ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part examines the debates on the concept of postmigration and its historical antecedents and explores the critical and analytical potential of the concept, especially how postmigrant perspectives can be deployed in cultural analysis. It discusses the academic reception of the term, and how it has spread to different disciplines and contexts. The part is concerned with historical developments in the UK, Germany and Denmark in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and provides an account of some historical backgrounds and preconditions for the emergence of the critical discourse on postmigration. It explains how the concept has been criticized within academia, and to position it in relation to other ‘post-’ terminologies and criticisms scholars have generated. The debates on postmigration and the postmigrant condition include critical perspectives on contemporary societies and on the controversies unfolding as a reaction against former and ongoing migration movements.
