No Home but the World: Forced Migration and Transnational Identity Justice Hagan Marquette University
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Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects No Home but the World: Forced Migration and Transnational Identity Justice Hagan Marquette University Recommended Citation Hagan, Justice, "No Home but the World: Forced Migration and Transnational Identity" (2019). Dissertations (2009 -). 853. https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/853 NO HOME BUT THE WORLD: FORCED MIGRATION AND TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY by Justice Hagan A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin May 2019 ABSTRACT NO HOME BUT THE WORLD: FORCED MIGRATION AND TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITY Justice Hagan Marquette University, 2019 In my dissertation, I investigate how 20th and 21st century literature depicts new transnational identities that challenge the conventional understanding that belonging and identity are routed primarily through the nation-state. Specifically, I focus on those narratives within immigrant literature that address the lived experiences and consequent identity formations of forced migrants: individuals, families, and communities displaced from their country or region of origin and forced to inhabit spaces with which they often have no prior familiarity. This literature challenges the idea that a spectrum of lived experiences can be restricted to a codified US nationalism and contained within an identity or set of identities that are uniquely “American.” Literary studies can advance this important topic alongside the interdisciplinary fields of migration studies, international law, and sociology, and a study of forced migration narratives can help to broaden the definition of cosmopolitanism to one that includes an individual, family, or community living inside the nation-state, but whose cultural ties transcend any notion of defined borders or a single national belonging. The assumption of place and cultural (or political) allegiance cannot withstand the observable expressions of transnational identities in forced migrant narratives, and the interdisciplinary fields of both literary studies and American studies have much to contribute to this issue. Assimilating these stories into the collective “immigrant literature” genre not only dismisses the importance of the violence of forced migration from the realm of cosmopolitan experiences, but it also denies that trauma a voice of its own. Global citizenship does not just come from an abundance of resources and the desire to use those resources internationally for personal gain, or even for geopolitical social progress; it also comes from being ripped away from your home and thrust into new environments and circumstances over which you possess no agency, from not having access to governmental support because of your gender, or no access to education because of your religion, and having to create a new life in a new land just to access the most basic of human rights. i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Justice Hagan I dedicate this work to Golbon, who makes everything possible, and to Aram, who gives everything meaning. I want to thank my family for their love and support in this endeavor, as well as my friends and colleagues for their help along the way. To Dr. Jodi Melamed, my dissertation director, and to Dr. Gerry Canavan and Dr. Heather Hathaway, I will be forever grateful for your guidance and mentorship. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…………………………………………………………………i INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 Narratives as Truth Commissions…………………………………………..….….7 CHAPTER 1: HOME, MOSCONCEIVED: TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTEES AS FORCED MIGRANTS…………………………………………………………………..19 Introduction………………………………………………………………………19 Don’t Tell Your New Family Your Real Name………………………………….22 In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee and First Person Plural…………………...……33 Somewhere Between……………………………………………………………...41 Where is the Place of Habitation?..........................................................................49 CHAPTER 2: LOCATION(S) OF HOME: REFUGEES AND EXILES IN NARRATIVES OF FORCED MIGRATION…………………………………………...56 Introduction……………………………………………………………………...56 The Question of Mobility………………………………………………………..70 Encountering the Opposition & Becoming a Forced Migrant…………………...72 In Transit…………………………………………………………………………75 A New Home?........................................................................................................85 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….94 CHAPTER 3: COSMOPOLITAN BY DEFAULT: THE ENIGMA OF STATELESSNESS……………………………………………………………………..100 Introduction……………………………………………………………………..100 The Airport……………………………………………………………………...108 The Terminal Man………………………………………………………………113 The Terminal……………………………………………………………………124 The Kamalfar Family…………………………………………………………...133 Statelessness and Cosmopolitanism…………………………………………….143 CHAPTER 4: SUBJECTS AND MALCONTENTS: FORCED MIGRATION AND EMPIRE IN THE STAR TREK UNIVERSE…………………………………………...148 Introduction…………………………………………………………………..…148 Colonial Successes and Subjects of the Federation…………………………….156 Adoption in Star Trek…………………………………………………………..160 Refugees & Exiles……………………..……………………………………….171 The Skrreea…………………………………………………………………..…177 Statelessness in Star Trek……………………………………………………….184 Odo…………………………………………………………………………...…187 The Maquis…………………………………………………………………..…195 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...…201 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………205 1 Introduction Immigrants to the United States no longer live in a place of security, if we ever did. With the calamitous changes that transpired between 2017 and 2019, the place that has become our home has threatened us all, and our citizenship—for those of us who have obtained this legal status—no longer guarantees our protection. Though the deportation of naturalized citizens wasn’t an impossibility before, it was far from a common occurrence. In her article in The New Yorker “In America, Naturalized Citizens No Longer Have an Assumption of Permanence,” Masha Gessen writes, “The conceit of naturalization is that it makes an immigrant not only equal to natural-born citizens but indistinguishable from them. So denaturalization, much like the process of stripping a natural-born American of citizenship, has been an extraordinary procedure reserved for very serious cases, mostly those of war criminals.” The “denaturalization push” (Vox News) that occurred during 2017 and 2018 and the fear that it is eliciting among the naturalized citizenry of the United States is only a part of the nativist and nationalist policies operating in the country. In October and November of 2018, American troops were ordered to the US-Mexican border, in an unprecedented move to prevent the border-crossing of a group of migrants from Honduras. This group, made up entirely of individuals and families fleeing violence and poverty in their places of origin, has neither broken any American laws nor proclaimed any intent other than seeking humane relief and assistance. Refusing to even consider their request for assistance is a death sentence for many of them, as they do not possesses the means to return to their places of origin. For those that survive, there is simply nowhere to go, and 2 not even a space in which they can stand and wait. Near the end of November 2018, these restrictions reached a crisis point in which a large number of migrants rushed the Tijuana- San Diego border and were violently repelled by American and Mexican law enforcement. Among the migrants were young children seen clutching their faces at the onslaught of chemical weapons deployed against them; for them, there is no relief, and no recourse. What does it mean to be a forced migrant? This question has no single answer, as the experiences of forced migration vary widely and include the familiar stories of refugees and exiles, as well as the less familiar accounts of statelessness and transnational adoption. While we tend to associate forced migration with violent displacement—a fair association, to which the chapters in this dissertation will attest—the events that lead to forced migration can also be a calm refusal or entirely absent from conscious memory. Sharing the same emotional pain as violent displacement, the outcome is the same; the place of origin is no longer a safe or legal space to inhabit. Where, then, are the spaces that forced migrants can inhabit? A significant portion of our contemporary political conversations concerns refugees and asylum-seekers displaced by violence—or the threat of violence—and their efforts to find a new place for their families to inhabit. Though some are admitted, many are turned away and possess no agency—be it legal or logistical—to return to their places of origin, like the Honduran migrants mentioned above. Those admitted undergo a rehoming that often does not match the cultural assumptions of the natural citizens of the state, while the space that those rejected by asylum, residence, or citizenship rights come to inhabit is a nebulous, interstitial zone of existence outside the established borders of the world’s nations. My claim is that forced 3 migrants represent a new dimension of cosmopolitanism that challenges the unfettered mobility and the agency to exercise basic human rights traditionally associated with the term. Cosmopolitanism has a variety of connotations in our contemporary world. While many associate it with an openness toward—or an abundance of—international experience, there is also the notion of being “at home”