Migrants shaping Europe, past and present : multilingual literatures, arts, and cultures

This comparative volume examines the sustained contribution of migrants to Europe’s literatures, social cultures, and arts over centuries. Europe has never been a continent bounded by the seas that surround it. In premodern times, migrants imprinted the languages, arts, and literatures of the places where they settled. They contributed to these cultures and economies. Some were on the move in search of a better life; others were displaced by war, dispossessed, expelled; while still others were brought in servitude to European cities to work, enslaved. Today’s immigration flows in Europe are not exceptional but anchored in this longue durée process. Iberia/Maghreb, Sicily/Lampedusa, Calais are the three hotspots considered in this volume. These regions have been shaped and continue to be shaped by migrants; by their cultures; their Spanish, Arabic, Italian, and Somali; their French, English and Mandarin languages. They are also shaped by migrants’ struggles. The scholars and artists who wrote Migrants shaping Europe, past and present compose a new significant chapter in the cultural history of European migration by reflecting on the forces that have put people into motion since the premodern period and by examining the visual arts, literature, and multilingual social worlds fostered by migration. This historically expansive and multilingual approach to mobility and expressiveness makes a crucial contribution: migrants as a lifeblood of European cultures. Front matter 1 Dedication 7 Contents 9 Figures 11 Contributors 18 Acknowledgments 19 Introduction 21 PART I: A premodern cultural history 37 The astrolabe: from “mathematical jewel” to cultural connector 39 PART II: Migrating in Spanish 61 The expulsion of the Moriscos, 1609–14: still more questions than answers 65 Translating migrant precarity in Rachid Nini’s Diario de un ilegal 78 PART III: Migrating in Italian 97 “The world is my homeland”: exile and migration, from Ibn Hamdîs to Dante 99 Superman in Italy: the power of refugee artists 116 Porta di Lampedusa, porta d’Europa: contemporary monumentality, entropy, and migration at the gateway to Europe 151 PART IV: Migrating in French 187 Calais-enclave: fictions for locking in and opening up, 2018–1346 191 Calais-campscape: A short history of immigration deterrence at the French–British border 217 PART V: Arts of migration 247 In Transit 249 Cornered 275 Index 300 This comparative collection makes the case for the sustained contribution of migrants to European literatures, arts and social cultures, in early modern times and today. Iberia/Maghreb, Sicily/Lampedusa and Calais provide key examples for composing this new chapter in cultural history. -- .