The “I” in the Deconstruction of Frontiers through Memory: Postcolonial Diasporas

Abstract

The North and South relations have changed in terms of migratory flow in the last 50 years. From colonial to postcolonial times, economic and political forces have been influencing men and women all over the world, particularly in Africa because of the heavy colonial inheritance, which explains the tight link between the two worlds. Besides, there has always been a reciprocal fascination between the West and developing countries, at the same time with a kind of distrust between both worlds. Beyond trade relations, the migration movements have surely inscribed those colonial and postcolonial links, those relations between the ‘civilised’ and the ‘barbarous’ world. The human geographical map has been transformed by these migrations. Within this prospect and reality, I propose to look into these migration movements first from a historical point of view, and then through their impact on the subject of the new diaspora in the sense that these migrations have changed the perception of the ‘Other’ in our postcolonial world. I will discuss how these various migrations have created a blurring of the frontiers, real or imaginative. I hope to show in fine also how these post-colonial migration flows created new identities, new maps, those of the diaspora in relation with key issues such as ‘identities and territories’ in the sense given by Homi Bhabha to internationalism, which is the “history of postcolonial migrations.”