‘The new Europeans’: the image of the African refugee in European literature

The Refugee as the New Nomad: Reading Helon Habila's <em>Travellers</em> (2019) and Mohsin Hamid's <em>Exit West</em> (2017) as Literature of Mobility

“…What Habila, as an African diasporic writer, seeks to achieve in his novel is to urge the reader to think beyond the binaries between refugee and non-refugee, between legal and illegal, between haves and have-nots, between Europe and its Others. By imagining Europe as a new contact zone, as a space of diverse cultural encounters, Habila portrays refugees not as mere outsiders but as the 'New Europeans' (see Helff 2008) who contribute to "the construction of modern Euro-African lifeworlds" (Bekers et al 2009, xv) lifeworlds that intersect with nomadworlds.…”

Fragile balance: Imaginary Europes, transcultural aesthetics and discourses of European identity in Pawel Pawlikowski’sLast Resortand Steven Spielberg’sWar Horse

“…As this brief summary illustrates, Europe has never been just one thing, but many; it is a construct invented, imagined and constantly re-imagined to facilitate the needs and wishes of its various creators (Helff 2008). The many Europes imagined often depict either some sort of utopian realm, or at times a dystopian space (Helff 2010).…”