Postmigration and anti-immigrant discourse, UCLouvain

I presented my research at the international conference “From Experiences to Storytelling of Postmigration” at UCLouvain (Université catholique de Louvain), a conference devoted to rethinking how postmigration reshapes the stories European societies tell about themselves. Bringing together work from literary studies, the arts, history, and the social sciences, the event examined postmigration as a way of narrating both individual experience and plural societies.

My paper, “Against plurality: postmigration and anti-immigrant discourse in contemporary French literature,” grew out of a difficult but necessary question: how should we read literary texts whose politics are openly hostile to migration and social plurality? These are not texts I approach with sympathy, but I do think they need to be read critically and taken seriously as part of the cultural history of backlash. In the paper, I asked how literature can give narrative form to fear, exclusion, and resentment, and how literary analysis can make those strategies visible rather than leaving them to circulate unchecked.