The Figure of the Migrant

Author: Thomas Nail
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804796688
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.

Figures of the Migrant

Author: Siobhan Brownlie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000434109
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
This volume seeks to investigate the representation of the migrant and migration in literary texts and the arts. Through studies that examine works in a range of art forms ‒ novels, theatre, poetry, creative non-fiction, documentary films and performance and video installations ‒ that evoke a variety of historical and (trans)national contexts, the volume focuses on the question of the roles of literature and the arts in representing migration. An important issue considered is the extent to which artistic figuration can act as a counterpoint to social discourse on migrants that often involves stereotypes and reductive views. The different contributions to the volume illustrate that literature and the arts can provide readers and viewers with a space for fluid knowledge production and affective expansion and that within that overarching function, artistic works play three main roles with regard to representing migration: undertaking a socio-political and cultural critique, presenting alternative views to stereotypes that highlight the singularity and complexity of the migrant and providing proposals for different futures.

Theory of the Border

Author: Thomas Nail
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190618663
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Despite -- and perhaps because of -- increasing global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life. Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

The Migrant Image

Author: T. J. Demos
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822353407
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Book Description
In The Migrant Image T. J. Demos examines the ways contemporary artists have reinvented documentary practices in their representations of mobile lives: refugees, migrants, the stateless, and the politically dispossessed. He presents a sophisticated analysis of how artists from the United States, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East depict the often ignored effects of globalization and the ways their works connect viewers to the lived experiences of political and economic crisis. Demos investigates the cinematic approaches Steve McQueen, the Otolith Group, and Hito Steyerl employ to blur the real and imaginary in their films confronting geopolitical conflicts between North and South. He analyzes how Emily Jacir and Ahlam Shibli use blurs, lacuna, and blind spots in their photographs, performances, and conceptual strategies to directly address the dire circumstances of dislocated Palestinian people. He discusses the disparate interventions of Walid Raad in Lebanon, Ursula Biemann in North Africa, and Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri in the United States, and traces how their works offer images of conflict as much as a conflict of images. Throughout Demos shows the ways these artists creatively propose new possibilities for a politics of equality, social justice, and historical consciousness from within the aesthetic domain.

The Figure of the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema

Author: Temenuga Trifonova
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501362496
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
The Figure of the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema explores contemporary debates around the concepts of 'Europe' and 'European identity' through an examination of recent European films dealing with various aspects of globalization (the refugee crisis, labour migration, the resurgence of nationalism and ethnic violence, neoliberalism, post-colonialism) with a particular attention to the figure of the migrant and the ways in which this figure challenges us to rethink Europe and its core Enlightenment values (citizenship, justice, ethics, liberty, tolerance, and hospitality) in a post-national context of ephemerality, volatility, and contingency that finds people desperately looking for firmer markers of identity. The book argues that a compelling case can be made for re-orienting the study of contemporary European cinema around the figure of the migrant viewed both as a symbolic figure (representing post-national citizenship, urbanization, the 'gap' between ethics and justice) and as a figure occupying an increasingly central place in European cinema in general rather than only in what is usually called 'migrant and diasporic cinema'. By drawing attention to the structural and affective affinities between the experience of migrants and non-migrants, Europeans and non-Europeans, Trifonova shows that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate stories about migration from stories about life under neoliberalism in general

We Are All Migrants

Author: Gregory Feldman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804795886
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Book Description
Now more than ever, questions of citizenship, migration, and political action dominate public debate. In this powerful and polemical book, Gregory Feldman argues that We Are All Migrants. By challenging the division between those considered "citizens" and "migrants," Feldman shows that both subjects confront disempowerment, uncertainty, and atomization inseparable from the rise of mass society, the isolation of the laboring individual, and the global proliferation of rationalized practices of security and production. Yet, this very atomization—the ubiquitous condition of migrant-hood—pushes the individual to ask an existential and profoundly political question: "do I matter in this world?" Feldman argues that for particular individuals to answer this question affirmatively, they must be empowered to jointly constitute the places they inhabit with others. Feldman ultimately argues that to overcome the condition of migrant-hood, people must be empowered to constitute their own sovereign spaces from their particular standpoints. Rather than base these spaces on categorical types of people, these spaces emerge only as particular people present themselves to each other while questioning how they should inhabit it.

Migrants

Author: Issa Watanabe
Publisher: Gecko Press USA
ISBN: 9781776573134
Category : JUVENILE FICTION
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The migrants must leave the forest, but the journey proves to be a dangerous battle of love and loss.

The Figure of the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema

Author: Temenuga Trifonova
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 150136250X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Handbook of Art and Global Migration

Author: Burcu Dogramaci
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110476673
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Book Description
How can we think of art history as a discipline that moves process-based, performative, and cultural migratory movement to the center of its theoretical and methodical analyses? With contributions from internationally renowned experts, this manual, for the first time, provides answers as to what consequences the interaction of migration and globalization has on research in the field of the science of art, on curatory practice, and on artistic production and theory. The objective of this multi-vocal anthology is to open up an interdisciplinary discourse surrounding the increased focus on the phenomenon of migration in art history.

Memories of Migration

Author: Kathie Friedman-Kasaba
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438403380
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
The migrant has been designated the central or defining figure of the 20th century. Yet, for much of this period, research and theory have centered on adult men as representative, ignoring women's part in international migration. Weaving together history, theory, and immigrant women's own words, Memories of Migration reveals women's multifaceted participation in the mass migrations from eastern and southern Europe to the United States at the turn of the century. By focusing on women's responses to Americanization organizations, coethnic community networks, and income-producing opportunities, this book provides rich insight into the sources of immigrant women's distinct fates in America.