This essay examines the liminal dimension experienced by migrants in the UK today. It is argued here that their liminality is not confined to specific sites, but is dispersed throughout the great variety of places where they are exploited and enslaved; that this variety includes institutional places, such as Detention Centres, and traditional tourist sites, such as bucolic landscapes and coastal resorts; that, given its pervasiveness and its importance for the national economy, the liminality of new slaveries paradoxically plays a central role, similarly to what Giorgio Agamben argues about the normative exceptionality of the concentration camp. All these points are demonstrated through an analysis of three genres and three corresponding case studies: humour (Lewycka’s novel Two Caravans), crime (Rankin’s novel Fleshmarket Close) and dystopia (Cuarón’s movie Children of Men). Finally, the Conclusion reflects on the relationship between new slaveries and certain canonical, anthropological ideas of liminality.
Shards in the landscape: The dispersed liminality of contemporary slaveries in the UK
DEANDREA, Pietro
2012-01-01
Abstract
This essay examines the liminal dimension experienced by migrants in the UK today. It is argued here that their liminality is not confined to specific sites, but is dispersed throughout the great variety of places where they are exploited and enslaved; that this variety includes institutional places, such as Detention Centres, and traditional tourist sites, such as bucolic landscapes and coastal resorts; that, given its pervasiveness and its importance for the national economy, the liminality of new slaveries paradoxically plays a central role, similarly to what Giorgio Agamben argues about the normative exceptionality of the concentration camp. All these points are demonstrated through an analysis of three genres and three corresponding case studies: humour (Lewycka’s novel Two Caravans), crime (Rankin’s novel Fleshmarket Close) and dystopia (Cuarón’s movie Children of Men). Finally, the Conclusion reflects on the relationship between new slaveries and certain canonical, anthropological ideas of liminality.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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