Oceanic perspectives on migration

I took part in the 2025 NYU Global Gallatin Symposium, Oceans, Connectivity, and Circulation at NYU Abu Dhabi, contributing a discussion on Fatou Diome’s The Belly of the Atlantic (Le Ventre de l’Atlantique, 2003), a novel I regularly teach.

My contribution reflected on how Diome’s novel invites us to think about migration through the figure of the ocean: not simply as a route of passage, but as a space of contradiction, hope, danger, and transformation. Focusing on the trajectory of Moussa, a young Senegalese football player whose migration to France ends in precarity and deportation, I explored how the novel rethinks mobility, exclusion, and the fragile promises of connection across borders.