Remembering Refugees

"The primary concern of this book is to explore the memory work associated with 'the refugee'. It is only secondarily a history of refugee movement and settlements." --introd.

This book takes an innovative approach to the study of memories of transit and exile in Portugal between 1933 and 1945 in artistic media. Informed by contemporary debates within memory and translation studies, it develops a translational perspective on transcultural memory and explores its ethical implications. This study provides an in-depth analysis of Daniel Blaufuks’s inter-art project Sob Céus Estranhos, Domingos Amaral’s novel Enquanto Salazar Dormia and João Canijo’s documentary Fantasia Lusitana. It examines the heterocultural networks of signification that these artistic media mobilize to implicate the presence of World War II refugees in Portugal in contemporary negotiations of communality. By approaching memory through a translational lens on culture, this book also offers new perspectives on remediation, memory transfer and the ethical dimensions of remembrance in the context of transcultural memory and migration.

This book explores the discourse by and about refugees and asylum seekers in relation to memory with a particular focus on the United Kingdom. A series of studies using different analytical approaches is undertaken, and together the studies shed light on this overlooked area of research. The studies or ‘facets’ presented in the monograph cover a range of contexts and discursive genres: a joint BBC/refugee-authored television documentary, refugees’ oral histories, creative life writing by asylum seekers, parliamentarians’ debates, a reworking of canonical texts and sites in a protest campaign, and non-fiction testimonies and fictional works by later generations of refugee background. The monograph introduces ‘facet methodology’ to memory studies, arguing that this approach could encourage interdisciplinary research in the field.

A Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction "Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” —The New York Times Book Review "Nayeri weaves her empowering personal story with those of the ‘feared swarms’ . . . Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating . . . Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart–rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own . . . This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart at a time when the latter has grown elusive.” —Star–Tribune (Minneapolis) Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel–turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. In these pages, a couple fall in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. A closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum, and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials. Nayeri confronts notions like “the swarm,” and, on the other hand, “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee challenges us to rethink how we talk about the refugee crisis. “A writer who confronts issues that are key to the refugee experience.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees

Chronic violence has characterized Somalia for over two decades, forcing nearly two million people to flee. A significant number have settled in camps in neighboring countries, where children were born and raised. Based on in-depth fieldwork, this book explores the experience of Somalis who grew up in Kakuma refugee camp, in Kenya, and are now young adults. This original study carefully considers how young people perceive their living environment and how growing up in exile structures their view of the past and their country of origin, and the future and its possibilities.

In the ten years immediately following the Second World War, some 170 000 immigrants from Europe and Britain arrived in Australia. First published in 1988, this unique book recreates the experiences of those who fled a ravaged Europe to seek a new life in far-distant Australia. Their stories are told in the words of the people themselves, supplemented with photographs, documents, press reports and memorabilia. These stories of over 100 Australians, New and Old, stories sometimes humorous and often very moving, provide a fascinating insight into a significant moment in Australian history. As the first definitive examination of life in the migrant camps, it documents a part of Australian history in danger of vanishing without trace. Never before has there been such a collection of intensely personal accounts of what it was like to pass through the immigration centres and workers’ hostels on the way to building new lives – and to shaping present-day Australia.

Memoirs of a Jew born in 1920 in Warsaw; in 1930 he and his parents emigrated to the USA. Ch. 5 (pp. 115-143), "On the Edge of the Volcano, " contains, inter alia, recollections of and reflections on antisemitism in Poland in the 1920s.