Introduction: Towards a Postmigrant Frame of Reading

Following up on the discussion of and attempt to define the concept of postmigration in Part I, this part explores the usefulness of ‘postmigration’ as an analytical perspective by developing, testing and discussing different postmigrant frames of reading works of art, using contemporary literature, film and performance art as test cases. Accordingly, the chapters in this part address the following issues. What does a postmigrant frame of reading look like and what does it do? What new perspectives and critical questions does it bring about? How does it reopen discussions on the articulation of migration and its social impact in literature, film and the visual arts? What happens when we adopt a postmigrant lens to analyse the form and content of works of art and fiction, as well as exploring the part these works may play in the more encompassing processes of social, cultural and institutional change? How does reading works of art, film and fiction through the lens of postmigration renegotiate and alter our understanding of key concepts such as identity, integration, belonging, ‘home place’ (Heimat), race, hegemony and binary distinctions between self and other, majority and minority? And how do postmigrant readings of works of art interrelate with and differ from postcolonial/decolonial and migrant readings?