Using three literary analyses to show what happens once we leave behind the theoretical poverty of celebratory readings of contemporary migration and hybridity literature, this book offers a way out of the theoretical deadlock of putting hybridity against purity or flux against fixity.

Immigrants who travel and settle in foreign countries face challenges due to cultural differences or even deliberate segregation by dominant groups. In their attempt to negotiate their existence, some decide to stick to the culture of their mother nations and some stand in the middle, and blend some aspects of their mother culture and the new culture. Although immigrants who remain closer to their own cultures are easily spotted and relegated, they are assigned a place on the identity continuum, whereas immigrants who choose to stand in the middle run the danger of being neither this nor that, neither here nor there, and can undergo severe internal fragmentation. In this book, Cultural Hybridity and Fixity: Strategies of Resistance in Migration Literatures, Andrew Nyongesa delves into these two strategies of resistance and analyzes the merits and demerits of each with reference to Safi Abdi’s fiction.

Culture, Literature and Migration gives us a unique insight into the emotional and physical experiences of immigrants. By shedding light on the challenges of the plight, the chapters in this book raise awareness of the global scale of the crisis and reduces hostility towards the displaced as a result of a better understanding of that which is often left unspoken of and unheard of. The distinctiveness of voluntary and involuntary immigration is brought forward and contextualized in order to emphasise the trauma of forced departure and the often forgotten psychological complications of the host nation. With such matters arising, there is an ultimate return to notions of hegemony, colonialism, otherness, hybridity and citizenship. New understandings of identity, nationalism and multiculturalism are explored in context of transnationalism and multiculturalism. Culture, Literature and Migration critically analyzes the transformation of the immigrant and highlights the importance of hope and the power of inclusiveness in a fragmented global environment. Content Introduction – Ali Tilbe and Rania M Rafik Khalil Chapter 1 – The Bildungsroman and Building a Hybrid Identity in the Postcolonial Context: Migration as Formative Experience in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane Petru Golban and Derya Benli Chapter 2 – The Migrant Female Writer, Originally from Muslim Country in the Literary Field: A Sociological Approach Francesco Bellinzis Chapter 3 – Migration, Integration and Power. The Image of “the Dumb Swede” in Swede Hollow and the Image of Contemporary New Swedes in One Eye Red and She Is Not Me Maria Bäcke Chapter 4 – Coerced Migration, Migrating Rhetoric: The ‘Forked Tongue’ of Native American Removal Policy in the Nineteenth-Century United States Estella Ciobanu Chapter 5 – The Migrant Hero’s Boundaries of Masculine Honour Code in Elif Shafak’s Honour Tatiana Golban Chapter 6 – Literary Representations of Progressive Era Lithuanian Immigrants in the United States and the Question of Genre: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) Cansu Özge Özmen Chapter 7 – Migration, Maturation and Identity Crisis in Abani’s Select Novels: A Postcolonial Reading Bernard Dickson and Chinyere Egbuta

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. While migration has become an all-important topic of discussion around the globe, mainstream literature on migrants' legal adaptation and integration has focused on case studies of immigrant communities in Western-style democracies. We know relatively little about how migrants adapt to a new legal environment in the ever-growing hybrid political regimes that are neither clearly democratic nor conventionally authoritarian. This book takes up the case of Russia—an archetypal hybrid political regime and the third largest recipients of migrants worldwide—and investigates how Central Asian migrant workers produce new forms of informal governance and legal order. Migrants use the opportunities provided by a weak rule-of-law and a corrupt political system to navigate the repressive legal landscape and to negotiate—using informal channels—access to employment and other opportunities that are hard to obtain through the official legal framework of their host country. This lively ethnography presents new theoretical perspectives for studying immigrant legal incorporation in similar political contexts.

From Multiculturalism to Hybridity: New Approaches to Teaching Switzerland places Switzerland within the context of transnational labor migration and examines how this German-, French-, Italian-, and Romansh-speaking nation is being transformed by the influx of migrants from all over the world who now constitute a fifth of the population. This dynamic mixture of cultures and races is embodied by a new generation of citizens who call themselves “Secondas and Secondos,” the second generation. Today, Switzerland is leading all industrial nations in growth potential and economic benefits from migration (OECD). The articles in this volume analyze the challenges, successes, and ongoing struggles Switzerland experiences with migration, focusing specifically on what it means to shape a nation-state by political will rather than linguistic and cultural unity. From Multiculturalism to Hybridity also offers teaching suggestions for the French, German, and Italian language and literature classroom as well as for courses in Social, Cultural, and Political Studies. Articles address the hybrid literatures and cultures of Switzerland including films, pageants, smellscapes, and women’s issues and place Switzerland in the context of a unifying European continent. Readers will find ideas and resources for critically investigating and teaching the concepts of cultural hybridity and transculturalism in the high school and college classroom.

Diaspora & Hybridity deals with those theoretical issues which concern social theory and social change in the new millennium. The volume provides a refreshing, critical and illuminating analysis of concepts of diaspora and hybridity and their impact on multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies’ - Dr Rohit Barot, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol What do we mean by 'diaspora' and 'hybridity'? Why are they pivotal concepts in contemporary debates on race, culture and society? This book is an exhaustive, politically inflected, assessment of the key debates on diaspora and hybridity. It relates the topics to contemporary social struggles and cultural contexts, providing the reader with a framework to evaluate and displace the key ideological arguments, theories and narratives deployed in culturalist academic circles today. The authors demonstrate how diaspora and hybridity serve as problematic tools, cutting across traditional boundaries of nations and groups, where trans-national spaces for a range of contested cultural, political and economic outcomes might arise. Wide ranging, richly illustrated and challenging, it will be of interest to students of cultural studies, sociology, ethnicity and nationalism.

′Diaspora & Hybridity deals with those theoretical issues which concern social theory and social change in the new millennium. The volume provides a refreshing, critical and illuminating analysis of concepts of diaspora and hybridity and their impact on multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies′ - Dr Rohit Barot, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol What do we mean by ′diaspora′ and ′hybridity′? Why are they pivotal concepts in contemporary debates on race, culture and society? This book is an exhaustive, politically inflected, assessment of the key debates on diaspora and hybridity. It relates the topics to contemporary social struggles and cultural contexts, providing the reader with a framework to evaluate and displace the key ideological arguments, theories and narratives deployed in culturalist academic circles today. The authors demonstrate how diaspora and hybridity serve as problematic tools, cutting across traditional boundaries of nations and groups, where trans-national spaces for a range of contested cultural, political and economic outcomes might arise. Wide ranging, richly illustrated and challenging, it will be of interest to students of cultural studies, sociology, ethnicity and nationalism.

Drawing on a wide range of migrants' writings, this collection reveals an extraordinary diversity of global migratory experience while illustrating the realities and emotions shared by all who leave their home and culture and must adapt to another.

A young Chinese girl and her parents immigrate to the United States and try their best to assimilate into their San Francisco neighborhood while anxiously awaiting the arrival of their green cards.