Perilous Journeys to Peaceful Lands in the Quest for a Better Life: Migration Literature as a Space of Negotiation for New Climate Solidarities

Abstract

This paper investigates Europe’s most pressing refugee/asylum seeker/immigrant crisis to bridge the knowledge gap between the host nations’ border control, immigration, and integration policies and the human stories of perilous journeys in search of peaceful lands with the help of Nadia Hashmi’s novel When the Moon is Low (2015). The paper explores the ways migration literature can help in overcoming the narrative gap in the recent European refugee/asylum seeker/immigrant management policies. Furthermore, by taking an issue with the European detention centers and their living conditions, the paper highlights the disparity in the myth of equal human rights. The study hopes to open debates around the issue that will decolonize the Eurocentric refugee narrative around immigration and integration policy, place it in a relational and global perspective and suggest a human-rights-oriented frame for reimaging an inclusive migration discourse for the twenty-first century. The paper employs Anibal Quijano’s ‘coloniality of knowledge’ framework to fill the knowledge gap in the Eurocentric immigrant discourse through a literary lens to humanize it and locate alternate epistemologies