Conscripts of Migration in the Era of Globalization

Abstract

This introductory chapter lays out the high stakes of rethinking immigration in our twenty-first century of migration crises, resurgent racist nationalisms, and the continued destabilization of countries in the Global South under globalization. It introduces a theory of conscription regarding immigration and historicizes the ways in which the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the United States, and other powers produced the migration that they attempt to police at their borders. Through global economic, political, and cultural processes from the era of high imperialism, decolonization, the cold war, to contemporary neoliberal globalization (neocolonialism), they have devastated nations in the Global South, creating instability and displacement. This chapter introduces migritude cultural production, often challenging these conscripting forces, and close reads Abu Bakr Khaal’s novella African Titanics.