Exile as Experience

Published at 8 September 2013
Working paper in french.
In our contemporary world, migratory movements have reached an unprecedented scale and include a wide range of realities. However they all share a voluntary or imposed condition, which shall be named “exiliance” and which continues over several generations, both at the individual and at the collective level. Regarding the migrants’ identity, if Republican integration stresses the moment of arrival and multiculturalism the one of departure, the exiled person’s experience dialectically links both. Edward Said and Emmanuel Lévinas help us to sketch this specific existential category which is not the same as the one of the foreigner.
This text is part of a series of Working and Position papers :
Follow our news and receive our invitations!