ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the refugee experience through alternative documentation in a century that has seen a sharp escalation of anti-immigration policy and rhetoric in Europe, Australia and North America. Contending with this hostile political climate, fictional representations of contemporary asylum and displacement eschew simplified legal and media forms, giving narrative shape to the complex dynamics evoked by Yaguine Koita’s and Fode Tounkara’s letter to Europe. The chapter suggests that three lenses through which writing about asylum and displacement might be viewed. First, a thematic shift away from a migrant identity that draws exclusively on ‘bonds of language, religion, culture and a sense of common history’. Second, an exploration of how contemporary migrant identity is shaped by an emerging topography of precarious migration, including the sea crossing, the refugee camp and the territorial border zone. Third, the challenge of documenting the undocumented in contemporary fiction marks a turn to self-reflexive narrative forms.
