World literature and migration literature

During the past decades, literature by migrant authors has emerged in national literary fields all over the globe. This happened at different times and with diverse effects, depending on the respective socio-political contexts these authors tried to establish themselves in. Often, these authors first occupied a niche in the literary field but in many circumstances their writing and reception, together with other cultural developments, eventually had a near revolutionary effect on the literatures they worked in. In many cases, those were opened up and became more inclusive with regard to writers’ origins, ethnicities and languages. New infrastructure (such as dedicated publishing houses, literary journals and prizes) emerged and the national aspect of literary fields was questioned. In literary studies, these processes together with the aesthetic innovation brought about by migration literature, led to labelling this literature as transnational and reading it as a new world literature. In the proposed article, I will first define “migration literature”, present various terms that are used in different languages, such as Migrationsliteratur, littérature migrante, letteratura migrante etc. and discuss their differing meanings. I will then present approaches of reading migration literature as world literature, first from the point of view of scholars studying migrant writers and, second, from a world literature perspective. Finally, I will shed light on the impact of an understanding of migration literature as world literature on national literary fields.