ABSTRACT

The portraits of the harragas from Boualem Sansal and Merzak Allouache complicate theories associated with both nation-building and cosmopolitanism. The harraga exists in a state of alien-nation, that is to say the condition of rupture with his motherland and in an uncertain relationship with the host country. Harragas tells the story of clandestine immigrants, nine men and one woman, waiting to leave the Algerian city of Mostaganem and looking to reach the Spanish coast, only a distance of about 200 kilometers from their departure city. The harraga’s identity is, by definition, always in flux, always in the process of leading to another state of being, to another identity, national and otherwise, that risks canceling out that which preceded. According to Hakim Abderrezak, in Arabic Hrig and harga, or “burning,” can alternatively signify “the clandestine migrant’: burning desire to leave, burning of kilometers to the final destination, and burning identification papers in hopes to make repatriation more difficult for authorities”.