New Grounds - Shaping identities across the African-European border

Abstract

Borders, more in than in the past, determine the way Europe contemplates itself and how it is perceived by others. While internal borders seem to disappear, the pressure on Europe’s external borders increases significantly. Migration concerns have led to an inward looking stance and the term border as a territorial limit, acquires a different meaning. On the Mediterranean frontier, the route between North Africa and Europe, European identity is most visible and at the same time most challenged. This research refers to three notions of space, determined by borders in Migrant literature and recaps this to the current postcolonial immigration debate. It discusses how identities are constructed through shifting borders and how borders form the basis of a new literary space. In Wedding by the Sea (Bruiloft aan Zee) by Abdelkader Benali, the protagonist living in the Netherlands returns to Morocco for a family wedding and faces questions of home and belonging right at the Moroccan border towns. Assia Djebar’s novel Het Verloren Woord (La disparition de la langue Francaise) touches upon these very same questions when the protagonist returns to Algeria after living in France for more than twenty years. It also addresses France’s colonial legacy and how this past influences feelings of home and belonging.