Introduction

In this chapter, the author stands witness to a catastrophe of global proportions. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, violence has displaced 70.8 million people from their homes, approximately one out of every 112 people in the world. Recent trends in scholarship would seem to create space for such a body-centric approach. In particular, so-called “mobility studies” rejects frozen representations of cultures, like the maps that adorn schoolrooms with solid blocks of color within national borders. Following Jeffers, Involuntary Motion uses embodied experience as a critical lens to investigate the performances refugees enact, and the performances refugees and/or outsiders make about migration across dance, theatre, and mediatized imagery. A follow-on treaty in 1967 broadened refugees to include persons who became displaced after World War II, as well as territories outside of Europe. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.