World Literature and Migration Literature

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the fields of world literature studies and migration literature studies have been brought into increasing proximity. On the one hand, migration literature is often called the new world literature; on the other, scholars of world literature have referred to authors and texts of migration literature as examples of world literature. The contested expression litterature francophone, mostly used to denote writings by French authors whose origins lie outside France, even though they may live in France, has been criticised for its racial and ethnic dimensions. Salman Rushdie, for instance, rejects the term ‘Commonwealth literature’ in his well-known essay “Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist”. In the past few decades, literature by migrant authors has emerged in national literary fields across the globe.