Paper short abstract:

Where does a nation begin and end? How are borders visualised as both geopolitical realities and imagined concepts? How do migrants challenge conventional ideas of nation and belonging? This paper offers an alternate understanding of how Europe’s “migration crisis” may be envisioned.

Paper long abstract:

New configurations of the global and local are constructed via images. Indeed, the study of visual culture offers the potential for a deep, if different, historical understanding of how the world is envisioned, with significant implications for exploring issues of nationhood, migration, identity and belonging.

In a deterritorialized world of "global cultural flows," it is not so much "imagined communities," (Anderson 2006) as whole "imagined worlds" that exist in the minds of persons and groups around the planet (Appadurai 1996). As a result, new forms of belonging and identification emerge. Meanwhile, in describing the space between historical periods, between politics and aesthetics, between theory and application, Bhabha (2013) writes of the "large and liminal image" of the nation, referring to a peculiar ambivalent quality in the idea of nationhood and the modern condition itself. The imagined frontiers of a nation are continually coming into being, in a constant state of reinvention, hybridity and transition.

As Europe's "migration crisis" continues, these are topical issues. Where does a nation begin and end? How are borders visualised as both geopolitical realities and imagined concepts? How do migrants challenge conventional ideas of nation and belonging? Developing an analytical framework around visual culture, this paper offers an alternate understanding of how Europe's "migration crisis" - its legacies and futures - might be envisioned.

References

Anderson, Benedict 2006 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso.

Appadurai, Arjun 1996 Modernity at Large. University of Minnesota Press.

Bhabha, Homi K 2013 Nation and Narration. Routledge.