Abstract
The number of migration narratives published in recent years in the form of short stories, novels, poetry, and nonfiction has been considerable, particularly by writers connected with the African continent. Previous studies on this body of work have included investigations of identity and otherness, transnational connections, and cosmopolitan aspirations. Despite this abundance of perspectives on the literature, there have also been urgent calls for new ways of theorizing migration (Fasselt, 2019; Kraler, 2011; Edmunds, 2006). Postmigration is just such an intervention, a concept that aims to go beyond previous meanings of migrant and migration, to critique instances of othering and the gap between the margins and the majority society (Römhild, 2017), and to focus explicitly on trajectories relating to the future. Postmigration, as outlined by Roger Bromley (2017: 39), is not a concept solely tied to temporal distinctions, but is also ideological in its attempts to construct “a new set of emergent spaces of plurality”. The present article argues that Leila Aboulela’s short story collection Elsewhere, Home (2018) manifests such spaces, particularly through its representations and negotiations of gender, family practices, generation, and religious belief and practice. My analysis shows that Aboulela subverts tropes regarding gendered and religious identity and mobility. Elsewhere, Home is no longer primarily occupied with the displacement of individual characters but moves toward seeing migration as interaction and participation instead of integration (Moslund and Petersen, 2019), and as transcultural (Petersen and Schramm, 2017) instead of transnational.
Highlights
The number of migration narratives published in recent years in the form of short stories, novels, poetry, and nonfiction has been considerable, by writers connected with the African continent
Such aims are embedded in the concept of postmigration, which has been developed in recent years and attempts to go beyond previous meanings of migrant and migration to question the reasons for othering migrants and to criticize the gap between the margins and the majority society (Römhild, 2017)
Home, through its stories published over a period of 18 years, itself becomes evidence of this subtle transformation
Summary
The notion of postmigration as a conceptual tool is not about alternative modes of migration, which are emphasized by Rebecca Fasselt (2019: 76) in her chapter on narratives of intra-African migration, but instead it offers novel ways of seeing migration as an inherent component of society. Hassan’s analysis (2008) of her works shows, much of Aboulela’s fiction focuses on migration from Sudan to Europe (2008: 300), while Yousef Awad (2018: 72) for his part asserts that her writing “depicts the lives of Muslims in Britain” Compared to her previous novels, the stories in Elsewhere, Home offer fragments of the lives of a variety of characters who go about their lives often with relative ease but remaining mindful of their pasts and presents, their multiple roles and identities in complex family settings and circumstances. Ronan in Khartoum is the immigrant, and Yassir is the local man whose life is in Aberdeen where he himself is the immigrant With this story, Aboulela shows that a postmigrant society can be born out of such encounters between people of different origins, contradicting simplistic notions of how migrants define themselves or are defined by others. As will be argued on religious identities in the stories, Aboulela constantly plays with various expectations and tropes relating to women and men on the move
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