Abstract

Immigration is, arguably, the hot button issue of our time, rivaling in scope and complexity the role that “the national question” and “the Jewish question” played in previous eras. Not a day goes by without a news story of boats of migrants adrift at sea, of refugees who have drowned and asylum seekers who were turned away. A strong undertow of concern in host countries is the long-term effect of such migrations on local populations and cultures. From Australia to Indonesia and Malaysia to Lampedusa, in Italy and other European countries, migration is indeed a worldwide political, economic, and humanitarian problem. Not surprisingly, such ubiquity is reflected in the increasing body of work in cinema, both commercial and independent, documentary and fictional, male-centered, female-centered, and child-centered, in which filmmakers have tried to capture the experience of migrants and the impact of migration on host societies. There is also a growing critical literature on migration cinema that examines themes of exile and abjection (Naficy 2001; Marciniak 2006; Palmer 2011), home and belonging (Gedalof 2011; Kraenzle 2009; Yi 2015), borders and boundaries (Shepherd 2010 for Spanish film and literary texts; Capussotti 2003 and Luciano and Scarparo 2010 in relation to Italian migration; Levine 2008 for beur cinema in France), migrant subjectivity (Capussotti 2003; Podalsky 2010), institutional structures and cultural policy (Grassilli 2008), multiculturalism and transnationalism in metropolitan centers (Oliete 2010), history and memory (Mitchell 2013; Portuges in Sherzer 1996). New journals such as Mobilities and Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, started in 2006 and 2010 respectively, are devoted exclusively to the cultural dimensions of human migration. In short, migration has emerged as a key epistemology in the contemporary world.