Narrating Migration: The Experience of Migration in Contemporary British Prose Fiction

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ralf Schneider
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 253899846

This project investigates the literary portrayal of experiences of migration in British prose fiction since World War II. Drawing on basic narratological text analysis as well as the sociological concept of transnational social spaces (Thomas Faist), the project will analyse novels and short stories with regard to their narrative techniques and cultural functions. Building on a broad understanding of migration as a process of spacial relocation of the place of residence, which involves transgressing socio-political and cultural borders (Ingrid Oswald), the project is organised on several interconnected levels of investigation. Firstly, we will examine which aspects and phases of migration phenomena are expressed in the texts at hand and which patterns and topics the corpus contains as a whole. Secondly, the narratological stratagies by which the texts represent the characters' experienced reality of migration will be at the centre of investigation. Thirdly, in the context of our theme-based and narratological assessment, our particular interest lies in the specific literary representation and evocation of transnational social spaces. The sociological term "transnational social spaces" denominates the various material, personal, symbolical and cultural ties established by migrants between their receiving country and their country of origin. Based on this concept, the central hypothesis of the project states that migration literature creates mental spaces in which the experienced realities of migrants is revealed to be, and imagined as, interconnected with other countries and cultures. In presenting the life and experiences of migrant characters, the novels and short stories evoke a connection between Great Britain and other realms of the world in the shape of lived and imagined cognitive-emotional relations with different characteristics and evaluations. The function of these transnational conceptual spaces within the literary presentation of migration experiences and their discursive negotiation in British society is still widely under-researched in English literary migration studies. Previous research focused primarily on post-colonial theory, as well as texts and contexts concerned with migrants (and their descendants) from Commonwealth countries. It paid special attention to racism, social dislocation and hybrid identities. Within the project proposed here, novels and short stories featuring characters coming from non-Commonwealth countries and authors without migration experience will be included. The innovative contribution of this project to research on English migration literature thus consists in broadening the scope of study compared to previous research, but also in the thematic and the conceptual expansion of the subject matter.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Person: Dr. Marcus Hartner