Narratives of the New Diasporas: A Theoretical Approach

Abstract

This introduction offers a survey of Border Studies and Diaspora Theory to contextualize the ways in which contemporary fictions of migration in the 21st century have reinterpreted classic paradigms. Literature has played a paramount role in illustrating many of the challenges of narrating the experience of migration. This role is the motivation for this Special Issue as it examines the literary mechanisms that engage with current social, economic, and political issues and shows how discourses on migration contest perspectives on concepts such as ‘mobility’ or ‘space’. Thus after contextualizing ‘the Black Atlantic’, ‘diaspora space’, ‘third scenario’, ‘necropolitics’ or ‘gore capitalism’, this introduction describes the contributors’ diverse critical readings, which are presented and organized to illustrate the evolution of academic research around Diaspora Studies. The new avenues of research that 21st-century migration has fostered bear witness to the complex and intricate phenomena of human mobility.