Navigating Trauma and Displacement: A Comparative Analysis of Exit West (2017) by Mohsin Hamid and The Baghdad Clock (2016) by Shahad Al Rawi

The impact of post-‘9/11’ terrorism on how the city of London has been reimagined is significant. In this paper, we will explore two post-‘9/11’ novels, Chris Cleave’s 2005 Incendiary and Mohsin Hamid’s 2017 Exit West, which complicate the tradition of British literature featuring terrorists (Taylor, London's Burning: Pulp Fiction, the Politics of Terrorism and the Destruction of the Capital in British Popular Culture, 1840–2005 (London: Continuum, 2012), 1–2) by reenvisaging London as a nexus of state terrorism. Incendiary, published on the day of the ‘7/7’ bombings, highlights the complexity of political violence through the story of a traumatised woman who loses her son and husband during a terrorist attack in London. Cleave critiques the post ‘9/11’ city by constructing a narrative centred on the Londoners’ response to the terror perpetrated by the government, the police, and media (e.g.: violence against civilians, suspension of civil rights, martial law, and surveillance). Similarly, Hamid’s Exit West depicts London as a place where refugees live in terror, exploited in work camps and subjected to surveillance (through drones and by citizens turned vigilantes) by the British state. This paper aims to interrogate how these texts problematise mainstream representations of sovereign power in London. If state sovereignty is understood as ‘an aspiration that seeks to create itself in the face of internally fragmented, unevenly distributed and unpredictable configurations of political authority that exercise more or less legitimate violence in a territory’ (T. B. Hansen and F. Stepputat (eds.), Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants and States in the Postcolonial World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2005), 10), literary fiction creates a space suitable for questioning the legitimacy of this aspiration. The state actively produces ‘fear, terror, and violence’, embedding in the construction of cities (D. Gregory, The Colonial Present (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004), 4). The London of Cleave’s and Hamid’s novels becomes a site for both projecting terrorism and resisting terror in all its forms. Our interdisciplinary theoretical framework combines postcolonial theory and elements of urban and cultural sociology (S. Graham (ed.), Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004); S. Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (London: Verso, 2011); J. C. Alexander, Performance and Power (Cambridge: Polity, 2011)) with inquiries into the cultural imaginary of terrorism (Frank, The Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism in Public Discourse, Literature, and Film: Narrating Terror (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017), 75.) in post-‘9/11’ literature. We subscribe to the proposition that the ‘only real solution to our current geopolitical crisis’ is asserting the global values that connect the Self with the Other (Gauthier, 9/11 Fiction, Empathy, and Otherness (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 1.) and we argue that Incendiary and Exit West provide a counternarrative to the dominant discourse of terrorism post ‘9/11’, which champions the state’s supreme authority through stereotyping and polarisation. The proposed reading of Cleave’s and Hamid’s novels will show how the city of London, as imagined in literary responses to ‘9/11’, can crystallise a counternarrative of protest by revealing the systemic violence through which sovereign power is performed at the expense of civil populations, particularly minoritised populations through discourses of hate such as Islamophobia and antiimmigrant/refugee rhetoric.

Girl at War by Sara Nović and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid both tell the stories of characters in war-torn countries that are trying to survive day by day. In these novels, there are many physical and intangible borders that impact the main characters’ lives in significant ways. Ana Jurić from Girl at War is a Croatian girl from the former Yugoslavia who lives in poverty in the midst of a civil war at just 10 years old. Exit West follows young, working-class couple Saeed and Nadia from an unspecified country who are experiencing a violent war within the streets of their city while also trying to navigate their forming romantic relationship. Although Exit West differs significantly from Girl at War due to its elements of magical realism, the two novels are very similar in that they both show that money can be used to cross borders. Class borders and the importance of money to go from one place to another play a key role in these novels and in the main characters’ lives. A lack of money also creates a border for these characters in many ways. In addition, Ana, Saeed, and Nadia are all moving westward throughout their journeys out of their countries; borders become more restrictive and more dependent on money to cross. This paper will focus on comparing the experiences of Ana Jurić from Girl at War and Saeed and Nadia from Exit West and how these characters use money to cross borders and escape the traumatic living conditions of their home countries, how the lack of money impacts their lives and ability to cross borders, and the connection between the western world and the importance of money in border crossings. Furthermore, Girl at War and Exit West both suggest that resources and opportunities should be more accessible to everyone, not just the affluent, and that wealth distribution would secure the well-being of the working class.

This paper examines a process of forced migration within the United Kingdom: that of women (often with children) escaping violence within relationships. Studies of internal migration in the UK have rarely examined forced migration or emphasised gendered processes, and studies of migration and relationship breakdown have under‐recognised abuse in forcing migration decisions. This study used administrative, survey and interview data to identify and explore processes at a range of scales, from individual to national. The empirical analysis reveals that there are high rates of forced residential mobility within many local authorities as well as migration across local authority boundaries, with over 18 000 journeys a year by women to access formal services in England. The migration is distinctive from other internal migration in the UK because of its gendered and forced nature: women are relocating to escape violence and had not otherwise intended to migrate. Journeys are therefore typically focused on trying to minimise disruption either by staying as local as they can, but avoiding friends, family and known locations, or by travelling to a similar type of place to the one left. The primary concern is safety, and journeys are often complex and segmented into multiple stages over time and space. However, despite such disruption at the individual scale, the journeys do not aggregate into net migration flows at the local or national scale and the overall process is one of spatial churn. The multi‐scale analysis of this research reveals the turbulence beneath the surface, and highlights a forced migration process which had previously remained invisible to studies of internal migration in the UK.

In the context of increasing global migration, contemporary literature has become a vital space for exploring how identities are formed and re-formed across borders. This paper investigates how Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West represents transnational identity formation, focusing on the experiences of its protagonists, Nadia and Saeed. While previous research has examined migrant fiction’s portrayal of displacement and cultural adaptation, less attention has been paid to the ongoing negotiation of identity in rapidly changing global contexts. This study addresses this gap by asking how Exit West uses narrative strategies, characterization, and shifting settings to depict the challenges and possibilities of belonging for modern migrants. Employing a qualitative literary analysis grounded in Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, the research analyzes how the novel’s use of magical realism, fragmented narrative structure, and global geography reflect the fluid, in-between status of migrant identity. The findings reveal that Exit West moves beyond simple narratives of exile or assimilation, instead presenting identity as a dynamic process shaped by memory, language, community, and continual negotiation. This study highlights the significance of Hamid’s work for understanding the complexities of transnational identity, suggesting that such fiction plays a crucial role in reimagining the ethics and politics of belonging in today’s interconnected world.

Resilience and Refugees: From Individualised Trauma to Post Traumatic Growth

This article explores a phenomenon of low-level magical realism we call infrastructural-innovation realism. Reversing the formulation identified by Sean McCann and Michael Szalay in their 2005 essay “Do You Believe in Magic? Literary Thinking After the New Left,” in which an earlier generation of left-leaning American writers eschewed engagement with the state in favor of imagining utopian magical communities, these novels rewrite historical events, often catastrophic and violent ones, with the addition of one piece of working magical infrastructure. Here we explore the effects of these magical technological additions in three novels: Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad (2016); Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017); and briefly, César Aira’s Shantytown (2000). Although these effects vary, in these novels, history continues on as violently as ever: together they betray the difficulty in late neoliberalism of even imagining that states will provide working infrastructure, particularly for oppressed and displaced people. At the same time, these novels challenge the idea that imagining utopian communities beyond the state’s orbit constitutes a retreat from politics. Rather, they showcase the difficult, painstaking work of building alternative community in the wake of the state’s many failures and imply the continued necessity of confronting and reimagining the violent state rather than appealing to it.

This thesis discusses the central concern of the global refugee crisis through the fictional novel Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. The novel tells the story of two protagonists who are portrayed as the modern subject that Hamid comes to humanize, which reflects on current society’s representation of the refugee as dehumanized or “the Other.” Hamid takes his readers on a journey that represents his characters as normal everyday humans that are forced into the process of refugeehood and displacement. Throughout this thesis, I discuss what makes the novel so unique in representing the modern-day refugee. In the first section titled “II. Humanization of Hamid’s Characters,” I discuss what distinguishes this novel from other forms of American Literature with its use of two central protagonists, the form and structure of the novel, the use of vignettes, magical realism, and its transition of privileged stable characters to displaced beings in the world. In the next section titled “III. The Role of Technology in Representing the Modern Subjects,” I discuss the subjectivity of Hamid’s main characters through their use of technology and the inevitable deterioration it brings to their homeland and each other. The thesis aims to highlight Exit West as a modern and effective representation of the global refugee crisis today, through the uses and growth of technology in the 21st century and its unique form of storytelling within U.S. fiction in representing the refugee as human. The goal of the novel and the paper is for readers to recognize refugee individuals as human beings.

Sara Nović’s Girl at War, a realist novel concerned with Ana Jurić’s journey through the Yugoslavian civil war, and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a magical realist novel detailing the lives of Nadia and Saeed during a civil war, are two different takes on one’s life within a warzone. While Nović explores identities and borders within the history of the former Yugoslavia, Hamid brings modern issues, including violence, surveillance, and borders, into a hypothetical world. Nović and Hamid highlight hypocrisies within peace organizations, as well as a lack of accountability for abuses committed against citizens living within warzones. Rather than alleviating devastation within conflicting areas, peace organizations appear to add to the violence. With an established exploration into the globalization present in Hamid’s Exit West and nationalism in Nović’s Girl at War, we can expand and investigate the portrayal of third-party peace organizations, such as the United Nations, independent agents, and others. While observing these organizations’ tactics, often concerning the guarding of borders and their supposedly protective measures within countries, one can examine them as bodies that self-govern, gatekeep safety, and bypass borders, all of which are distinguishing characteristics of imperialist tendencies vis-à-vis the control and authority they have exerted within foreign states.

This study explores the complex dynamics of transnational displacement and identity reconstruction in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea, situating both novels within a postcolonial framework. Through a comparative analysis, it examines how forced migration acts as both a physical and psychological rupture, reshaping individual identities amid cultural dissonance, trauma, and the legacies of colonialism. Hamid’s use of magical realism dismantles traditional notions of borders and nationhood, presenting migration as a fluid and transformative experience, while Gurnah’s realist narrative foregrounds the silenced voices of refugees and asylum seekers navigating postcolonial power structures. Drawing on postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak, the study reveals how these texts challenge dominant discourses on migration by portraying the multifaceted processes of identity negotiation, hybridity, and belonging. Ultimately, this paper highlights the vital role of literature in humanizing refugee experiences and advancing scholarly conversations about displacement and identity in the contemporary postcolonial world.

This article explores how literature can sensitise us to our potential implication in the injustice and violence of the global border regime. The violence of borders today sustains a large economic and political system that “produces precarity and disposability, exposes migrants and refugees to harm and exploitation, and reinforces global inequalities”. While it manifests itself in direct events, policies, and actions, the violence produced by the global border regime is structural, widespread, and racially charged. Citizens of the global North are not precisely perpetrators of border violence, yet they bear a certain kind of political responsibility for the experiences of trauma, death, impoverishment, and discrimination that borders generate and institutionalise. Reading Mohsin Hamid's Exit West (2017), I investigate how we can recognise ourselves in the position of the ‘implicated subject’ (Michael Rothberg) through a process of what I call ‘disorienting empathy’. This form of expanded and self‐aware perspective‐taking elicits our concern for others, but simultaneously de‐centres our self, leading us to reflect critically on our subject position and on our potential indirect involvement in systemic violence. By examining Exit West 's literary strategies, I argue that empathy, non‐appropriative identification, and disorientation can generate a self‐reflexivity about our responsibility in relation to the global border regime. Drawing on affect theory, literary theory, migration studies, and critical race theory, the article highlights contemporary fiction's capacity to represent diasporic experiences and reimagine the freedom of movement in the twenty‐first century.

Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions of research and analysis being produced on migration is important for those working on migration policies, studying migration, or wanting to develop an informed opinion on migration.It is important to highlight at the outset that there are fundamental differences in the publishing processes for academic and non-academic material, and each has its strengths and weaknesses.The academic publishing system is largely focused on producing journal articles and books.This process typically involves multi-stage reviews and editorial comments involving authors, editors and reviewers.Most published academic research ("white" literature) is behind paywalls (that is, not freely accessible), and often managed by commercial publishers.In contrast, the production of research and analysis publications outside of academic publishing ("grey" literature) generally involves faster and simpler processes that are typically, although not always, characterized by more limited peer review.Contributions from grey literature (such as research reports, working papers and government/official documents) are usually freely available.A report such as this, designed to contribute to our collective understanding of migration and mobility in an increasingly interconnected world, would clearly be incomplete without describing the role of grey literature, which has been "recognized as a key source of evidence, argument, innovation, and understanding". 6 The volume, diversity and growth of both white and grey literature preclude a systematic review of all the material produced and published on migration in 2017 and 2018.Instead, this chapter highlights examples of key contributions made during this period, published in English by a selection of academic journals and intergovernmental organizations.It provides an update to the chapter in World Migration Report 2018, including by focusing on different academic journals and intergovernmental organizations, and their key output in 2017 and 2018. 7 The next section provides an overview of the different actors involved in migration research and analysis.The third section features recent, selected contributions from academia and intergovernmental organizations, and the reach and impact of some of the migration research materials published. Main producers of migration research and analysis AcademiaIdeally, researchers create new knowledge that is supported by strong evidence and is useful for others.Research findings are produced for, and disseminated to, different target audiences.Traditional academic work can be highly technical and narrowly focused, although academic researchers are increasingly encouraged to disseminate their work beyond academic spheres. 8 Researchers analysing policy-relevant issues are often keen to engage with policymakers to impart knowledge that can inform policy deliberations and help shape policymaking -this is especially the case with migration.Effective research contributions for policy audiences tend to take the form of short papers and blog articles, as well as policy workshops and interactive expert meetings.6 GreyNet International, 2014.7 In order to ensure, to the extent possible, that this chapter provides a comprehensive "stand-alone" overview of migration research and analysis in 2017 and 2018, we have drawn upon key background and context material included in the

This‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌ research paper aims to explore the portrayal of technology and the use of social media as communication tools in the migration experience in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West (2017). It questions the extent to which virtual places influence aspects of life such as mobility, identity, and sociopolitical mix at the point of the merger between virtual and physical migration. It combines media theory elements with migration studies to investigate digital network systems that empower migrants through surveillance operations. It uses qualitative text analysis to examine vital sections that show how technological developments affect character development through their experiences. Close reading of the novel led to the understanding that social media is a technology that connects, documents, and reinvents the self for migrants, but at the same time, it is a technology through which control and exclusion are exercised. The research then places the characters within different levels of the migration debate, demonstrating the novel's critical perspective on how displacement is changing in the digital era.

Contemporary novels about refugees often question the appropriateness of traditional narrative forms to relate stories of forced migration which involve a fragmentation of the self and of one’s sense of reality. Writers opt instead for forms which are as disjointed as the experience of refugees themselves. This paper explores the precarious balance between a poetics of rupture and an aesthetics of connectivity in two novels about refugees: Exit West (2017) by Mohsin Hamid and Travelers (2019) by Helon Habila. It first examines the strategies developed by both authors to destabilize form in order to reflect the refugees’ shattering ordeals during and after their forced displacements. The multiplicity of stories as well as the shifts in focalization and narrative modes testify to the impossibility of inscribing refugees’ experiences within a single coherent and homogeneous pattern. However, Hamid and Habila also draw from the potentialities of the novelistic genre to devise formal ways of connecting apparently disparate story lines and thereby suggest possibilities for cross-cultural solidarity between refugees who share a common condition of vulnerability.

This response advocates for the conceptual utility of displacement and the potential emergence of Global Displacement Studies (GDS). I argue that displacement provides a more expansive analytical framework than migration studies, refugee studies, or forced migration studies, capturing the broader structural forces—economic, political, historical—forces that drive human movement and vulnerability. In so doing, I emphasise how displacement is deeply embedded in contemporary capitalism and social difference—race, gender, class, and sexuality. This response explores three key potentialities of GDS: (1) Its capacity to address systemic displacement in the context of capitalist inequality; (2) its ability to reframe place, scale, and temporality in global political economy; and (3) its potential to disrupt state-led categorisations of migration and forced movement. Rather than replacing forced migration or refugee studies, the analytic of global displacement offers a broader intellectual terrain for scholars examining displacement beyond migration categories, thereby embracing analysis of colonial dispossession, labour precarity, displacement in the Anthropocene, and urban marginalisation.

ABSTRACTThis article explores the representation of refugees in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a novel which has been widely celebrated for its response to the refugee crisis of its contemporary moment. In a distinct echo of Salman Rushdie’s claim, thirty-five years earlier, that it ‘may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated’, Hamid’s novel similarly claims that ‘we are all migrants through time.’ Moreover, like Rushdie’s fiction, Hamid’s novel incorporates elements of magical realism: its protagonists escape their unnamed war-torn city through a ‘door’ that instantaneously transports them to Mykonos, and they subsequently travel through other such ‘doors’ to London and California. Their story is interspersed with a series of vignettes in which other migrants also find themselves magically transported across national borders. As well as considering the ways in which Hamid’s novel seeks to humanise refugees, this article considers the novel’s evocation of a world in which human beings – like capital, images, and (mis)information – have gained access to largely ungovernable networks of instantaneous travel across vast distances. It argues that Hamid’s novel is not just ‘about’ refugees but also constitutes a reflection on how they and their journeys are represented and mediated by actually-existing technologies.