Ex-centric Migrations ― Europe and the Maghreb in Cinema, Literature, and Music

Writing in the wake of the political and social uprisings known as the "Arab Spring" and the restrictive European immigration policies that followed, Hakim Abderrezak contests the common notion that emigrants from former European colonies migrate predominantly to the land of the ex-colonizer. Focusing particularly on clandestine migration practices, he shows that despite a linguistic affinity, a tradition of labor, and additional historical ties with the colonizer, migrants from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) are no longer trekking to France, but instead are drifting towards other destinations like Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Middle East. Abderrezak locates this migratory shift away from France in literary, cinematic, and musical representations of the emigrant’s journey. Contrary to mass media coverage and mainstream political discourse, these cultural productions reveal new patterns of human movement and an alternative mapping of the Mediterranean.

Hakim Abderrezak is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Minnesota.