‘instead of a humanitarian response’, they legitimize ‘securitisation practices that encamp or deport them’ (ibid.: 1165). As Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou (2017) write, representations of this kind mobilize particular types of responsibility that lead, for instance, to indiscriminate border closings. Security in this sense becomes ‘part of the biopolitical apparatus of the media’, which reproduces such political discourse because ‘refugee visualities of aggression and violence legitimise civic dispositions of proactive protection’ (Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017: 1169).

‘Xenios Zeus’: In/visibility and the Misappropriation of Greek Mythology ‘Xenios Zeus’ constitutes an example of aggressive measures taken in the name of proactive citizen ‘protection’, which may have become (partly) justified through injurious metaphors used in governmental discourse on ‘illegal’ migration. This ‘sweeping’ operation was launched in August 2012 and was aimed, according to Dendias, at ‘repelling illegal migrants from Evros and sealing the borders’, at deporting ‘illegal’ migrants and at making ‘Athens a law-abiding metropolis that would offer quality life for its residents and visitors’ (‘Ν. Δενδιάς’ 2012). According to a report issued by Human Rights Watch (2013b), between August 2012 and February 2013 eighty-five thousand people of foreign origins were

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stopped by the police in Athens for compulsory checks, with only 6 per cent of them found to be unlawfully residing there. In its description of the ethnic and racial profiling of people conducted by the police, this report explains that police officers would ‘stop and search individuals who appear[ed] to be foreigners’, ordering ‘them to provide proof of legal residence in Greece’ (ibid.: 2). While accounting for the number of human rights violations suffered by those forced into compulsory checks and detention, the report points to the ways in which the visible identity markers of those perceived as ‘others’ facilitated their control and surveillance.5 Chiara Brambilla and Holger Pötzsch (2017: 71) discuss ‘various forms of in/visibility and processes of in/visibilization’ occurring in borderscapes like the Greek islands. ‘Public visibility’, they write, ‘is the precondition for active political participation and citizenship’. Visibility can be ‘empowering . . . (visibility as recognition)’ or ‘disempowering . . . (visibility as control)’ (ibid.). Public visibility, they further explain, is progressive only when ‘other identity markers remain invisible’ and the subject is protected by what they describe as ‘natural invisibility’, that is, by unmarked traces ‘of racial, ethnic, class or other belonging’ (ibid.: 70–71). Refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants suffer ‘from public invisibility that is wedded with natural visibility’ (ibid.: 72). Thus, they are excluded from the public sphere, deprived of political agency and reduced to ‘sets of natural traits that are articulated in a public sphere of appearance’ (ibid.). Brambilla and Pötzsch observe that ‘pathologies of in/visibility . . . assume a crucial, often disquieting role in the staging of refugee crises and migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, but also in the discursive framing of terrorism, migration pressures, and religious conflict’ (ibid.). Operation ‘Xenios Zeus’ was based on such ‘pathologies of in/visibility’. Ironically, it bore the name of the Olympian god of hospitality, who cared for the wrongs done to foreigners. On the one hand, it showed how the natural visibility of asylum seekers, stateless people, refugees and undocumented migrants, as well as of Greek nationals and tourists, caused their enforced checks, detention and the violation of their human rights (see Human Rights Watch 2013b). On the other, it illustrated how governmental authorities blatantly misused the notion of Greek ‘hospitality’ by euphemistically referring to a practice of aggressive biopolitical control through the name of Hospitable Zeus. Dendias’s decision to name this ‘sweeping’ operation in this way, and the detention centres where people were held ‘hospitality centres’, reflects, according to Katerina Rozakou (2018: 193), ‘the long-standing nationalist discourse [of ] the production of the modern Greek state as the descendant of Ancient Greece’. This discourse underscores the ‘us versus them’ dichotomy in its juxtaposition between Greeks and anonymous masses of (threatening) ‘others’ deprived of public visibility, agency and historicity. Rozakou (2012: 563) explains that prior to ‘Xenios Zeus’, a ‘politics of invisibility’ characterized the extremely slow processes for

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securing asylum in Greece, causing many individuals to remain undocumented for a long time, rendering them publicly invisible. In contrast, ‘Xenios Zeus signalled a shift from this politics of invisibility to one of proclaimed and total institutional visibility and control’ (Rozakou 2018: 192). Thus, it embodied the spectacularization of the abusive, state-initiated surveillance of visible ‘otherness’, while also highlighting the power dynamics emerging in relations of hospitality.

Of Hospitality and Solidarity: Towards Unsettling Hierarchies Jacques Derrida notes that hospitality demands ‘a rigorous delimitation of thresholds or frontiers . . . between the familial and the non-familial, between the foreign and the non-foreign, the citizen and the non-citizen, but first of all, between the private and the public’ (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000: 47, 49). ‘Whenever “the home” is violated’, he continues, ‘wherever at any rate a violation is felt as such, you can foresee a privatizing and even familialist reaction, by widening the ethnocentric and nationalist, and thus xenophobic, circle’ (ibid.: 53). The representation of undocumented migration as a threat to the Greek ‘home’ and the subsequent justification and practice of ‘Xenios Zeus’ demonstrate how racist, inhospitable processes of exclusion can (paradoxically) emerge in the context of (Greek) hospitality. The host’s power to offer hospitality only to ‘the socially acceptable stranger’ (Rozakou 2018: 193), and the ‘imbalanced relation between the host and the guest’ (Brambilla and Pötzsch 2017: 74), can be unsettled by what Derrida describes as ‘absolute hospitality’ (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000: 25) and Rozakou (2018: 194) refers to as ‘solidarian activism’. ‘Absolute hospitality requires’, according to Derrida, ‘that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner . . . but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them [their] reciprocity’ (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000: 25). The ‘right to hospitality’ (ibid.: 23) concerns only those foreigners who are protected by their name, family and social status. The ‘absolute other’, the ‘anonymous new arrival[,] someone who has neither name, nor patronym, nor family, nor social status . . . is . . . treated not as a foreigner but as [a] barbarian’ (ibid.: 25). The ‘absolute other’, as embodied in the figure of the ‘illegal’ migrant, constitutes an unlawful threat for the host society and is thus excluded from the hierarchical relationship emerging in the context of hospitality between the host and the proper guest. The absolute other’s public invisibility can be undone through their taking the place that is offered by what one might refer to as the ‘absolute host’. This process can also unsettle the power relations of ‘hospitality by right’ (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000: 25). Rozakou (2018: 194) writes that the contemporary ‘crisis of hospitality’ in Greece coincides with the radicalization of ‘solidarity with immigrants [which] challenges established modes of social relatedness

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and embraces alternative anti-hierarchical visions of society’. Acts attempting to demonstrate solidarity can also challenge injurious representations of the ‘refugee crisis’ in Greece like those structured in the 2012 pre- and post-election rhetoric of New Democracy, offering a counter-discourse to normalized metaphors of threat, invasion, illness and erosion. However, such efforts may also run the risk of reproducing the power relations of hospitality that they seek to counter, thus failing to demonstrate ‘solidarian activism’ (ibid.).

Injurious Metaphors (II): Glamoria and the Lolita Metaphor An example of replicating power relations through metaphorical symbolism was the cover of the glossy magazine Glamoria, published in the Netherlands in December 2018 by the local arm of Amnesty International to raise awareness about Moria on Lesvos.6 The magazine’s title emerges from a linguistic blend that conflates the word ‘glamour’ with the name of the reception and identification centre. The cover was withdrawn a few days after its release because of public outrage against its sexualizing depiction of the female refugee on its cover (Cohen 2018), which depicts the Syrian refugee actress Jouman Fattal semi-nude in a scene that draws from American Beauty (1999) and the depiction of Angela (Mena Suvari), the teenage friend of Lester Burnham’s (Kevin Spacey) daughter, with whom he becomes infatuated (see Caires and Aziz 2018). The Glamoria cover borrows from American Beauty the iconic scene that displays Angela, nude, lying on a bed with red rose petals scattered around her, on her breasts and on her genital area. In this scene, Angela seductively returns her gaze to the camera, presenting herself as a sexual spectacle both for viewers and for Lester, the middle-aged man whose paedophilic desire for her is never consummated in the film. The film resonates, as Casey McKittrick (2001: 6) writes, with Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in how it ‘evokes the sense of [the] lack of children’s agency, the power imbalance of intergenerational relationships, and the inherent moral and ethical corruption involved in [the] realisation’ of such relationships. In Glamoria’s repetition-with-differentiation of Angela’s depiction in American Beauty, Fattal lies on a bed of orange life jackets, and instead of red rose petals, a life jacket covers her breasts and another her genital area.7 Like Angela, she too returns an alluring gaze to the camera, her hair spread, visually presenting another variation of the Lolita figure that the film’s character also embodies.8 The reduction of Fattal to a silent Lolita figure and the replacement of rose petals with life jackets on the Glamoria cover were particularly problematic. The deaths in the Mediterranean have invested the life jacket with connotations of precarity, death, desperate sea journeys and disposable human lives. Indeed, Kaya Barry (2019) notes that high art installations like those by Ai Weiwei mobilize material agencies such as those found in orange life jackets to transfer compo-

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nents of the ‘refugee crisis’ into institutions like museums and art galleries.9 The Greek photographer Tasos Markou stresses the rhetorical potential of the life jacket when he explains how, upon seeing hundreds on the shores of Lesvos, he realised that these objects did not constitute waste material, but that ‘each jacket meant a human life, a story of crossing’ (Muir 2017). The Glamoria cover mutes this item, as well as the refugee, for both become suffocated by the image’s sexualizing overtones. In presenting Fattal through the Lolita metaphor to raise awareness about Moria, the cover illustrates, in an exaggerated way, the ‘imbalance [existing] between those who have the power to represent and those who are represented’ (Yialouri 2019: 227). Irrespective of its withdrawal, the cover points to the need for a serious consideration of ethical issues arising from Western, patriarchal, neocolonial representations of the female refugee and Greece’s ‘refugee crisis’. When such representations derive from organizations like Amnesty International, which has traditionally fought for the protection of the human rights of marginalized people, they become doubly problematic, as they highlight the misguided directions in which Western humanitarian aid is directed and the problems emerging in relations of hospitality. In addition, they ignore the particularities of gendered experiences of dangerous journeys to Europe. As Alexia Peper de Caires and Shaista Aziz (2018) from the NGO Safe Space aptly note in their open letter to Amnesty, [t]he simple and inconvenient fact that has been erased by Amnesty Netherlands is that many of the black women and women and girls of colour who constitute the majority of the world’s refugees exist in contexts where their bodies do not belong to them. Their bodies have been used and abused as weapons of war and sexual degradation, abuse, and pleasure . . . Their bodies are bartered over, traded over and trafficked and when a tiny minority of these women eventually do arrive on the shores of fortress Europe, their racialized bodies are denied dignity and deemed ‘illegal’ by a racist and dehumanised asylum and immigration system primarily focused on locking refugees out.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report Dangerous Journeys (2018), which analyses refugee and migration flows in Europe for the period between January and August 2018, states that sexual violence has affected almost all the women en route to the European Union, with the vast majority of cases having remained unreported. That Amnesty International Netherlands used the Lolita metaphor to visually represent Fattal on the Glamoria cover demonstrates a lack of sensitivity in relation to the suffering of women and girls undertaking precarious journeys to Europe, and disregard for the specificities and scale of gendered suffering in such contexts. For El Refaie (2001: 89), visual metaphors are different from verbal ones because they are ‘more suited to convey emotional meaning’ and to trigger affectively charged responses. Ljiljana Šarić (2019: 991) also notes that through visual

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images ‘some events . . . acquire immense symbolic dimensions’ because people ‘construct their social realities’ through them. Due to the issues arising from the fact that ‘the majority of our knowledge about migration is mediated’, from the diminished existence of alternative sources of information on this matter and from the silencing of migrant voices, ‘visuals (and [the] multimodal messages they frequently are part of ) matter’, according to Šarić (ibid.: 992). The Glamoria metaphor also matters because of the affective impact of its visuality. While Amnesty International Netherlands had a different aim to that behind political rhetoric that introduces a unified whole of ‘illegal’ migrants as a dangerous threat to Greece, Fattal’s depiction mediates a neocolonial, paternalistic perspective that infantilizes, sexualizes and silences the ‘vulnerable other’, who is depicted as in need of salvation by the Western host.

Injurious Metaphors (III): The Child Metaphor in Migozarad A similar take on the relationship between the Western host and the ‘other’ emerges through what we read as the child metaphor in Christos Tsantis’s (2016) semi-fictional novel Migozarad. The novel starts with a letter written by Fazil, an underage Afghan refugee who becomes the fictional vehicle through which the collective story of years of war, suffering, trauma and the uprooting of Afghan people is mediated to Greek-speaking readers. The recipient of the letter is the narrator, a Greek journalist named Lefteris Antoniou who has the power to shape public opinion through his profession, and, to a different extent, Greek people, who face the impact of the ‘refugee crisis’ in the midst of the financial crisis affecting the country. ‘As I was watching other people leaving, I had no idea how long the journey would be’, Fasil writes; ‘I wanted to talk to someone, but there was no one there to listen to me. There was a chance that you wouldn’t have listened to me either, but I couldn’t take it any longer. I had to do something. . .’ (ibid.: 10). Fasil claims his right to speak but also, and most importantly, to be heard, underscoring the need for the establishment of a dialectic relationship wherein the Afghan underage ‘other’ speaks and the adult Greek (male) host listens and responds ethically and responsibly. Lefteris does respond ethically by saving the boy from the dangers of the reception centre of Patras. His narrative voice nevertheless frames the letter that initiates his own confession, which mediates his experiences in the port city of Patras, where increased numbers of refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants live under terrible conditions.10 Despite Fasil’s request as inscribed in his letter, then, Migozarad also infantilizes and somewhat restricts the agency of the ‘other’. For Chouliaraki and Tijana Stolic (2017: 1168), as ‘[a]n exemplary manifestation of innocent vulnerability, the child has historically operated as an instrument in mobilising tender-heartedness and parental love’, in contrast to adult

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hostility and malevolence. Thus, it often leads to ‘the Western self-description of the caring parent’ (ibid.). Indeed, Lefteris becomes the philanthropic saviour of the Afghan boy, the Western fatherly figure who saves the innocent child. The novel foregrounds the responsibility to care for ‘others’ that is manifested through Lefteris’s actions as something inherent to being Greek. Peritextually, it includes an excerpt from Hannah Arendt’s (1968: 25) Men in Dark Times on the term philanthropia. ‘The Greeks’, Arendt writes, ‘called this humanness [the quality, that is, of being human], which is achieved in the discourse of friendship philanthropia, “love of man,” since it manifests itself in a readiness to share the world with other men’. Arendt introduces philanthropia as a core element of the ancient Greek polis. In its inclusion of this reference, Migozarad evokes a link between the modern Greek state and ancient Greece, similar to that which emerges from Dendias’s allusion to the Dorian conquest and his use of ‘Xenios Zeus’ to name a procedure of state-initiated violence. Migozarad also includes an excerpt from Euripides’ Medea, which describes being forcibly uprooted from one’s home as worse than death. In presenting the particular excerpt out of its initial context, however, the novel omits important information about the original. For instance, this excerpt was sung by the chorus when referring to Medea’s suffering upon Jason’s request for her to leave him so that he could live with his mistress. Medea, the barbarian princess of Colchis whom Jason, the Greek leader of the Argonauts, married, killed her children to revenge her husband for his infidelity. Upon the murder of their children, Jason declared that he ‘was insane’ to have brought her from her ‘home among the barbarians to a Greek house’ and that ‘no Greek woman would have dared to’ commit such a crime (Euripides n.d.: 1330, 1340). The chorus’s lament over the pain of being uprooted from one’s home appears in Migozarad after Lefteris’s description of having witnessed a number of dead bodies floating in the sea and a comment on the increasing scale of human flows in Europe. It is also located prior to the description of the haunting impact of that incident on him, and of correlations he creates between the dead people he saw and his grandparents, who fled Asia Minor upon their persecution by the Turks in 1922. While evoking similarities between his ancestors’ desperate journey and those of the people currently drowning on sea routes to Europe, Lefteris refers to Medea to underscore the depth of personal awareness of the trauma of forced migration and refugee movements that Greek people (should) have, as also reflected in one of the most significant tragedies of all times. While preserving the lineage between ancient and contemporary Greece via its reference to Euripides’ tragedy and investing the Greek reader with responsibility to act ethically towards the ‘other’, the novel also implicitly elevates the implied host and reader in relation to their ethos by omitting those parts of the play that refer to Jason’s hostility against his ‘barbarian’ wife. Nonetheless, the novel does not simply exemplify another variation of a Western, neocolonial, paternalistic take on the ‘other’, because it also places respon-

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sibility on corrupted local authorities and describes Western political decisions as leading to and preserving the ‘refugee crisis’. For example, Lefteris mentions that across Europe, those who ‘promise more security, more prisons, [and] more policing practices’ and those who ‘blame foreigners for their problems’ are the ones who gain ‘popularity and votes’ (Tsantis 2016: 54). In addition, he refers to racist and xenophobic depictions of refugees in newspapers, to the thousands of children who have disappeared on their journeys to Europe and to the Western financing of terrorist groups like ISIS.11 Unlike the Glamoria cover, Migozarad does not ‘avoid attributing political responsibility’ by merely focusing on the helpless victim in need of salvation, thus refusing to ‘leave the political parameters that have caused the refugee condition unchallenged’ (Yialouri 2019: 227).

Undoing Hierarchies: Solidarian Activism in Amateur (Non-)Art We argue that unlike the Glamoria cover and Migozarad, amateur (non-)art from below, like that created on Lesvos by locals and asylum seekers, invests the ‘absolute other’ with agency, allowing them to speak and to be seen.12 Simultaneously, it undoes relations of hospitality, producing bonds of solidarity in the way that it cultivates possibilities for the ‘absolute other’ to ‘take the place’ they are given. In referring to such creations as ‘amateur (non-)art’, we differentiate between them and art that mediates – at times in rather abstract ways – experiences of the ‘refugee crisis’ in (Western) high art institutions like galleries and museums. While there is significance in the way that such high-artistic and experimental works illustrate an almost immediate historicization of the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’, there is also risk. As Ida Danewid (2017) explains, even if they may seek to counter populist, far-right, anti-immigrant, xenophobic and racist attitudes by calling for empathy, publicly mourning lost lives and ‘humanizing’ migrants, there are issues that such artworks hide from view. Artists, activists and academics may reproduce rather than challenge assumptions of the far-right by focusing on abstract as opposed to historical meanings, potentially turning ‘questions of responsibility, guilt, restitution and structural reform into matters of empathy, generosity and hospitality’ (ibid.: 1681). In distinguishing between amateur (non-)art and high-artistic, experimental work, we also propose to unsettle the status of the (Western) artist or author as a source of authenticity for legitimate artistic or literary expressions of the ‘refugee crisis’. Moreover, we highlight the radical potential that exists in amateur artwork that is not legitimized through high art institutions or mainstream publishers. By examining the representation of the ‘refugee crisis’ in such amateur (non-)art, we hope to contribute to the field of arts-based refugee research, which expands ‘the possibilities of collaborating with marginalised Knowledge Holders’ (Lenette 2019: 33), encouraging emancipatory and alternative pathways to advancing

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knowledge and broadening narratives that may have otherwise been ‘trimmed or reshaped for academic consumption’ (ibid.: 35). Specifically, we point to the radical differences between representations of Moria and the people living there offered in amateur (non-)art created on Lesvos and on the Glamoria cover. Lesvos was the first point of arrival on European soil for more than half a million people trying to reach Europe in 2015 and many others thereafter (Hernandez 2016). Locals report that its shores resembled a war zone at the time (see Hall 2015). Moria was the largest of the five reception centres on Greek islands, originally built to host 2,200 people but with a population of up to eighteen thousand having lived in and around it in terrible conditions (Bigg 2020). Many of the people who lived there metaphorically described it as a ‘prison’ (Médecins Sans Frontières 2017). After the fire of September 2020, in addition to those deemed more vulnerable, such as women, children and sick people, others also sought shelter in centres like Kara Tepe and Pikpa, or in alternative housing.13 Amateur (non-)art created on Lesvos consists of art aimed at raising awareness (and money), ‘protest’ or ‘refugee art’, ‘decorative art’, art as a way of healing through expressing oneself and sharing experiences that are traumatic, and art for memory or collection. An example of amateur (non-)art that raises awareness and money was initiated by Lesvos Solidarity.14 Because of the number of people arriving on the island in 2015, close to half a million life jackets were left on its shores. These amounted to a ‘Life Jacket Graveyard’ (Lindsay 2017).15 Lesvos Solidarity ‘upcycles’ these life jackets and organizes workshops, during which volunteers and refugees make bags out of them (Figure 10.1). This project, which is called ‘Safe Passage’, shows how ‘the appropriation of materials imbues them with new purposes and symbolism in the artistic and activist realm. Their meaning changes and moves, and therefore the materials change politically and symbolically’ (Barry 2019: 209). As such, ‘Safe Passage’ exemplifies how the life jacket can be utilized to connote survival beyond perilous journeys and steps towards gradual integration in local society. Lesvos Solidarity also specializes in caring for refugee children’s well-being through creative methods and language lessons, which offer them space to use art for healing. For instance, a child’s painting in Mosaik Support Centre (Figure 10.2) depicts Moria as a prison, illustrating the child creator’s perspective on – and traumatic experiences of – the reception centre, which is of potential healing impact. Simultaneously, this practice facilitates English-language learning, which may potentially enable integration. Such creative work, as well as that produced as part of ‘Safe Passage’, raise awareness and money (in the second case), simultaneously functioning as means towards healing and expressing emotions and experiences that adult and children refugees and asylum seekers may otherwise be prevented from expressing. Another example of art that aims at raising awareness and money is that created by Eric and Philippa Kempson, who moved to Lesvos in 1996 and have been

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FIGURE 10.1. Life jacket bag catalogue, Mosaik Support Centre, July 2017. Photograph by Jovana Mastilovic. Lesvos, Greece. © Lesvos Solidarity, used with permission.

helping refugees ever since they started arriving on the island (Barbetta 2018). The Kempsons receive donations for their ‘operational charity’ called The Hope Project and sell their art to raise money for purchasing necessities such as water, food and warm clothes, as well as for sometimes providing shelter for refugees. Eric Kempson is a painter and sculptor who makes jewellery and other designs from the wood of the boats that have arrived in Lesvos carrying refugees from Turkey. In addition, he publishes amateur documentary videos via his YouTube channel and photographs accompanied by written information via the Facebook page of The Hope Project, which provides first-hand information about the humanitarian emergency on Lesvos. Christina Barbetta (2018) describes the humanitarian support that his YouTube videos have triggered, explaining that ‘in 6–8 months 2500 people . . . from all over the world arrived on the Greek island to help migrants, working next to fishermen and other inhabitants’. Eric Kempson underscores the significance of social media for his humanitarian work, explaining that ‘if it was not for those tools we wouldn’t have had any help for the refugees. They are very important’, he adds, ‘because [the] media

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FIGURE 10.2. A child’s drawing of Moria, Mosaik Support Centre, July 2017. Photograph by Jovana Mastilovic. Lesvos, Greece. © Lesvos Solidarity, used with permission.

don’t tell anything about what happens here’ (Barbetta 2018). Videos framed through Kempson’s perspective provide visual access to the living conditions of refugees on the island or to boats arriving on the shores of Lesvos as he waits with others to help people arrive safely. They also present his commentary through voice-over as he refers, for example, to the problems that refugees face, like the separation of families, cold and lack of necessities.16 As opposed to objectifying ‘others’ and preserving hierarchical relations of hospitality, through their work of ‘solidarian activism’ (Rozakou 2018: 194), the Kempsons cultivate bonds of solidarity with them, while offering substantial humanitarian support and raising awareness. Kempson’s amateur YouTube videos carry political and affective impact, as indicated by the amount of humanitarian support they have triggered. This has been achieved because of the potential for activism presented by YouTube, which enables ‘access, participation, reciprocity and many-to-many rather than one-to-many communication’ (Jenkins and Thorburn 2004: 2) as is the case for ‘broadcast media’ (ibid.). Michael Strangelove (2010: 4) describes YouTube as ‘a social space . . . a battlefield, a contested ground, where amateur videographers try to influence how events are presented and interpreted’. For Strangelove (ibid.:

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25), amateur online videos are ‘history from below’ and should ‘be treated as significant sources of historical insight’. Like Kempson’s videos, his Facebook posts may also function as a source of historical information, as they also unveil, among other issues, the difficulties faced by refugees and asylum seekers who are left without financial or medical support by the state in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.17 Borrowing from Patricia R. Zimmerman (2008), Strangelove (2010: 24) explains that like offline amateur videos, online ones constitute ‘unexplored evidence, potentially subversive in its meanings and implications’ that can mediate ‘historical traumas’, or stage ‘counter-narratives’ to ‘existing social orders’, thus constituting ‘a necessary and vital part of visual culture’ (Zimmerman 2008: 5–6). For Zimmerman, amateur videos should not merely be seen as ‘artistic interventions . . . but as series of active relationships between the maker and the subject, . . . between the international and the local, between reality and fantasy, . . . between the nation and the empire and between gender and race’ (ibid.). In demonstrating all of the above, Kempson’s videos and Facebook posts counter normalized injurious metaphors, like those found in New Democracy’s 2012 rhetoric and on the Glamoria cover, by rendering publicly accessible a perspective (from below) on the humanitarian emergency on Lesvos. Like Migozarad, they unveil the responsibilities of Western foreign policies and local authorities, but unlike it, they do not infantilize those they seek to aid. Graffiti is yet another category of ‘protest art’, through which activists, refugees and asylum seekers publicly express themselves and their criticism of EU and Greek state policies (Figure 10.3). Such grassroots activist (non-)art offers space for individuals to display their agency and to exercise their right to truth-telling and justice-seeking as they engage in creative projects. As a counterhegemonic art form and a ‘method of contesting space’, ‘political’ graffiti, such as that identified on the walls of buildings in Lesvos, is motivated by feelings of exclusion from political processes and provides a venue for marginalized people to express their disagreement with the status quo (Waldner and Dobratz 2013: 380). Marginalized individuals like refugees, asylum seekers or even activists take over space to express counter-hegemonic views through the inscription of phrases like ‘no one is illegal’, or ‘no borders no nations’ on public space (Figure 10.3). Such ‘political graffiti’ targets public consumption and aims at influencing public opinion and affecting government decisions and policies (ibid.: 378). In addition to anonymous ‘political’ graffiti, a mural on the kitchen wall of Pikpa, created by Art for Action, shows a girl blowing across the globe, with clouds turning into the word ‘home’ written in different languages, illustrating children’s right to free and protected movement across the globe and to a safe home (Figure 10.4).18 A final example of ‘protest art’ is (rap) music. For example, in 2017, refugees and asylum seekers living in Moria composed a rap song that deals with people’s

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FIGURE 10.3. Graffiti in Mytilene City Centre, 2017. Photograph by Περσεφόνη Κερεντζή [Persephone Kerentzi]. Lesvos, Greece. © Περσεφόνη Κερεντζή [Persephone Kerentzi], used with permission.

FIGURE 10.4. Pikpa Refugee Camp kitchen wall mural by Art for Action, Lesvos, Greece, 2017. Photograph: © Lesvos Solidarity, used with permission.

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abandonment in the ‘camp’ and with Western countries’ responsibilities for the wars in their homelands and for their subsequent refugee status. It also expresses dissatisfaction with local authorities for delaying asylum-securing procedures, and it refers to the loved ones they lost because of wars, to the children who went missing on their journeys to Europe and whom no one looked for, and to their feelings of injustice and hopelessness (Observatory 2017). Music has traditionally been used by oppressed communities to ‘express rage and produce fantasies of subversion’ (Rose 1994: 99). As a countercultural genre, hip-hop in particular has expressed social and political issues, having had a ‘psychological impact on political attitude formation’ in the African American community and beyond (Bonnette 2015: 3). Cultural forms like amateur rap songs mediated through popularized channels like YouTube or Facebook, for instance, provide valuable insights into how opinions can be expressed in communities of colour that have traditionally been excluded from the public sphere (Harris-Lacewell 2004). They also offer venues for people to make themselves, their stories and their cultures publicly visible, while expressing their claims to the right to humane treatment and respect.19 Instead of triggering positive political change, however, such amateur (non-)art may have a negative impact on asylum claims and, consequently, it may need to be removed from the public domain. When coming into contact with state authorities, therefore, such creations, which are otherwise ignored, come to matter in ways that justify the deprivation of their creators’ human rights. Despite its injurious impact, however, this in itself shows the radical potential of, and the value existing in, such amateur (non-)art.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have investigated injurious metaphors that structure irregular migration to Greece as a threat, inter alia, while also justifying state-initiated violence against visible ‘otherness’. ‘Xenios Zeus’ manifests the way in which the misappropriation of elements from the Greek historical and mythological archive expands hierarchical relations between the Greek (civilized) host and the ‘absolute other’, illustrating how processes of exclusion can emerge in frameworks of ‘hospitality’. Through their Lolita and child metaphors, respectively, the Glamoria cover and Migozarad display the ethical issues characterizing Western attempts to speak on behalf of the ‘other’. The potential of the arts and literature to trigger ethical engagements with ‘others’ in the context of the ‘refugee crisis’ is, indeed, not without problems. The risk of objectifying, infantilizing and re-silencing the refugee, the stateless person and the undocumented migrant are always present in artistic attempts initiated by members of host societies who

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aim at raising awareness about the suffering of ‘others’. In contrast, amateur, activist (non-)art from below can enable the ‘absolute other’ to speak, undoing hierarchical relations of hospitality and showcasing solidarian activism. Initiatives like ‘Safe Passage’ and children’s drawings, online amateur documentary videos and posts, ‘political’ graffiti and (rap) music may offer alternative venues for expression, illustrating radical potential, fostering healing and the potential for integration, while countering injurious metaphors representing the so-called ‘refugee crisis’. Olga Michael is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cyprus. Her research interests include refugee and migration comics, contemporary graphic life narratives of human rights violations and trauma and gendered violence in testimonial literature. Among her recent publications are ‘21st-Century Migration to Europe and the Rise of the “Ethno-Topographic Narrative”’ (Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, special issue, ‘Narratives of Migration to Europe’) and ‘Crossing, Conflict and Diaspora in Cyprus and beyond in Miranda Hoplaros and Lara Alphas’ Graphic Novel, The Sign Maker’ (a/b: Auto/biography Studies, special issue, ‘Migration, Exile and Diaspora in Graphic Life Narratives’). Jovana Mastilovic, PhD (2019), is adjunct researcher at Griffith Law School in Brisbane and works as a project manager for local government in Sydney, Australia. Her work focuses on community safety and recovery. She completed her bachelor’s degree in European Legal and Political Studies in the Republic of Serbia and a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her doctoral research examined the securitization of asylum in the European Union and the extraterritorial effects of EU policies in Turkey and countries along the Western Balkans route.

Notes 1. We approach the term ‘refugee crisis’ from a critical standpoint because it fails to link the increased flows of refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in Europe to European countries’ histories of (neo-)colonial interventions in Asia and Africa, and with the multiple (financial) crises within Europe (see Tazzioli and De Genova 2014; Gerasopoulos 2018). 2. Textual excerpts in Greek have been translated into English by Olga Michael. 3. Information included in this chapter regarding Moria dates from prior to September 2020, when it was destroyed by a fire, leaving eleven thousand people without shelter.

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4. We use the term ‘other’ to refer to refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants currently seeking refuge in Europe. Our use of the term is not intended to reproduce the hierarchical relations it implies, but rather to undermine and unsettle them through our analysis,. 5. ‘Xenios Zeus’ was abandoned in 2015 (‘Greece’ 2015). 6. For the cover, see Cohen (2018). 7. Glamoria was aiming to inform people about the petition ‘Don’t Look Away’, which called ‘for the Dutch government to bring 1 000 refugees from the Greek islands to the Netherlands’ (Cohen 2018). 8. In referring to Nabokov’s fictional ‘Lolita’, we mean to point to the underage, sexualized female spectacle visually and verbally displayed in many literary and filmic works, including American Beauty. 9. For instance, see his installation Soleil Levant (2017) in Berlin: https://publicdelivery.org/ ai-weiwei-life-jackets/ (accessed 16 August 2021). Contrary to Barry, when discussing high art that utilizes objects to narrate refugee experiences, Eleana Yialouri (2019: 230) writes that even if ‘things can “talk” or “act,” this speech or action is not the same as the speech or actions of the refugees themselves’. 10. A Human Rights Watch (2013a) report describes the inhuman conditions in which unaccompanied minor and adult refugees, as well as undocumented immigrants, live in Patras. 11. Appendices at the book’s end provide historical evidence and a bibliography substantiating the narrator’s statements. 12. Most of the primary data examined in this section was gathered during Jovana Mastilovic’s empirical data collection on Lesvos in July 2017. 13. Pikpa was forcibly shut down in October 2020, and the Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum announced early in 2021 that Kara Tepe will also close, thus eliminating alternative structures to the tent-based closed camp erected after the fire in Moria, which exposes individuals to excessive precarity because of weather and environmental issues (see Amnesty International 2020; Human Rights Watch 2021). 14. Lesvos Solidarity is a refugee centre, where volunteers provide support to vulnerable refugees; it looks very different to Moria. For more information, see https://lesvossol idarity.org/en/ (accessed 16 August 2021) 15. The ‘Life Jacket Graveyard’ memorial was created by volunteers who gathered life jackets from across Lesvos to commemorate those who undertook perilous journeys to Europe (Barbetta 2018). 16. See for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGS0xfktQEY&t=151s (accessed 16 August 2021). For Kempson’s YouTube channel, see https://www.youtube.com/chan nel/UCnPYqWbPl4OOCa7RHfSjhxw (accessed 16 August 2021). For the Facebook page of The Hope Project see https://www.facebook.com/HopeProjectGreece/. 17. See https://www.facebook.com/HopeProjectKempsons/photos/a.1659118077702651/2 615366298744486/?type=3&theater (accessed 16 August 2021). 18. Art for Action uses art as means to raise awareness on social issues like wars and conflicts, and it also fosters positivity in vulnerable, traumatized communities. It initiates, for instance, the creation of public street art and murals by (vulnerable) groups of individuals in organized workshop series. See https://artforaction.co.uk/art-for-action/ (accessed 16 August 2021). 19. See also the Afghan musician Mohammad Hussain, who sings using a traditional musical instrument of his experiences of being a refugee, claiming his right to respectful treatment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex7IoyCuWtc (accessed 16 August 2021).

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References Amnesty International. 2020. ‘Urgent Action: Pikpa Refugee Shelter Closed Down’, Amnesty International, 19 November. Retrieved 11 April 2020 from https://www.amnesty.org/ download/Documents/EUR2533662020ENGLISH.pdf. Antonopoulos, A.G. 2006. ‘Greece: Policing Racist Violence in “Fenceless Vineyard”’, Race and Class 48(2): 92–100. Arendt, H. 1968. Men in Dark Times. New Work: Harcourt Brace & Co. ‘Α. Σαμαράς: Πρέπει να Ανακαταλάβουμε τις Πόλεις μας’ [‘A. Samaras: Prepi Na Anakatalavoume tis Polis mas’/‘A. Samaras: We Need to Reclaim our Cities’ ]. 2012. Naftemboriki .gr, 29 March. Retrieved 3 May 2020 from https://www.naftemporiki.gr/story/387960/ a-samaras-prepei-na-anakatalaboume-tis-poleis-mas. Barbetta, C. 2018. ‘Saving Migrants in Lesbos’, Vita International, 20 April. Retrieved 1 August 2020 from http://www.vitainternational.media/en/interview/2018/04/20/savingmigrants-in-Lesvos/39/. Barry, K. 2019. ‘Art and Materiality in the Global Refugee Crisis: Ai Weiwei’s Artworks and the Emerging Aesthetics of Mobilities’, Mobilities 14(2): 204–17. Bigg, M.M. 2020. ‘Vulnerable Asylum Seekers Struggle to Access Medical Care on Overcrowded Greek Islands’, UNHCR: Cyprus, 21 February. Retrieved 2 May 2020 from https://www.unhcr.org/cy/2020/02/21/vulnerable-asylum-seekers-struggle-to-access-medic al-care-on-overcrowded-greek-islands/. Bonnette, M.L. 2015. Pulse of the People: Political Rap Music and Black Politics. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brambilla, C., and H. Pötzsch. 2017. ‘In/visibility’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 68–89. Caires, A.P. de, and S. Aziz. 2018. ‘An Open Letter to Amnesty International from NGO Safe Space’, Media Diversified, 20 December. Retrieved 3 May 2020 from https://mediadiversified.org/2018/12/19/an-open-letter-to-amnesty-international-from-ngo-safe-space/. Chouliaraki, L., and M. Georgiou. 2017. ‘Hospitability: The Communicative Architecture of Humanitarian Securitization at Europe’s Borders’, Journal of Communication 67(2): 159–80. Chouliaraki, L., and T. Stolic. 2017. ‘Rethinking Media Responsibility in the “Refugee Crisis”: A Visual Typology of European News’, Media, Culture & Society 39(8): 1162–77. Cohen, D.R. 2018. ‘Uproar Over Sexy Picture on Magazine from Amnesty International’s Dutch Arm’, NPR, 21 December. Retrieved 4 May 2020 from https://www.npr.org/ sections/goatsandsoda/2018/12/21/678626058/uproar-over-sexy-picture-on-magazinefrom-amnesty-internationals-dutch-arm?t=1558696660920. ‘Compulsory Health Checks for Migrants’. 2012. Ekathimerini.com, 1 April. Retrieved 28 April 2020 from http://www.ekathimerini.com/140488/article/ekathimerini/news/ compulsory-health-checks-for-migrants. Danewid, I. 2017. ‘White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the Erasure of History’, Third World Quarterly 38(7): 1674–89. Derrida, J., and A. Dufourmantelle. 2000. Of Hospitality, trans. Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. El Refaie, E. 2001. ‘Metaphors We Discriminate By: Naturalized Themes in Austrian Newspaper Articles about Asylum Seekers’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(3): 352–71. Euripides. n.d. Medea, trans. David Covaks. Retrieved 2 May 2020 from http://www.perseus.tufts .edu/hopper/text?doc=Eur.+Med.+1339&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0114.

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Gerasopoulos, V. 2018. ‘Countering “Crisis”: Identifying the Components of the Refugee Crisis in Greece’, in D. Siegel and V. Nagy (eds), The Migration Crisis? Criminalization, Security and Survival. The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, pp. 265–92. ‘Greece to Ditch Xenios Zeus Operations, Government’s Immigration Chief Says’. 2015. Ekathimerini.com, 4 April. Retrieved 28 April 2020 from http://www.ekathimerini .com/166923/article/ekathimerini/news/greece-to-ditch-xenios-zeus-operations-governme nts-immigration-chief-says. Hall, J. 2015. ‘Syrian Refugees Have Turned Lesvos into a War Zone, Residents Claim, as Migrants Chant “F*** You” at Hungarian Police Amid Fears ISIS is Using the Crisis to Enter Europe’, Daily Mail, 9 September. Retrieved 2 May 2020 from http://www .dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3227436/Syrian-refugees-turned-Lesvos-war-zone-residentsclaim-migrants-chant-f-Hungarian-police-amid-fears-ISIS-using-crisis-enter-Europe.html. Harris-Lacewell, M. 2004. Barbershops, Bibles, and BET. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hernandez, J. 2016. ‘Refugee Flows to Lesvos: Evolution of a Humanitarian Response’, Migration Policy Institute, 29 January. Retrieved 4 May 2020 from https://www.migra tionpolicy.org/article/refugee-flows-lesvos-evolution-humanitarian-response. Human Rights Watch. 2013a. Turned Away: Summary Returns of Unaccompanied Migrant Children and Adult Asylum Seekers from Italy to Greece, 21 January. Retrieved 27 April 2020 from https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/01/21/turned-away/summary-returns-unac companied-migrant-children-and-adult-asylum. ———. 2013b. Unwelcome Guests: Greek Police Abuses of Migrants in Athens, 12 June. Retrieved 28 April 2020 from https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/06/12/unwelcome-guests/ greek-police-abuses-migrants-athens. ———. 2021. Greece: Migrant Camp Lead Contamination, 27 January. Retrieved 11 April 2021 from https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/01/27/greece-migrant-camp-lead-contamination. Jenkins, H., and D. Thorburn. 2004. ‘Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy’, in H. Jenkins, D. Thorburn and B. Seawell (eds), Democracy and New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1–18. Lenette, C. 2019. Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research: Creating Sanctuary. Singapore: Springer. Lindsay, J. 2017. ‘Dispatch from the Lifejacket Graveyard near Eftalou Beach in Lesvos, Greece’, State of Formation, 22 May. Retrieved 3 March 2020 from http://www.stateofformation .org/2017/05/dispatch-from-the-lifejacket-graveyard-near-eftalou-beach-in-lesvos-greece/. McKittrick, C. 2001. ‘“I Laughed and Cringed at the Same Time”: Shaping Pedophilic Discourse around American Beauty and Happiness’, The Velvet Light Trap 47: 3–14. Médecins Sans Frontières. 2017. One Year on from the EU-Turkey Deal: Challenging the EU’s Alternative Facts. Athens: Médecins Sans Frontières. Retrieved 20 March 2020 from https://www.msf.org/sites/msf.org/files/one_year_on_from_the_eu-turkey_deal.pdf. Muir, C. 2017. ‘Friday Essay: The Photographer, the Island and Half a Million Lifejackets’, The Conversation, 4 August. Retrieved 10 March 2020 from https://theconversation.com/ friday-essay-the-photographer-the-island-and-half-a-million-lifejackets-81682. ‘Ν. Δενδιάς για Μεταναστευτικό: Έχουμε μια “Νέα Κάθοδο των Δωριέων”’. [‘N. Dendias gia Metanasteftiko: Ehoume Mia “Nea Kathodo ton Dorieon”’/‘N. Dendias regarding the Migration Issue: We Are Witnessing a “New Dorian Conquest”’] 2012. Το Βήμα [To Vima], 6 August. Retrieved 20 March 2020 from https://www.tovima.gr/2012/08/06/ society/n-dendias-gia-metanasteytiko-exoyme-mia-nea-kathodo-twn-dwriewn/. Observatory of the Refugee and Migration Crisis in the Aegean. 2017. ‘Malakastan – Moria No Good’, 6 October. Retrieved 28 April 2020 from https://refugeeobservatory.aegean .gr/en/malakastan-moria-no-good.

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Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 2018. Desperate Journeys: Refugees and Migrants Arriving in Europe and at Europe’s Borders, January–August 2018. Retrieved 20 March 2020 from https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/ 65373. Rose, T. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Rozakou, K. 2012. ‘The Biopolitics of Hospitality in Greece: Humanitarianism and the Management of Refugees’, American Ethnologist: Journal of the American Ethnological Society 39(3): 562–77. ———. 2018. ‘Solidarians in the Land of Xenios Zeus’, in D. Dalakoglou and G. Agelopoulos (eds), Critical Times in Greece: Anthropological Engagements with the Crisis. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 188–201. Šarić, L. 2019. ‘Visual Presentation of Refugees During the “Refugee Crisis” of 2015–2016 on the Online Portal of the Croatian Public Broadcaster’, International Journal of Communication 13: 991–1015. Strangelove, M. 2010. Watching YouTube: Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Tazzioli, M., and N. De Genova. 2014. ‘Europe/Crisis: Introducing New Keywords of “the Crisis” in and of “Europe”’, in N. De Genova and M. Tazzioli (eds), Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of ‘the Crisis’ in and of ‘Europe’. Near Futures Online. Retrieved 16 March 2021 from http://nearfuturesonline.org/europecrisis-new-keywords-of-crisis-in-and-of-europe/. Tsantis, C. 2016. Migozarad. Chania: Radamanathys. Waldner, K.L., and B.A. Dobratz. 2013. ‘Graffiti as a Form of Contentious Political Participation’, Sociology Compass 7(5): 377–89. Yialouri, Eleana. 2019. ‘Difficult Representations: Visual Art Engaging with the Refugee Crisis’, Visual Studies 34(3): 223–38. Zimmerman, P.R. 2008. ‘Introduction: The Home Movie Movement’, in K.L. Ishizuka and P.R. Zimmerman (eds), Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 1–28.

Chapter 11

WHO MARKS THE BORDERS OF THE (UN)KNOWN? The Dynamics of Relational Reflexivity in the Production of a Play on Forced Mobility in Northern Portugal

F Elizabeth Challinor

Public performances are aesthetic processes. They articulate sensory perceptions and subjectivities, including value judgements regarding what is true or false and what is art or politics (Rosello and Wolfe 2017; Schimanski and Wolfe 2017). But who has the power to decide what should be seen or heard, what is relevant or irrelevant? And should art limit itself to imitating reality, or does it have a transformative political potential? This chapter addresses these questions through an examination of the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of the reflexive dilemmas (Flynn and Tinius 2015) that emerged during the collaborative process of writing and performing a play on the topic of forced mobility in northern Portugal. This involves addressing borders as ‘categories of difference that create socio-spatial distinctions between places, individuals and groups’ (Kolossov and Scott 2013: 7). However, these distinctions are not only physical and conceptual; they are also aesthetic, because sensory perceptions also play a role in cognition. Relevant here is Rancière’s (2004: 44) discussion of art ‘as the transformation of thought into the sensory experience of the community’. This chapter focuses on the relational spaces within which the theatre director, actors, migrants and refugees negotiated their conflicting aesthetic and political sensitivities with regard to how people’s personal experiences of forced mobility should be discursively and visually performed. How should they cross from private experience into the public sphere? The politics of border aesthetics (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017) was consequently central to the negotiations that took place during the various stages

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of producing the play. These stages included: listening to narratives and interviews; producing a text and songs out of them; rehearsing the play; performing the play; and finally discussing the play with the audience in talkback sessions. The fieldwork consisted of observation of the performances and talkback sessions and informal conversations with members of the audience during the month of October 2017; observation of a rehearsal and interviews with the play’s director, its actors and the refugees and migrants involved between March and May 2018; and textual analysis of the script. Most of the script was based on personal testimonies of individuals’ experiences given in interviews with the theatre director and actors.1 Names have been changed in order to safeguard anonymity. Some of the interviewees were subjects in my wider research on refugee hospitality in Portugal (Challinor 2018). The anthropology of performance emerged as a field of enquiry to pursue as a result of seeing the first public performance of the play, which consisted of a series of vignettes and episodes linked together by songs written and performed by a local musician. It was consequently too late to observe the processes of collaborative playwriting. I also had to negotiate my own identity as anthropologist and an engaged citizen who had become directly involved in the lives of some of the refugee informants. My in-depth knowledge of the circumstances of the family represented in the play heightened my awareness of debates regarding the complex relationships between artistic practices and the ‘real world’, between private experience and the public sphere, and between sensory perception and cognition. Throughout the writing and review process of this chapter, I came to realize that this play not only presented border crossings to the public; it was also part of the process of border crossing, in which social actors had unequal power to decide where to mark the borders of what was to be made visible or invisible to the audience. As shall become evident below, the suffering of migrants and refugees crossing physical borders was made highly visible in the play, while the wider political context of forced mobility and the citizenship issues raised by this were not. By focusing on borders and crossings, the play not only ignored the wider structures that produced them, but also marked its own borders, which kept the issues of refugee integration in Portugal at bay.

Setting the Scene The repertory theatre maintained close ties with the local population (approximately forty thousand residents), regularly sending messages and ringing people to offer to reserve tickets for performances. The company also ended each play with talkback sessions in which the actors would appear on stage to engage in discussion and answer questions from the audience. It is within this context of

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‘focused engagement and deliberative discussion’ (Long 2015: 311) that the play was received by the local community. In 2015, the issue of forced mobility hit the headlines all over Europe. Members of the theatre were so moved by the image of Alan Kurdi, the young Kurdish child found dead on a Turkish beach, amply divulged by the media, that they felt they had a social responsibility towards the local community to address the issue of forced mobility, and considered putting on a play. The opportunity arose within the ambit of the local council’s inter-institutional integration plan for third-country nationals, funded by the government. The company invited a director with whom they had already worked in community theatre. He described his work to me as follows: Most of my work is about giving voice to people. I often don’t work with professional actors at all. I work with people directly . . . and the whole work is based around what is important for you to talk about and how can you use theatre to tell the world what needs to be said from your point of view . . . Here the objective was to make a professional show.2

The aim was to produce an original script to be performed by the resident actors. The company was also inspired by two plays that the actors read during their first rehearsals in September 2017. First, Les Emigrés (Mrozek 1974) provides a portrayal of two Polish emigrants in Paris and is overtly political in its criticism of state communism. The actors felt it addressed a topic with which the Portuguese public was already familiar, that of economic migrants who cross borders to improve their living standards; after all, Portugal has a long history of emigration (Pires 2019). The other play, ‘Migrants: We Are Too Many on This Fucking Boat’ (Migraaants: On est trop nombreux sur ce putain de bateau) by Matei Visniec (2016), addressed the issue of forced mobility by resorting to ironic humour, which did not correspond with the company’s aesthetic sensibility on the topic. The actors and director decided they were looking for something else, even if extracts from this play were also incorporated into the script. Therefore, they sought people that they knew had either experienced forced mobility directly or witnessed the experiences of others. Some of the interviews were conducted via Skype; others were conducted with local residents with the help of migrant voluntary translators. They were all transcribed and edited into a script. This was the company’s first experience of ‘documentary theatre’, understood as ‘a category of staged performance in which the actual words of real people are edited into a script and performed on-stage by actors’ (Long 2015). All the actors interviewed claimed that for the first time in their careers, they were being confronted by a set of narratives relating to ‘real events’. This was definitely not fiction. Moreover, the testimonies they heard were very powerful, often reducing them to tears.

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The play’s director was highly aware of the risk of reducing the performance to an exercise in emotional catharsis (see Szakolczai 2015), and there was an underlying tension between detachment and emotional engagement throughout the whole process of writing the script, rehearsing and performing the play. Most of the actors wanted to bear witness to the suffering of their interviewees as truthfully as possible; they felt a moral obligation to do so. Ana, in particular, spoke about the need to be honest. Surely, this implied putting all of her emotions into the part: I kept saying we’re not being honest with them. We’re not able to transmit the reality of their suffering. What are we going on stage for; to do theatre, while they have cried their eyes out, suffering in the face of death? . . . We’re not going to be faithful, real, authentic and this tormented me.3

Ana had walked out of one of the Skype interviews, so affected by the accounts of suffering that for a period of forty-eight hours, she was unable to commit herself to continue with the play. The director helped her to see things differently by explaining that when she became emotional, she became autobiographical, and he was not interested in her suffering and in how sorry she felt: In the aesthetics of the twentieth century . . . acting, it is all supposed to be about empathy and about feeling and about crying . . . as if you were that person, and the whole of the five weeks we spent on it, I kept on saying ‘I don’t want you to feel anything. I want you to transmit this because it is not for us to feel, our job is to try and transmit these stories . . . Just in purely theatrical terms they are incredibly strong, incredibly dramatic and they just need to be told and anything that we do that involves us getting involved and us crying or us taking a position and saying this is right or this is wrong will just get in the way.4

From Ana’s perspective, adopting such a stance went against the grain because it implied being superficial and insensitive. In response to the director’s request for ‘dry energy’ during a rehearsal to allow the story to tell itself, Ana responded, ‘Can you see black? It’s white’. Despite the director’s desire to avoid emotional involvement, he was also aware that the individuals who had given personal testimonies were seeing their experiences reflected in the play. His sense of moral obligation towards meeting their desire for identification and authenticity consequently led him to accommodate some of their requests, which resulted in the very sentimental reactions he had insisted the actors should avoid provoking. Moreover, holding back their emotions during the performance constituted a difficult challenge for most of the actors, and on the first night, as soon as the play ended, they all cried. The post-show talkback sessions, which held the potential for analysis and critical detachment,

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consequently also became forums for the public spreading of private emotions (Szakolczai 2015). Was the effect to make the actors and audience feel better by indulging their sentiments over the suffering of others, similarly to the way that humanitarian aid relieves the burden of an unequal world order (Fassin 2012)?

Negotiating Sensibilities Actor: I felt shivers today because we managed to transmit the message.5 Director: I don’t do messages.6

The writing of the script was a collaborative process that involved negotiating different sensibilities under time pressure. Due to delays in funding, the company only had five weeks to write the script and rehearse the performances. Aware that they had far more material from the interviews than they could use,7 and given the ninety-minute time constraint on the performance, they decided to focus on the topic of people on the move and finish the play by depicting arrival at a safe location. The possibility of introducing fiction was also ruled out. This was justified by one of the actors on the grounds that they preferred to use the accounts of ‘real people, of flesh and blood’. Since this was not participatory refugee theatre, the people interviewed were not given the opportunity to represent themselves on stage. The possibility of detachment from ‘the stigmatizing and minimal category of the refugee by introducing fiction and self-creation’ (Tinius 2016: 36) was consequently replaced by the search for authenticity and realism, placing an enormous sense of responsibility upon the shoulders of the actors. The director also felt very early in the process, when he started listening to the testimonies, that he did not want to take these stories and make them his own: It was not about us helping them, it was about them helping us to make a piece of good theatre. And I think, directors, especially in this kind of process, where the director is also coordinating the . . . writing process . . . it is very subjective . . . some people . . . have very tight control on that. Personally, I . . . can’t do it . . . for me theatre is about people . . . The actors . . . may be 15 years old or 95 years old and they may be professionals, semi-professionals or never even thought about making theatre in their lives but as performers . . . it is all about building on their qualities and pushing their limitations . . . to make sure they go as far as they possibly can in their lives and . . . you can’t plan that really because you only understand what their potential and their limitation is as you are going along.8

Having selected the main topics, the company began to write scenes based on the testimonies given via Skype and in face-to-face conversations with residents

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in the local town. These included a Syrian refugee, Elias, who spoke Portuguese; a Syrian Kurdish refugee, Bassam; and Bassam’s family, who had arrived more recently through the European relocation programme (European Commission 2017) and did not speak any European languages, as well as staff from local institutions responsible for hosting or assisting them. Elias and an Egyptian migrant served as interpreters between Arabic and Portuguese in the interviews with Bassam and his family. Those interviewed via Skype were a Portuguese maritime policeman who had served in Greece, a Portuguese citizen who had worked as a volunteer in the refugee camps in Greece and a Cuban refugee resident in Barcelona who had recently become a family member of one of the actors. The time constraints of having to produce a script and rehearse the play within a period of five weeks for a performance of around ninety minutes constituted reasonable justification in the eyes of the director and the company for the selective nature of the editing process, which barely touched upon integration issues, with the main focus on the dangers of forced mobility. The script was put together like a jigsaw puzzle. Separate pieces of paper with the title of each scene and song were scattered across the floor. The company drew a line and then discussed which scenes to include and where to place them. The result was thus a collage of separate stories that ran throughout the play, with the songs serving to connect them. The policeman spoke of his experiences assisting refugees off the boats in Turkey, and the volunteer’s stories described life in the camps. One refugee story was about the Cuban’s troubled journey to reach Barcelona and his emotional phone calls to his family. The other refugee story was that of Bassam’s family’s traumatic journey from Syria, which took them through Turkey to Greece and then from Greece to Portugal as part of the European relocation programme (Challinor 2018). Represented by a different actor in each scene, Bassam’s story gained prominence, always beginning with ‘My name is Bassam’, which rendered his account more vivid and evocative of the ‘flesh and blood’ people the actors wished to represent. The actress called Ana explained that the company chose Bassam as the protagonist, rather than his mother, his wife or any one of his four children, because of what she described as the contagious energy of his personality – he had a positive and proactive way of living life. A highly sociable character, Bassam was proud to be a refugee and wanted to be known by as many people as possible. Unable to communicate in Portuguese, he resorted to sending photographs of himself and his family to his new friends on social media apps such as WhatsApp and Messenger. The play’s director acknowledged that Bassam would have loved to represent himself on stage, but the language barrier made this difficult; however, since the company was telling his story, they could not possibly ignore his requests. One such request was to include an inflated boat in order to recreate the sea crossing from Turkey to Greece, which had constituted a traumatic experience for the whole family. Some members of the audience were offered an aesthetic ex-

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perience of how forced mobility can happen to anybody by boarding the boat on stage. The director told me that he had felt obliged to have the boat in the show: If I went back to it now, I would seriously consider not having the boat image because it is such a cliché but when we talked to Bassam, when we talked to Bassam’s wife and his mother and his daughters they came back to it again and again and again; the moment in the boat and it is so strong and it is so important to them that it seemed like you couldn’t get around it.9

Not only was it important to respond to the family’s requests but, as the director stated, ‘it became important [that] we did it the way they wanted it done and the way they said was real’. He described it as ‘a very dramatic moment because the life jackets drop from the sky’; the aim was thus to make it real for the audience by crowding them onto the boat. But this attempt to produce a re-enactment of the events inevitably produced some frustrations. Bassam and his daughters, for instance, kept insisting that the life jackets they had used were orange, but the theatre was only able to find red and yellow life jackets. It took a long time for them to accept this, because they wanted the representation to be as accurate as possible. Bassam also wanted to thank the local community for hosting his family. Although the director was aware that this risked turning ‘the whole thing . . . sloppy’, Bassam’s thanks were finally incorporated into the final speech of his character and into a song. Another request came from Elias, the young Syrian man who had helped with interpretation during the interviews. He was represented directly in the play through the screening of short videos that had been made of him playing the piano. Together with the songs, these helped to break up the storytelling in the other scenes, some of which were very dense. Elias had taught himself to play the piano and it had always been his dream to play a grand piano on stage. The play’s director was aware of the risks, which he discussed as follows: We didn’t manage the degree of detachment that I would have liked . . . I knew, as soon as I made the decision, to have him play at the end, that it was a very dangerous thing to do, from that point of view, almost suicidal really, because it was so moving to watch him play and . . . I couldn’t resist doing it because he wanted to be there.10

A few days later I met one of Elias’s secondary school teachers and asked him for his opinion of the play. He told me that he was quite biased because he was so fond of Elias, and that he felt it was wonderful. Nevertheless, he made two critical comments, to be discussed below. Although most of the editing of the play was the responsibility of the director, this section has illustrated how the need to negotiate different sensibilities placed the sentimental dimensions of forced mobility centre stage in the performances and

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in the post-show talkbacks, in which members of the audience saw their own experiences reflected. Audience participation included statements such as the following: I was a migrant that went to France. I crossed the border into Valença in the boot of a car. This play reminded me of this, and tears came to my eyes. This was an awakening for me. Forty years ago, I came with my father to Portugal. I was a refugee.11

The play triggered memories of difficult border crossings and forced mobility. Yet did it actually depoliticize the current context of forced mobility by obscuring the wider social, economic and political issues involved? Thanks to the 1985 Schengen Agreement, for example, there are no border controls between Spain and Portugal in the town of Valença any more. This freedom of movement within the Schengen zone contrasts sharply with the current outsourcing of the European border (Vaughan-Williams 2015). A refugee gave the following comment regarding the play: The play touched feelings, not the mind. If I speak to you with my feelings, you will feel sad – but it is just a feeling that will pass with time. If you speak with the mind it is like throwing a stone in the water; the stone will stay. Speaking with feelings is like throwing paper in the river – it will float away. The play did not help to understand why the people came here. It is important to understand why we run away from our country.12

These words elucidate how sensory perception affects cognition. The actors’ emotional engagement in their endeavour to transmit the reality of suffering channelled the audience’s understanding about forced mobility in a particular direction that bypassed critical analysis. Moreover, the distancing requested by the director, with which Ana in particular took issue, does not constitute dishonesty or indifference but rather, as Rancière (2004: 43) argues, is constitutive of performative acts: The democratic distribution of the sensible makes the worker into a double being. It removes the artisan from ‘his’ place, the domestic space of work, and gives him ‘time’ to occupy the space of public discussions and take on the identity of a deliberative citizen. The mimetic act of splitting in two, which is at work in theatrical space, consecrates this duality and makes it visible . . . the art of imitations is a technique and not a lie.

The Politics of the (Un)Known According to Rancière (2004: 13), works of art or performances are ‘involved in politics’, whatever their intentions may be, because ‘Politics revolves around

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what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak’. Moreover, aesthetic judgements regarding what is important and what should be made visible or invisible are also informed by the desired effects of ‘performativity’, a form of social action intended to effect change in the world (Austin 1962). In other words, art does not simply imitate or integrate reality – it transforms it (Szakolczai 2015), bringing about ‘radical changes in people’s conceptions of themselves and their understanding of wider political subjectivities’ (Flynn and Tinius 2015: 5). Nearly all the actors described the process as a life-changing experience. One of them stated that he felt they had become better humans. While this corroborates the point that theatres are ‘ethical fields in which actors work on themselves to attain greater responsibility’ (Tinius 2017: 246), it also raises the question of the degree to which the play served to ease consciences by showing sympathy for the ‘distant suffering’ (Boltanski 1999) of the ‘other’. In one of the talkback sessions, members of the audience spoke of the need to address integration issues, saying: ‘[t]hings are far more complex than the supposed happiness you represent them as feeling when they arrive’ and ‘[w]hat about their day-to-day life now?’13 None of the actors answered these questions, possibly due to their need to express the emotions they had tried so hard to contain during the performances, as the following extract from my field notes exemplifies: ‘To answer your question about integration’ (Ana, who has just finished talking, raises her hands in the air as if to acknowledge that she forgot to answer the question), ‘I would like to begin by saying, that while they gave us their accounts they did not shed a single tear . . . They gave us their stories in such a lively and positive way. Elias would ask us, “You are crying? Why? This is normal”’. (Ana comments, ‘we are the privileged ones’). ‘This has marked us for the rest of our lives . . .’ Note, like Ana, this actress has not answered the question about integration either.14

The director acknowledged that the company became so involved in the personal stories that they were unable to address the wider political context. He also added that neither he nor the cast were overtly political people. Yet if we analyse the play from Rancière’s (2004) perspective regarding what was made visible or invisible, we see that they were still involved in politics irrespective of their intentions. At this point, let us return to the boat scene. Some members of the audience had been given plastic bags before the performance began and told to put their ID cards and mobile phones inside. But when they were invited on stage to sit in the boat, no further mention of this was made. A member of the audience who had sat in the boat on stage raised this issue in the talkback session and pointed out to me later that the whole point of the scene should be to question

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the geopolitical context that denies migrants and refugees safe passage.15 Instead, the emphasis had been on the emotional trauma of crossing the sea. The audience member had expected to have his ID card forcibly taken from him. ‘Our citizenship status is really at the crux of the matter’, he insisted. I put this question directly to the play’s director. He replied that the mobile phones and ID cards were requested not to make a political point, but rather simply to provide an accurate description of what had actually happened. The director then continued, ‘I don’t want to justify myself in retrospect and make you believe I thought about things when maybe sometimes I didn’t’.16 I appreciated the honesty of his response. Issues raised by members of the audience with regard to the selective nature of the editing process were not restricted to what had been omitted – such as integration matters related to the post-arrival period – but also to what had been kept. Perhaps the most polemic part of the play was when the maritime policeman described what it is like to rescue migrants. The following words are translated from the original script: People are desperate and scared, they don’t hear, they just want to get on to our boat. For them, our boat is Europe and then . . . we arrive and say, ‘women and children first, then older people, then men’, right? But not for them . . . in their social scale the man comes first, it’s their thing. So, for them it’s first men and children last! It’s like that for them, do you see? You’re in the middle of the sea trying to save a boat overloaded with people and the men all trying to come over to our side and we ‘no . . . children first . . .’ and then you can’t hesitate, because it can be dangerous, because people don’t think because they want to save themselves . . . then this woman falls in the water . . . and I hold out my hand to her and while I’m holding her to pull her on board . . . the guys walk over me, really, about five or six of them. They looked like rats . . . as soon as the woman was safe, I kicked one of them and calmed everything down . . . otherwise they could overturn our boat.17

Elias’s schoolteacher told me that this reference to ‘men first’ should have been omitted because the audience was not sufficiently prepared to understand. The play’s director justified its inclusion on the grounds that this is what the policeman said and that it would be dishonest to remove it: ‘[w]ith the policeman what I tried to do was to work in that other perspective . . . of the professional, who isn’t cold but . . . he has to be professional because he has to do his job’.18 The director’s intention was to counter the emotional depiction of the boat. But since this was about survival, not culture, the end result could be described in terms of ‘realism gone wrong’ (Tinius 2016: 28). From an anthropological perspective, it is the implicit reification of culture that is problematic, whereby all the occupants of the boats were presumed to share the same nationality and culture, taken to be the explanatory framework for their behaviour even though their

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fear and desperation was also explicitly mentioned. I brought this issue up with the director and the actors. Although they all claimed that nobody can know beforehand how they would react in similar circumstances, and one actor argued that irrespective of culture, we all share the same animal instincts, the actor’s final thoughts on the matter are exemplary of almost every interview: It’s painful for my way of thinking; it doesn’t make sense this thing of leaving the children for the end. But I can’t judge from the outside, without taking the necessary distance to realize that it is the way they think, this is their culture.19

The result was a reproduction of the standard ‘us versus them’ categories of ‘the West versus the rest’, also evident in the second criticism made by the schoolteacher. He disagreed with the fact that in the additional performances put on for schools, entry was only free for immigrant pupils. The schoolteacher thought that Portuguese pupils should not pay either. When I asked Bassam’s wife how she had felt seeing their story represented on stage, she replied (in Arabic, translated by Google into English), ‘I remembered the days of torment and when the actors cried, my heart cried with them. The whole story of our lives was a torment. Now we feel safe’.20 From her perspective, it constituted an empowering moment of emotional catharsis. However, the artistic production of the experience of suffering could also be seen as a form of refugee-related dark tourism. It runs the risk of ensnaring individuals in a cultural discourse of difference in which cultural inclusion becomes a spectacle (Clements 2006). The dynamics of the decision-making process regarding what was rendered visible and invisible in the performance of the play produced borders of inclusion and exclusion for the migrants and refugees involved, with unequal effects regarding their capacity for agency and self-articulation (Brambilla and Pötzsch 2017). Moreover, there were divergent perceptions of who had been given more visibility. This was evident in the case of Bassam, who was silenced in the talkback sessions due to his lack of command of Portuguese and the unavailability of interpretation, which contrasted with the case of Elias, who was fluent in Portuguese and appeared in person on stage. It was deemed unfair to expect Elias to interpret for Bassam on this occasion too when he was often called upon to do this in day-to-day contact with hosting institutions and nobody else was available. Although Bassam’s real name was used in the play, he complained to me that his photograph did not appear in the programme or posters. ‘Me, little Portuguese; me photo’ (‘Eu, português pouco; eu foto’), he told me in truncated Portuguese.21 Bassam had no desire for ‘natural invisibility’ (Arendt 1958; Borren 2008). He had managed to have his photograph taken with the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Education when they visited town, as

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well as with the president of the local council and other local officials. Politically astute, Bassam spent a lot of time saying ‘thank you’ (obrigado) despite the many issues he was unhappy about. Thus, although his story was given prominence, he felt that he had not been sufficiently visible. This contrasted sharply with the perspectives of some of the migrants and refugees, who questioned why his story had been given such visibility. ‘Why say all the time “My name is Bassam?” Why him, just one person? Why not simply my name is “refugee”? There are many refugees, many stories’,22 they complained. Honouring Bassam’s request to thank the local community further misrepresented the situation on three different levels. Firstly, he was represented as giving thanks in his mother tongue. A song was performed with the refrain ‘shukran’ – ‘thank you’ in Arabic. However, Bassam’s mother tongue was Kurdish. This gains significance in light of the unofficial policy of the Arabization of Kurdish land and culture in Syria since the 1960s, which has effectively criminalized Kurdish identity. The Kurdish language is not officially recognized or used in public schools, nor permitted in the workplace (Allsopp 2014). But Bassam and his family were far more fluent in Kurdish than in Arabic. Secondly, on the opening night of the play, the host institution had declined the family’s request to continue to stay free of charge in the accommodation provided once their relocation contract had finished.23 There had been growing resentment among the staff of the hosting institution that the family was receiving far more help than was offered to underprivileged local Portuguese families. This decision was a source of anguish for Bassam, since he and his wife had not yet found full employment; this contrasted sharply with the representation of Bassam on stage, happily thanking the local community. Thus, the play served to render invisible his concerns regarding accommodation, language learning and employment (Challinor 2018). It projected the image of a docile, grateful refugee, reinforcing stereotyped categorizations and moralizing expectations of behaviour (De Genova, Garelli and Tazzioli 2018). Thirdly, the play transmitted a false, self-congratulatory image of the host community. This rosy picture of integration had already been questioned by some members of the audience in the talkback sessions. The concern to be as realistic as possible in the portrayal of human suffering was not followed through when the play touched upon integration issues. While time constraints undoubtedly played a role, there may also have been concerns over not offending the local host institutions, represented at the end of the play welcoming the Bassam family, or the local council that had procured funding for the play. It is noteworthy that the following text from the interview with the volunteer in the refugee camp in Greece, initially included, was then removed from the script: It is absolutely paramount for them that they communicate with their loved ones . . . and that they tell them that they are well, even when they are not.

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They lie unashamedly, they are not going to telephone their families to tell them that they are in deep shit, are they, they show themselves smiling, not crying . . . They create the impression with the families that they are better off than they are and so of course everybody wants to come.24

The play also created the impression that Bassam was welcomed with open arms. For example, a scene that had been written based on Bassam’s testimony regarding my attempts to help him find work in a local factory, where he had been turned away without the opportunity to show his skills, was also omitted from the play. There was a small allusion to the difficulties he faced in the final song, in the lines: ‘[b]ut I am still worried about the future, I am hostage to a year and a half ’, which refer to the end of the hosting contract, when the institution was no longer legally obliged to assist the family. But the songwriter admitted that most people would not have noticed or understood the significance of these lines. Were they included to ease the consciences of the director and the cast? According to the director, they had reached the decision that integration was another topic entirely. ‘There’s a million plays out there to be made about this kind of thing but the decision was made; it was about migration and moving’,25 he insisted.

Deliberative Citizenship It could be argued that other forms of migration and diasporic narrative (for example, book-length testimonials and novels) have more space to focus on the complexities of integration processes than a play. And yet the decision to focus on moving and the effort to mirror the suffering of others as ‘truthfully’ as possible led to the promotion of a non-reflective, emotional humanitarian position that reinforced stereotypes of ‘the rest’ in need of ‘the West’. This is evident in the first spoken scene of the play, taken from Visniec (2016), in which the actors announce that they are arriving from countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan with the desire to become globalized, Westernized, urbanized, modernized, democratized, civilized and politicized, to name but a few of the adjectives in the text; to have a dog, to open the fridge and eat with the family, and to watch television. The following extract from an interview with Visniec (Seoane 2017) on ideological manipulation suggests that these lines may have had a humorous, ironic intent in the original play: I discovered that it was much easier to denounce brainwashing in authoritarian countries than in the West, because in totalitarian countries this washing is primitive, brutal, violent and grotesque in itself, but in democratic countries it is subtle, fine, it infiltrates the soul and gently transforms the citizen into a consumer . . . A submissive consumer who feels happy, rich, and who because

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of this gives up thinking. I discovered a gigantic theme, the new ways of brainwashing by consumption, advertising, fashion. (My translation)

A critique of brainwashing through consumption did not appear to constitute the motivation for including this scene in the play. Rather, the focus appeared to be on the rights of immigrants to enjoy Western privileges and liberties. ‘They have the right to want more, they have been through so much’,26 commented one of the actors in a talkback session. The play’s director was aware of these risks of stereotyping, and although he was ultimately in control, he still chose to give way to accommodate other people’s expectations. For me theatre isn’t about pedagogy, it certainly isn’t about being didactic . . . [It is] to make people talk about things together in community . . . not just talk to their friends . . . families, make it public and I think if we can do that . . . we are doing our job and what we put on stage is subjective, its ours and it has all of its weaknesses as well as its strengths . . . I don’t believe pieces of theatre are ever finished, you keep working at it, particularly this kind of thing and you keep working at it, keep trying to make it better and you keep adding things in but there also has to come a point when you say OK.27

In this respect, the play itself may be seen as a form of provisional ‘arrival’, taking place on the continuum of an extended process of border crossing. The talkback sessions also created the public space in which the play could continue to be worked upon, in which all kinds of ideas circulated. As such, despite the misrepresentations and the non-reflective, emotional humanitarian position adopted in the play, the potential for both critical reflection upon the wider political context and inner transformation was still present, for actors and audience alike. As Flynn and Tinius (2015: 5) argue, ‘the very possibility of reflection is derived from intersubjective interrogation’. The transformative potential of theatre is thus to be found in the public spaces it opens for deliberative citizenship, ‘allowing citizens to exercise their communicative freedom in the public sphere’ (Smith 2019: 827). Elizabeth Challinor is a researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon (FSCH – UNL) and at the Centre for Research in Anthropology, Lisbon. She has a PhD in Social Anthropology (Sussex 2001) and has researched the anthropology of development, migrant maternity, motherhood and citizenship. She is conducting research on the integration of refugees in Portugal as part of a FSCH research project that examines the moral duties of assistance and integration policies in the context of European policies and values (PTDC/FER-ETC/30378/2017). She would like to thank the play director, actors and refugees for their involvement in the research.

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Notes The author would like to thank the play’s director, the actors, and the migrants, refugees and audience members who all agreed to be interviewed for this research. The writing up of the article was conducted within the ambit of the FCT-funded project PTDC/FER-ETC/ 30378/2017 of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon. 1. I was unable to access the transcripts of these interviews. 2. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018. 3. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 2 May 2018. 4. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018. 5. Talkback session in local town, 13 October 2017. 6. Interview with author, Skype, 22 March 2018. 7. One actor estimated that they had used 5 per cent, and another 20 per cent, of the material collected. 8. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018. 9. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018. 10. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018. 11. Talkback session in local town, 13 October 2017. 12. Personal communication with a local refugee, 19 October 2017. 13. Talkback session in local town, 11 October 2017. 14. Field notes, 18 October 2017. 15. Daniel Maciel, personal communication, 13 October 2017. 16. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018. 17. Unpublished original Portuguese script. 18. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018. 19. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 27 April 2018. 20. WhatsApp message, 23 October 2017. 21. Personal communication, 18 October 2017. 22. Talkback session in local town, 18 October 2017. 23. Months later, the family was told that they could stay in the flat and were charged a rent below the market rate. 24. Draft version of script, my translation. 25. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018. 26. Talkback session in local town, 18 October 2017. 27. Extract from transcript of interview conducted 22 March 2018.

References Allsopp, H. 2014. The Kurds of Syria: Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris. Arendt, H. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Boltanski, L. 1999. Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Borren, M. 2008. ‘Towards an Arendtian Politics of In/visibility: On Stateless Refugees and Undocumented Aliens’, Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network 15(2): 213–37.

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Brambilla, C., and H. Pötzsch. 2017. ‘In/visibility’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 68–89. Challinor, E. 2018. ‘Refugee Hospitality Encounters in Northern Portugal: “Cultural Orientations” and “Contextual Protection”’, Migration and Society 1: 96–110. Clements, P. 2006. ‘The Excluded Terms of Culture: Cultural Inclusion as Spectacle’, Journal for Cultural Research 10(4): 323–42. De Genova, N., G. Garelli and M. Tazzioli. 2018. ‘Autonomy of Asylum? The Autonomy of Migration Undoing the Refugee Crisis Script’, The South Atlantic Quarterly 117(2): 239–65. European Commission. 2017. ‘Relocation and Resettlement: Sharing Responsibility and Opening Legal Pathways to Europe’. Retrieved 30 September 2019 from https://ec.europa .eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migrati on/20170906_relocation_and_resettlement-sharing_responsibility_and_increasing_legal_ pathways_to_europe_en.pdf. Fassin, D. 2012. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, trans. R. Gomme. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Flynn, A., and J. Tinius. 2015. ‘Reflecting on Political Performance: Introducing Critical Perspectives’, in A. Flynn and J. Tinius (eds), Anthropology, Theatre, and Development: The Transformative Potential of Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–28. Kolossov, V., and J. Scott. 2013. ‘Selected Conceptual Issues in Border Studies’, Belgeo 1: 1–19. Long, N.J. 2015. ‘For a Verbatim Ethnography’, in A. Flynn and J. Tinius (eds), Anthropology, Theatre, and Development: The Transformative Potential of Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 305–33. Mrozek, S. 1974. Les Emigrés. Paris: Petit Orsay. Pires, R.P. 2019. ‘Portuguese Emigration Today’, in C. Pereira and J. Azevedo (eds), New and Old Routes of Portuguese Emigration. Cham: Springer, pp. 29–48. Rancière, J. 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. G. Rockhill. London: Bloomsbury. Rosello, M., and S.F. Wolfe. 2017. ‘Introduction’, in J. Schimanski and S.F. Wolfe (eds), Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–24. Schimanski, J., and S.F. Wolfe (eds). 2017. Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn Books. Seoane, A. 2017. ‘Matei Visniec: “Europa es la única ideología superviviente”’, El Cultural, 22 March. Retrieved 30 August 2019 from https://elcultural.com/Matei-Visniec-Eur opa-es-la-unica-ideologia-superviviente. Smith, W. 2019. ‘Deliberative Citizenship: A Critical Reappraisal’, Citizenship Studies 23(8): 815–30. Szakolczai, A. 2015. ‘The Theatricalisation of the Social: Problematising the Public Sphere’, Cultural Sociology 9(2): 220–39. Tinius, J. 2016. ‘Rehearsing Detachment: Refugee Theatre and Dialectical Fiction’, Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia 5(1): 21–38. Tinius, J. 2017. ‘Art as Ethical Practice: Anthropological Observations on and Beyond Theatre’, World Art 27(2): 227–51. Vaughan-Williams, N. 2015. Europe’s Border Crisis. Biopolitical Security and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Visniec, M. 2016. Migraaaants: On est trop nombreux sur ce putain de bateau. Paris: Editions l’Oeil du Prince.

CONCLUSION Migration, Border Aesthetics and Discursive Strategies

F Ana Belén Martínez García

This collection of chapters bridges the gap between a diverse range of disciplines, namely migration, cultural, literary, media, film, performance and postcolonial studies. Such disciplines are usually studied in isolation or, at most, combining only a few. However, they are overlapping areas, so much so that it is necessary to assess their intricate, enmeshed nature to tease out the connections that can grant a richer understanding of what migration – and representations thereof – is and does as a cultural process. Thus, our book has brought together contributions approaching the representation of migration to Europe in the twenty-first century, while offering a novel outlook on what the field of migration studies can gain by entering a dialogue with the humanities; in other words, our book is a good example of what the humanities and the social sciences can offer each other in the attempt to fully comprehend the complex phenomenon of contemporary African and Asian migration to Europe. This book pays especial attention to texts, though this does not just mean written words on a page. Text is taken ‘in a broad sense and include[s] all available semiotic resources’ (Šarić and Felberg 2019: 206), so whatever features can be ‘read’, interpreted critically, constitute relevant material deserving of study. Among the various types of text discussed in our book, one may find novels, written and audiovisual testimonies, drama, art, news images and films. We are interested in reading ‘texts’ on and by migrants in order to account for the construction of migration and to counter hegemonic practices of othering at play in contemporary Western society. Border crossing is, then, first seen in the very nature of texts themselves, which move from fixed categorizations and genrecanonical definitions as they become multimodal, hybrid texts, ‘on the move’ (see Ibarrola-Armendariz and Ortiz de Arruabarrena 2016) in ‘search of a witness . . . to invoke witnessing publics’ (Whitlock 2015: 8).

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Ethics and Aesthetics: Debunking Stereotypes Attached to Migrants The contributors to this volume have chosen their case studies by looking closely at a whole range of othering practices that can potentially be subverted and dismantled by and for migrants. Stereotypes such as the migrant as a silent Other, an in/visible Other or a victim Other must be read critically, considering how they are utilized in different ways and to different ends. First, the notion of the migrant as a silent Other can be challenged thanks to the deployment of the multiple – at times competing – voices permeating migrants’ narratives, so as to enable what Bakhtin (1981) might call ‘heteroglossia’ or ‘polyphonic’ text. Haunting (see Bhabha 1994) voices from the dead, of whom the migrants drowned or the left-behind of migration are examples, may impact characters and audiences alike. In other cases, the narrative voice is effectively reclaimed by subjects traditionally deprived of voices, most clearly when migrants produce or co-produce the texts themselves. Migrants also defy ‘in/visibility’. On the one hand, being invisible is usually associated with a lack of rights, and is therefore seen as a problem to be countered by leaving the private sphere and coming into the public arena. On the other hand, migrants’ hypervisibility may ultimately lead to continued othering practices, or, even worse, to increased surveillance and hate in the service of political and economic agendas that further constrain and constrict people’s movements. With this paradox in mind, we propose that ‘in/visibility’ be approached from a ‘border aesthetics’ (Schimanski and Wolfe 2017a) paradigm. In that sense, as Chiara Brambilla and Holger Pötzsch (2017: 71) remind us, ‘Public visibility is the precondition for active political participation and citizenship’, but ‘in/visibility’ can also categorize subjects in public discourse without them ‘gain[ing] a standing or voice in processes of public deliberation’ (ibid.: 72). Upholding ‘visibility’ as ‘recognition’ (ibid.: 71), border-crossing people can make themselves, their stories and their cultures visible and heard: ‘discursive practices and technologies that articulate alternative subjectivities and points of view . . . afford the potential subversion and replacement of reified and sedimented frames and discursive positions’ (ibid.: 81). It is precisely the bordering processes underlying in/visibility that migrant texts – in their activist capacity – can and should highlight. In so doing, texts and migrants alike can claim the right to be visible – or not – for the right reasons, ones they themselves can decide. Even when migrants are not the authors of the texts, (migrant) texts can make visible what might otherwise remain invisible – the rights migrants claim and the recognition they seek. Finally, portraying those on the move as victim Others, though aimed at mobilizing empathy, has been heavily criticized by Lilie Chouliaraki and Tijana Stolic (2017), among others. Yet extreme vulnerability may be used as a rhe-

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torical weapon of its own. Drawing on Judith Butler’s (1997) theory of performativity and ‘precariousness’ (2004), we can gauge how vulnerable selves can claim the agency that those in positions of power might wish to eradicate. Rather than discarding vulnerability as utter destituteness and weakness, one should aim at reconfiguring its value and what it might signify. Agency should be understood as resistance: ‘we are first vulnerable and then overcome that vulnerability, at least provisionally, through acts of resistance’ (Butler 2016: 12). It is thus possible to accept one’s own radical vulnerability as an intrinsic part of an empowered-in-border-crossing self. By appropriating the symbols that would render them a moving mass and perpetuate the figure of the passive victim, migrants can transform the meaning afforded to those symbols in the first place: ‘Their meaning changes and moves, and therefore the materials change politically and symbolically’ (Barry 2019: 209).

Re-assessing Borders Topographical Border Crossing Throughout this book, we have gathered texts in which actual physical borders are crossed: from sub-Saharan Africa to Spain, France, Sweden and Norway, from the Middle East to Italy, Greece, Portugal, Croatia and Germany, and all the borders in between. But where the media – mass media and online reporting in particular – have focused on migrants’ journeys, their origins and destinations, we have chosen a different take. While we acknowledge the importance of geographical and sociopolitical context to situating texts within the circumstances that surround their production, as well as the life experiences of the authors and the people discussed, we have shown that there are other borders that matter – medial and symbolic ones.

Medial Border Crossing As conceptualized by Johan Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe (2017b: 164), ‘medial borders’ are ‘the borders of the (re-)presentation rather than any borders which might be represented’. They are connected to ‘media’ and modes of communication. With this in mind, we have argued in our book that significant ‘medial borders’ are crossed. In other words, what Gérard Genette (1997) famously called ‘paratexts’ or ‘thresholds of interpretation’ present us with this kind of border. The link, instances of which may be book covers and reviews, is expressly made clear in this volume. There is a characteristic trend for medial border crossing in the case studies we have collected that can be interpreted as multimodal. Thus, the text is studied under the lens of the visual and the verbal, the digital and the analogue, in an

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all-encompassing manner. Taking into account the fact that most of the texts under consideration are produced by migrants, moreover, the book offers a unique opportunity to be read, together with life-writing theory, at what Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (2002: 37) call the ‘visual/verbal interface’. Reading at this interface means gauging how one realm becomes inseparable from the other, in turn giving way to productive forms of presenting the self. In isolation, images – both still and moving – can already have a certain effect. As noted by Elizabeth El Refaie (2001: 89), they can ‘convey emotional meaning’ and thus trigger affective responses. Yet in combination with other textual forms, their impact is multiplied and ostensibly maximized (see Martínez García 2020a), which has obvious benefits for social justice causes, including migration. Importantly, multimodal, multiplatform texts are easily reproduced and, aided by the technological and affective affordances of social media platforms, are quite easily viralized, reaching global audiences at ever-faster rates, again of note for activists (Martínez García 2020b).

Symbolic Border Crossing Metaphors, metonymies and other rhetorical phenomena are employed to describe migration and migrants, borders and border crossings. Some recurrent examples assessed by our contributors include Europe as a ‘Promised Land’ or ‘El Dorado’ and ‘water’ as symbolic of movement. The latter is related to positive re-imag(in)ings and representations of migration as ‘flows’ (see Martínez García n.d.), a process in flux rather than a static notion. Metaphors help us make sense of reality (see Lakoff 1993) and, concurrently, construct it ‘in one way or another’ (Fairclough 1992: 194). This fact, which we do not aim to deny, must however be problematized, as it risks oversimplifying narrative and discursive strategies. Assuming the harm that may come from symbolic language harnessed by those in positions of relative power in order to keep othering practices in play (see Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017), it may, conversely, have a positive impact, be that emotional, ethical, social or even political. Migrant texts and identities, as presented in this book, are often shaped precisely by addressing the concept they seek to transform – the ‘b/orders’ (see Van Houtum, Kramsch and Zierhofer 2005) they seek to cross.

What Next? Re-valuing Migration in Times of ‘Crisis’ Our book sheds light on the ways in which migration is represented and bordering processes are contested. It is through culture that identities on the move emerge, take shape and have the potential to reach others and sway attitudes, opinions and behaviours. It is important, as other scholars have noted before us (see Brambilla et al. 2016; Schimanski and Wolfe 2017a; Yuval-Davis, Wemyss

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and Cassidy 2019), to dismantle the narratives that have been in place for too long, influencing public perception and attitudes towards migrants. Our book has analysed narratives produced in recent times, most of them in the context of the so-called ‘migrant crisis’, ‘refugee crisis’ or ‘migration crisis’ that made headlines during the period 2015–16 in Europe. Many have complained about the problems arising from such phrases (see De Genova 2016; De Genova and Tazzioli 2016; De Genova, Garelli and Tazzioli 2018; Siegel and Nagy 2018), though few have attempted to describe what the term ‘crisis’ really means. One of the few who attempts to do this is Giuseppe Campesi (2018: 197), who defines ‘crisis’ as a ‘situation that breaks with routine and calls for immediate action’. In the same vein, Alex Sager (2019: 590) points to how such an identification is a ‘value judgement’ whereby ‘crisis’ is frequently mobilized for ideological ends, including the securitization of migration (Huysmans 2000). We agree that more attention should be paid to the ‘ethics of representation’ (Sager 2019: 592) in framing migration as a crisis and to its moral repercussions (see also Parekh 2020). Following Heaven Crawley and Dimitris Skleparis (2018: 60), ‘we need to explicitly engage with the politics of bounding, that is to say, the process by which categories are constructed, the purpose that they serve and their consequences. Our call is not for an end to the use of categories as a way of making sense of our social and political worlds, but for explicit recognition and engagement with the idea that categories do not simply represent or reflect the world’. Linguistic choices, though problematic, must be better understood even as we aim at contesting them. Europe’s so-called ‘crisis’, as Crawley et al. (2020: 130) explain, did not start suddenly in 2015. Rather, it started as a financial crisis in 2008 and was later exacerbated by global conflict, notably the Syrian civil war, which dates back to 2011 and has just hit its tenth anniversary, with no near end in sight as this manuscript is finalized. Unpacking the phenomenon of the so-called migrant crisis, one observes that multiple crises, including a crisis of European values (see Squire 2020), have contributed to a social scene of pervasive dread – one that neglects critical thinking and reasoning, favouring emotional discourse instead, as the rise of alt-right movements has sadly proven. Europe’s ‘crises’ (Castells et al. 2018) intersect and are hard to disentangle. Nevertheless, the official state policy reaction has largely been to assign blame elsewhere. Worryingly, ‘Europe’s “migrant crisis” or “refugee crisis” has been presented as the responsibility of those on the move and [as] an existential problem for European societies’ (Vickers 2020: 1). Attaching the label ‘crisis’ to contemporary migration connotes a sort of threat, visible or invisible, attributed to migrants – one that results in harsher state protection and imposes severe limitations on people’s rights. In the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we are

Conclusion • 229

aware of the risks that such discourse of ‘crisis’ poses for those who, unable to cross borders, are likely in greater danger, not only to their health but to their livelihoods (Ratha et al. 2020) and to suffering psychosocial impacts. Forced lockdowns imposed from above on migrants in informal, unsanitary and undignified settings may have devastating consequences, as the fire that razed the already-overcrowded Moria camp in Lesvos in September 2020 proved. Some have wondered, with good reason, about the irony of self-isolation measures in places like refugee camps (Raju and Ayeb-Karlsson 2020) or when one does not have a place to stay at all (Žižek 2020). As Lorenzo Guadagno (2020: 14) notes, what we need is not to exclude, but to include migrants in crisis management itself. He concludes, ‘Many countries have responded to COVID-19 with increased closure, tighter immigration regulations and further marginalization of migrants. The centrality of migrants in the social, cultural and economic fabric of our globalized world, instead, suggests that only inclusive approaches help protect and promote everybody’s rights, health and well-being, can allow communities and societies to respond more effectively to this crisis, and reduce the risk of future ones’ (ibid.). It is precisely at this point, therefore, that the humanities are needed so that we can emerge from this situation as a better, more understanding society. We would like to posit some form of scholar activism, attending to the context in which texts are produced and discourses challenged. Though the idea of ‘crisis’ lingers in the contemporary cultural imaginary, most markedly in Europe, we should strive past conceptions of emergency. Far from being the exception, crises are happening in everyday social practices. Furthermore, migrants are human beings and as such must be granted ‘grievability’ (Butler 2020: 121). Rethinking crisis and migration hand in hand allows for an exercise in revaluing human life. The present volume offers avenues for research and collaboration across traditionally separate research domains, suggesting a radical new take on migration. It will be of interest across a wide range of disciplines, given its cross-border and cross-genre approach, and may guide other researchers to undertake similar joint projects within the humanities and social sciences. Ultimately, our book can be read as a ‘performative encounter’ (Rosello 2005) that, in bringing together views on and by border-crossers, might help construct bridges, bonds, links and connections; in so doing, it unsettles received notions and offers opportunities for social justice and change. Our volume explores what Chiara Brambilla and Reece Jones (2020: 289) propose as a reinterpretation of borders to generate ‘new conditions for alternative political subjectivities and agencies’. Border crossings may lead to much-needed self-reflection (Schimanski 2006: 47–48) and self(re)presentation. We thus close by opening the door to new readings and interpretations of borders and migration, inviting our readers to reflect on how identities are constructed, contested and negotiated in contemporary times, not only in Europe but worldwide.

230 • Ana Belén Martínez García

Ana Belén Martínez García has a PhD from the University of Oviedo (2010) and is Associate Professor at the University of Navarra (Spain). She belongs to the Emotional Culture and Identity project at the Institute for Culture and Society at the same institution. Her research has focused on issues of identity, sociocultural, gender and performativity studies, and she is interested in young women on the move. She has been a research fellow at the Centre for LifeWriting Research, King’s College London (January–June 2017, January–June 2019) and published in journals such as a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, Life Writing, Prose Studies and Narrative, among others.

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INDEX

activism, 100, 102, 104, 112, 164, 191–92, 196, 199, 203, 229 Africa, 1–6, 9–10, 12, 14, 20–21, 23–25, 27, 30–31, 35–37, 39–40, 44–50, 52, 64, 75–76, 135, 141, 146, 183, 203, 226 African immigrant, 4–5, 19–20, 26, 61, 63 immigration, 19, 34 migrant, 4, 19, 24, 26, 30–31, 45, 54, 65, 172 narrator, 21, 26–29, 31, 36 Afro-Hispanic literature, 39 migration narratives, 51 cultural dialogue, 52 agency, 13, 58, 68, 73, 104, 125–26, 174, 190, 192, 194–95, 200, 218, 226 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 151, 163, 165 art, 4, 8, 14, 46, 67, 73, 123, 131, 151, 181, 186, 192–93, 196–98, 200–9, 215–16, 218, 223–24, 230. See also (non-)art Asia, 1–6, 9–10, 12–13, 195, 203 Asian countries, 20 migrants, 4–5, 13, 23 migration, 3, 224 narrators, 10 asylum, 69, 104, 187, 191, 193, 203–4, 223, 230 claims, 202 seeker, 2, 4, 36, 68, 97–98, 128–29, 139, 168, 188, 190, 194, 196–97, 200, 203–6, 231

autobiographical account, 35 aspects, 78 book, 20, 26–27, 36 ‘diary’, 9 narrating ‘I’, 9 narratives, 91 novel, 39 Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 6, 14, 19, 36–37, 40–41, 44, 50–51, 59, 68, 132, 146, 225, 230 Balkans, 129, 142, 203 Bauman, Zygmunt, 167–70, 172, 174, 183 Bhabha, Homi K., 41, 51, 55–56, 61, 68, 91, 104, 225, 230 blog, 62, 64, 68, 74, 80 blogger, 65–66 blogosphere, 54, 64, 66 boat, 20, 22–24, 27, 44, 48–50, 78, 95, 115, 120, 171–72, 198–99, 210, 213–14, 216–17 body, 12, 40, 71, 80, 124, 151–57, 159–65, 167–81, 183–84 border, 1, 4, 5, 9–15, 24, 40–52, 58–60, 69, 71–81, 83–85, 87–94, 96, 100, 102, 105, 110–11, 122–25, 127, 130–33, 135–39, 141–48, 151–65, 167–74, 177, 181, 183, 189, 200, 205, 207–11, 213, 215, 217–19, 221, 223, 226–27, 229, 231–32 aesthetics, 6–8, 10–15, 60, 62, 67, 70, 85, 89–90, 104–5, 129, 131, 136, 144,

234 • Index

147–48, 151–52, 166, 181, 184, 205, 208, 223–25, 230–31 assemblage, 76 concept, 76–77 control, 76, 97, 177, 215 -crosser, 44, 48, 58, 67, 72, 90–92, 98, 131, 144, 161–62, 229 crossing, 4, 10, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 52, 60, 74–77, 79, 83–85, 111, 161– 64, 209, 215, 221, 224, 226–27, 229 -crossing act, 85, 92–93, 101 -crossing experience, 90 -crossing individuals, 89, 91 -crossing journey, 76 -crossing narrative, 50, 98 -crossing people, 98, 225 experience, 79 figuration, 40, 84 figure, 74–75, 77–80, 84 guard, 85, 142 images, 85 narratives, 85 poetics, 85, 87 spectacle, 87 studies, 154, 223, 230 trauma, 88 zone, 23–24, 35, 42, 49 bordering, 7, 71, 76, 84–85, 88, 91, 97, 103, 105, 225, 227, 232. See border. See also othering borderscape, 7, 10, 71, 75–78, 85, 87, 89, 91–95, 97, 99, 101, 103–5, 166, 190. See border Brambilla, Chiara, 9, 14, 90, 92–93, 96–97, 103–4, 190–91, 205, 218, 223, 225, 227, 229–30 Baudrillard, Jean, 170, 183 broadcaster, 111–12, 114, 117, 126, 128, 130, 148, 207, 232 Butler, Judith, 7, 9, 14, 89, 92, 95, 97, 100–1, 103–4, 226, 229–30 capitalism, 172, 174 Casanova, Pascale, 56–59, 68–69, 82, 87 child, 23, 33, 53, 60, 75, 83, 94, 118–19, 121–25, 128, 134, 140, 143, 146, 151, 156, 161, 187, 192, 194–200, 202–3, 206, 210, 213, 217–18

childhood, 79, 93, 100, 102 Chouliaraki, Lilie, 112, 118, 121, 124–27, 189, 194, 205, 225, 227, 230 chronotope, 6–8, 14, 19, 24–26, 34, 36–37, 40–41, 44, 48–51, 59, 67–69 cinema, 3–4, 6–8, 12–13, 149, 167, 169–73, 175, 177–84. See film Cissé, Pathé, 9, 39–51 citizenship, 10, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27–29, 31, 33–35, 37, 92, 183, 190, 209, 217, 220–21, 223, 225 class, 3, 21, 26, 32–33, 40, 42, 56, 84, 101–2, 190, 205, 232 inequalities, 26 othering, 19 collective, 98, 102, 168 authorship, 39 book project, 50 border project, 83 characteristics, 3 ‘I’, 91 identities, 102 imagination, 111 newspaper, 135 reader, 73 self, 189 story, 194 struggle, 9 writing, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51 coloniality, 19, 21, 29–33 of power, 32, 37 of knowledge, 31, 37 of being, 31, 36 communication, 3–4, 28, 66, 77, 110, 126–30, 145, 147, 162, 199, 205, 207, 222, 226 community, 12, 28, 46, 50, 55, 57, 59–60, 63–64, 66, 83–84, 87, 91, 94, 104, 127, 168, 187, 202–3, 210, 214, 219, 221 construction, 7, 13, 19–21, 23, 25, 27, 29–31, 33–35, 37, 46, 57, 92–93, 105, 112, 125, 141, 145, 148 counter-discourse, 8, 13, 185, 187, 189, 191–93, 195, 197, 199, 201, 203, 205, 207 Crawley, Heaven, 110, 128, 228, 230 critical discourse, 5, 128, 148

Index • 235

Croatia, 8, 11, 97, 110–12, 114, 121–23, 125–26, 128–29, 226 culture, 3, 28, 31–32, 51, 54–55, 57, 62–64, 68, 75–76, 79–82, 85, 96, 101, 103–4, 125–26, 128, 132, 136–37, 148, 164, 183, 189, 200, 202, 205–7, 217–19, 223, 225, 228, 230 decolonial studies, 2, 21–22, 24, 30, 32, 35 (see decoloniality; see also postcolonialism) reading, 10, 19, 34 theory, 14, 36 decoloniality, 10, 33. See coloniality. See also modernity Derrida, Jacques, 169–70, 179, 183, 191, 205 detention, 4, 24, 78, 96–97, 121–22, 171–72, 190 diary, 9–10, 39, 42–46, 48–50, 105 diaspora, 64, 74–75, 79–80, 84, 87, 170, 183, 203 Diome, Fatou, 10, 53–70, 74, 87 discourse, 3–5, 8–9, 11, 13, 19, 31, 33, 35, 41–42, 45–46, 53, 56, 69, 74, 76–78, 81, 84–85, 89–92, 99, 103, 111–12, 114, 117–18, 122–34, 140, 145–49, 168–70, 180, 184, 187, 189–90, 195, 206, 218, 225, 228–29, 231–32. See critical discourse. See also discursive strategies discursive act, 72 analysis, 6, 8 challenges, 12 features, 10 formations, 9, 13 framing, 190 positions, 93, 225 practices, 93, 225 processes, 90 strategies, 224, 227 traits, 91 dystopia, 7, 26–27, 34–35, 37 El Dorado, 39, 44, 49, 60, 63, 227 El Refaie, Elisabeth, 126, 128, 188, 193, 205, 227, 231

emotion, 13, 32, 72, 78, 90, 92, 95, 103–4, 109, 113, 122, 129, 132, 141, 161, 179, 193, 197, 211–13, 215–18, 220–21, 227–28, 230 empathy, 11, 72, 99, 105, 109–13, 124–26, 134, 196, 211, 225 ethics, 9, 13, 46, 105, 222, 225, 228, 231 ethnicity, 3, 19, 22, 29, 32, 39, 42, 69, 91, 105, 147 Europe, 1–14, 19–27, 34–37, 39, 43, 49, 51, 61, 63, 69, 75–76, 87–89, 93, 96–101, 104, 124–25, 130, 133, 141–42, 145, 147–48, 167–71, 176, 180–84, 188, 193, 195–97, 202–7, 210, 217, 223–24, 227–31 European Union (EU), 2, 4–5, 20, 24, 34, 86, 168–69, 193, 203, 206, 230–31 exile, 43, 53, 61–64, 68, 79–80, 153, 203 exodus, 27, 35, 43, 133, 135, 138, 140–42, 146 Falconer, Rachel, 152–53, 158, 165 Felberg, Tatjana Radanović, 132, 134, 141, 148 film, 128, 151, 165–66, 179, 183–84. See cinema focalization, 6–8, 24–25, 30–31, 34–35, 82 forced mobility, 3–4, 13, 22, 208–10, 213– 15. See mobility. See also migration Foucault, Michel, 170, 175, 179, 183 France, 1, 5–6, 45, 53, 55–58, 60–65, 70–71, 88, 112, 129, 181–84, 215, 226, 231 Francophone authors, 57, 62–64 migrant literature, 53–54, 67 world, 54, 58 writers, 57–58 freedom, 1, 15, 45, 57, 62–64, 77, 95, 97, 105, 143, 157, 159, 182, 215, 221 gaze, 33, 54, 65, 72, 100, 113, 120, 170–71, 173, 175, 177–80, 192 gender, 3, 7, 14, 19, 22, 32, 36, 40, 42, 67, 75, 90–91, 101–3, 200, 230 Genette, Gérard, 6, 9, 14, 19, 36–37, 40–42, 46, 52, 73, 87, 226, 231. See paratext Germany, 5, 12, 93, 95–96, 98, 102, 166, 226

236 • Index

Gibraltar, Strait of, 2, 20, 25–27, 35–36 Goytisolo, Juan, 2, 14 Greece, 5, 13, 187–88, 190–95, 198–99, 201–2, 204–7, 213, 219, 226 Guadagno, Lorenzo, 229, 231 history, 1–2, 4, 14, 29, 31, 36–37, 39, 50, 72, 76, 87, 92, 103–4, 141, 167, 169, 187, 189, 200, 205, 210, 223 home, 24, 59, 61–66, 79, 83, 93, 97–99, 102–3, 111, 153, 156–57, 161, 191, 195, 199, 207 hospitality, 2, 14, 31, 37, 112, 168, 173, 188, 190–93, 196, 199, 202–3, 205, 207, 209, 223 host, 12, 24, 85, 123, 167, 170, 172–74, 176–78, 180, 191, 194–95, 197, 202, 219 human being, 1, 98, 102–3, 174, 229 rights, 4, 21, 34, 78, 91, 95, 98, 100–2, 104–5, 190, 193, 202, 231 trafficking, 2, 34 Human Rights Watch (HRW), 189–90, 204, 206 identity, 2–3, 8, 19, 31, 34, 45–46, 49, 51, 54, 57, 62–63, 71–73, 80, 85, 90–93, 98, 102–4, 125, 132–34, 144–45, 148, 157, 159, 161, 164, 168, 174, 176–77, 179–82, 184, 190, 209, 215, 219, 222, 230. See self illness, 12, 167, 170, 184 injustice, 42, 46, 72, 94–95, 202 in/visibility, 9, 14, 90, 96, 103–4, 190, 205, 222–23, 225, 230. See visibility Italy, 5–8, 127, 134–35, 137, 145, 147–48, 181, 183–84, 188, 203, 206, 226 Jammeh, Kalilu, 25–26, 35–37, 39, 52 journey, 6, 10, 21–23, 25–27, 29, 33, 36, 40, 42–44, 46, 48, 76–77, 79–80, 90, 93, 96, 121, 152, 154, 159–64, 183, 192–97, 202, 204, 207, 213, 226, 230 language, 3, 6–7, 15, 21, 26, 28–29, 31, 39, 54–59, 64–65, 67, 83, 85, 87, 89, 103,

118, 123, 125, 128–29, 131–32, 136, 139, 144–48, 165, 168, 170, 188, 197, 200, 213, 219, 227 life narrative, 15, 74, 90–91, 100, 104–5, 203, 232 writing, 91–92, 103–4, 230–31 limbo, 12, 152, 154, 157, 159–65 literature, 4, 6, 8, 10, 26–28, 39–42, 46–47, 50–51, 53–59, 61, 63–70, 73–74, 76–78, 81–83, 85, 87, 91, 104, 112, 152, 164–65, 181, 202–3 meaning, 3, 6, 27, 40, 46, 48, 50–51, 59, 99, 110, 113, 125, 135–36, 140, 152, 154–55, 157, 162–63, 178, 180, 193, 196–97, 200, 226–27 medial border, 7, 40, 72–74, 81, 89, 226. See border. See also symbolic border; topographical border Mediterranean, the, 5, 14–15, 20, 22, 25–26, 28–29, 34–35, 37, 76, 93, 95, 101, 105, 171, 183, 190, 192 memoir, 9, 22, 89–90, 92–94, 96–97, 100, 102, 104 memory, 45, 70, 73, 84, 94–95, 104, 162, 164, 178, 197 ‘mental colonisation’, 53–57, 60 metaphor, 6–8, 11–14, 19, 24–28, 34–35, 37, 39, 75, 78, 81, 120, 123–28, 133–35, 140–42, 144–45, 147, 151–52, 154–56, 160, 165, 167, 170, 172, 176–77, 182, 184, 187–95, 197, 199–203, 205, 207, 227, 231 metonymy, 6–8, 19, 24–26, 28, 34–35, 123–25, 134 migrant crisis, 11, 14, 37, 67, 69, 90, 114, 129, 131, 134, 139, 147–48, 168, 228, 231 (see migration crisis; see also refugee crisis) literature, 47, 53–55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 76, 91 self, 89–90, 100, 103 migration crisis, 105, 114, 133, 138–39, 144, 206, 228, 230–31 (see migrant crisis; see also refugee crisis)

Index • 237

narrative, 10, 19, 51, 71, 73, 75–81, 83, 85, 87, 169 mobility, 1–5, 13–15, 22, 28–29, 37, 75, 97, 105, 124, 169, 208–10, 213–15. See movement. See also migration modernity, 3–4, 10, 19–21, 25, 28–30, 32–34, 37, 55, 75, 79. See coloniality. See also decoloniality movement, 5, 71–73, 91, 94, 97–98, 102, 125, 129, 133, 136, 138, 140–44, 146, 155, 157–58, 160–61, 164, 168, 195, 200, 207, 215, 225, 227–28. See mobility. See also migration multimodal representation, 4, 8 text, 124, 132, 139 narrative negotiation, 3, 50, 78, 90–91, 208 neocolonialism, 21–22, 45 news, 11, 28, 76, 80, 97, 100, 112, 114, 117, 121–22, 124–27, 130, 134–35, 137, 139–40, 144, 147, 205, 230 newspaper, 4, 11, 24, 64–65, 80, 86, 128–29, 131–36, 138–40, 144–46, 188, 196, 203 (non-)art, 13, 187, 189, 191, 193, 195–97, 199–203, 205, 207 Norway, 6, 10, 12, 36, 71, 73, 75–77, 79, 81, 88, 145, 226 novel, 2, 5–11, 21–22, 25–27, 29, 33–37, 39, 41, 53–60, 62–68, 71–75, 77–85, 187, 194–95, 203, 220, 224 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2, 5, 15, 96, 105, 193, 205, 207 Other, 4, 11–13, 30, 33, 54, 66, 87, 111, 123–24, 129, 132, 136, 152, 154, 156–57, 163, 167–69, 171, 177–78, 180, 187, 189–91, 194–96, 199, 202–4, 216, 225. See othering. See also Otherness othering, 2, 10, 19, 21–23, 25, 27, 29–37, 43, 50, 81, 84–85, 91, 103, 105, 224–25, 227 Otherness, 4, 30, 157, 163, 191, 202

paradise, 27, 35, 60, 63 paratext, 9–11, 14, 40–42, 50, 52, 67–68, 73–74, 79, 87–88, 226, 231. See Genette performance, 7–8, 13, 78, 93, 105, 159, 208–16, 218, 223–24, 231 performative acts, 6–8, 215. See performativity performativity, 3, 7, 9, 89–91, 103, 216, 226, 230 photograph, 11, 72, 74–79, 85, 97, 100–1, 112, 114, 116–26, 131–32, 134–35, 138–39, 142–45, 198–99, 201–2, 213, 218 place, 1, 5, 24–27, 29–30, 42, 48–49, 59, 79, 83, 93, 95–96, 101–2, 131–32, 135–37, 145–46, 151, 153–58, 160, 162–65, 168, 171–73, 175, 191–92, 196, 208, 215, 229. See space play, 8, 13, 52, 79, 195, 208–22. See theatre. See also performance Pötzsch, Holger, 9, 14, 90, 93, 96–97, 104, 190–91, 205, 218, 223, 225, 230 politics, 3, 13–15, 46, 52, 77, 88, 91, 97, 103–5, 109–10, 123, 127–28, 132, 166, 181, 183–84, 190–91, 205, 208, 215–16, 222–23, 228, 230–31 Portugal, 5–6, 13, 208–10, 213–15, 221, 223, 226 postcolonial discourse, 45 studies, 41, 67, 224 (see postcolonialism; see also postcolonial theory) theory, 61, 67 postcolonialism, 2, 10, 55. See postcolonial studies. See also postcolonial theory poverty, 1, 21, 25, 27, 102, 155 power, 3, 21, 30, 32–38, 40, 44, 47, 54, 57, 65, 90, 94, 97, 100, 103–4, 109–10, 113, 123, 128, 157, 174–75, 179, 187, 189, 191–94, 208, 226–27, 230 precariousness, 95, 226 Promised Land, 27, 39, 63, 227 public sphere, 10, 13, 73, 76–77, 83–87, 102–3, 190, 202, 208–9, 221, 223 push-pull theory, 2, 10, 19, 21, 35, 59 reception, 4, 6, 8, 10–11, 42, 53–54, 62, 66, 71–78, 80, 84–85, 87

238 • Index

refugee crisis, 4, 11, 13–14, 76, 89, 109, 111, 113–15, 117, 119, 121, 123–30, 147, 168–69, 187, 189, 192–96, 202–7, 223, 228, 230–31. See migrant crisis. See also migration crisis religion, 3, 9, 29, 40, 42–45, 50, 52, 102 representation, 3–4, 6–9, 11–12, 19, 24, 34, 40–41, 50, 53, 56–57, 65, 71, 78, 91, 100, 104, 110–13, 116–18, 120–21, 123–24, 127–29, 132, 136, 142, 145–48, 154, 164, 167–68, 170–71, 177–81, 184, 187, 189, 191–93, 196– 97, 207, 214, 219, 224, 227–28, 231 resistance, 73, 78, 92, 100, 104, 226, 230 responsibility, 59, 95, 100, 111, 127, 189, 195–96, 205, 210, 212, 214, 216, 223, 228, 230 review, 10, 38, 41, 53–54, 62–70, 73–74, 77–78, 80–86, 226 Šarić, Ljiljana, 5, 8, 11, 109–10, 112, 114–20, 122, 124–26, 128, 130–32, 134, 141, 143, 148, 193–94, 207, 224, 231 Schimanski, Johan, 4–8, 10–11, 14–15, 40, 42, 44, 49, 52, 60, 67, 70–72, 74–76, 78–80, 82, 84–91, 94, 98, 103–5, 129, 131, 148, 151, 161, 166, 184, 205, 208, 223, 225–27, 229–31 sea, 2, 5, 15, 20, 22–23, 25–26, 28–29, 34–35, 44, 49, 80, 109, 137–38, 140, 142–43, 159–61, 163–64, 171–73, 181, 183, 192, 195, 213, 217, 230. See water self, 7, 13, 30, 33, 72–74, 88–90, 92–97, 100, 102–4, 112, 147, 154, 157–59, 164, 168–69, 171, 177, 189, 212, 218, 226–31. See identity semiotics, 11, 112–13, 130 Senegal, 6, 26, 39–40, 44–47, 50–56, 58, 60, 64–65 slave trade, 1–2, 48–49 society, 3, 14–15, 19, 27–29, 42–43, 46, 49, 55, 57, 60, 65, 73, 76, 87–88, 93, 103, 110, 127–28, 132, 134–38, 144, 153, 183, 188, 191–92, 197, 205, 207, 223–24, 230–31

solidarity, 127, 191–92, 196–99, 201, 204 Somalia, 6, 75, 220 space, 2–6, 10–12, 15, 19, 25–26, 28–29, 41–44, 46, 48, 51, 58–59, 76, 79–85, 87–88, 91–92, 95, 103–4, 116, 121, 124, 131, 133, 135–47, 151–67, 173, 177, 179, 183, 197, 199–200, 205, 208, 215, 220–22, 232. See place Spain, 5, 12, 19–22, 25–27, 29, 34, 36–37, 39, 44, 103, 155, 159, 161, 164–65, 215, 226, 230 stage, 209–14, 216, 218–19, 221. See theatre stereotype, 31, 95–96, 102, 220, 225 sub-Saharan Africa, 10, 19, 21, 25, 39, 45–46, 50, 226 authors, 10 countries, 5, 20, 22–23, 26 migrants, 27, 34 migration, 20 Sweden, 6, 14, 36, 53–54, 62, 66–67, 141, 164, 182, 226 symbolic border, 10, 40, 50, 75, 81, 85, 103, 227. See border. See also medial border; topographical border Syria, 90, 93, 96, 99, 101, 141, 213, 219, 222 TED talk, 9, 99, 101–2, 104 testimony, 9, 50, 89, 92–93, 95, 100–1, 103–5, 176, 178, 220 text, 2–3, 5–6, 9–11, 13, 22, 25, 27–28, 30, 34–36, 39–45, 50, 53–54, 65, 73–75, 77, 82, 90–94, 97, 99, 102–4, 114, 117–18, 120–21, 124, 126–27, 131–33, 139, 141, 145, 176, 183–84, 209, 219–20, 224–30 theatre, 185, 208–12, 214, 216, 221. See play. See also stage topographical border, 5, 41, 50, 79, 226. See border. See also medial border; symbolic border transit, 4–5, 11–12, 19, 21, 23–24, 28, 34–35, 105, 110, 112, 121, 123, 125, 128, 158, 168, 175, 182 trauma, 84, 88, 91–92, 112, 163, 194–95, 200, 203, 217

Index • 239

truth, 35, 37, 92, 163, 180, 200 tsunami, 133, 140–42, 145–46. See water. See also wave Turkey, 5, 15, 96, 99, 198, 203, 206, 213 utopia, 7, 26–27, 35, 50 Van Houtum, Henk, 5, 9, 15, 45, 52, 91, 105, 165–66, 227, 232 victim, 11, 25, 31, 65, 93, 99, 110, 112–13, 121–22, 124–29, 158, 196, 225–26 violence, 27, 39, 71–72, 76, 98, 103–4, 158, 187–88, 193, 195, 202–3, 205, 230–31 visibility, 9, 45, 93, 96, 112, 125, 153, 163, 180, 190–91, 218–19, 225. See in/ visibility voice, 9, 25–26, 31, 33, 35–36, 45, 50, 54, 65, 70, 74, 77, 81–83, 87, 90, 93–94, 96, 100, 102–4, 110, 114, 125, 127–28, 155–56, 160, 167–68, 172, 180, 187, 194, 210, 225

vulnerability, 100, 104, 121, 194, 225–26, 230 war, 1, 11, 15, 20–21, 31, 39, 45, 59, 87, 90, 96–98, 104–5, 124, 129, 159, 193–94, 197, 202, 205–6, 228 water, 27–28, 47, 80, 95, 97, 120, 133, 137, 140–41, 144, 146, 159, 172–73, 182, 188, 198, 215, 217, 227 wave, 120, 133, 140–41, 168. See water. See also tsunami Wolfe, Stephen F., 4–5, 7, 14–15, 40–41, 44–45, 49, 52, 60–61, 67, 70, 85, 87, 89–91, 95, 98, 103–5, 123, 129, 131, 136, 147–48, 151, 165–66, 184, 205, 208, 223, 225–28, 231 writing, 9, 13, 35, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51–52, 57, 70, 72, 75, 77, 83, 85, 88, 105, 152, 164, 166, 208–9, 211–12, 222. See life writing Zeus, 187, 189–91, 195, 202, 204, 206–7