A Transdisciplinary Study of Global Mobilities: Identities on the Move

Abstract

Identities on the Move interrogates the categories given and adopted by people on the move through a transdisciplinary and global approach that includes social and political sciences and the arts. It brings together experiences of displacement from a variety of cultural and national backgrounds, including Brazilians, Chinese, Koreans, South Italians, Africans, Muslims, Arabophobe migrants, Iranians, Pakistanis, Bosnians, Latin Americans and Eastern Europeans. It looks at their identity-negotiating processes in different geographies across the globe, namely Japan, UK, Palestine, Italy, Australia, Europe and North America. This multi-geographical and multi-disciplinary approach allows us to decentralise previous narratives of migration by reformulating them against coloniality and invisibility and presenting them within a richer and changing contemporary map of dynamic identities. The global scale of the case studies included in this volume also allows for a wider exploration of thematic concepts within the (trans)formation of displaced identities, such as assimilation versus alienation, memory and trauma, stigmatisation, enculturation, acculturation and deculturation. In a nutshell, this volume highlights current complexities of identity formation in a global scene that is moving away from homogenous nations by presenting a multi-layered and multi-spatial notion of belonging.