We Are All Migrants Secondary Source Blueprint

I

Goyal, Yogita. “‘We Are All Migrants’: The Refugee Novel and the Claims of Universalism.” Project Muse, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020, muse.jhu.edu/article/758170. Accessed 06 Oct. 2024.

II

In this essay, I draw on Said’s meditations on exile to critique Mohsin Hamid’s representation of the migrant as a universal figure in his acclaimed 2017 novel Exit West. I propose that Hamid naturalizes the fact of migration in a way that evacuates the specific historical experience that generates it, rendering banal what must remain historical. Along the way, I consider Hamid’s equation of migration with storytelling, exploring how such a claim reorders our understanding of the novel’s relationship to place. I also examine how the refugee novel as a genre reckons with the difficulties of representation in relation to debates in visual culture, as well as in response to a number of recent calls to stage the contemporary refugee in connection with past histories of racial dispossession. Placing such efforts next to vital developments in the emerging field of critical refugee studies, I probe claims to the singularity of the refugee, as well as attempts to create itineraries of ethical and historical relation.

Goyal is looking at Said’s thoughts about the importance of viewing a refugee as a specific person in comparison to Hamid’s Exit West and his claim that we are all migrants. Goyal talks about specific problems with making the refugee a universal figure, including the fact that we lose specific historical context along the way. Goyal also tries to look at how the refugee experience is tied to bigger ethical and historical problems in our world.

III

Goyal starts his article by bringing up one of his main “They say” people, Edward Said (240). Said has a firm belief that the refugee should not be seen as a universal figure because that would remove some of the historical context behind the refugee. Goyal then explains how hes going to be looking mostly at Said’s argument in comparison to Hamid’s novel Exit West. Hamid has a main idea in his novel that we are all migrants through time and by how making the migrant a normal part of life, you can diffuse the abnormality we normally tie to immigration (241).

Goyal also talks a little bit about different authors who debate about the different between words like refugee and immigrant. One such person is Nguyen, another “ They say” (242). He believes in embracing the title of a refugee as an identity. One really interesting thing that happens here is that Goyal emphasizes how Nguyen feels the need to empathize super deeply with his feelings of being a refugee in order to write (243). Basically, Nguyen needs to put himself in refugees’ shoes. However, Goyal ends with an “I say” that the distinction between refugee and immigrant is not clear (243).

Goyal then dives into some historical questions, specifically looking at a “They say” from Toni Morrison who connects slavery and the deep south so the immigration problem in many places (243). The connection is that slaves did not have a home of their own, nor did they feel a sense of belonging in many places. Likewise, refugees often do not have homes and they rarely feel like they belong in new, foreign places (244).

Next, Goyal dives into Hamid’s ideas in Exit West and how a refugee can be a universal human and doesn’t have the be the exception they can be the rule( (244). Basically, they can become normal and not extreme. Hamid also talks about how migration and the ability to move between borders should be a human right (245).

Goyal talks extensively about how different parts of the novel come together to feed Hamid’s views on how our world should view migration. Tying back into his idea about how mobility should be a human right, travel is never a struggle in  Exit West like we might expect it to be. They have different ways to “transport” themselves, whether through their phones or through the magical doors. And by refusing to add the cliché part of travel, Hamid is also honing down on how change can be an everyday normal part of life. It doesn’t have to be extreme. This is also portrayed in the way that the characters casually change in the novel, and yet life continues.

This idea also ties into how, when migrants did move in the novel, although we always thought there were going to be extreme consequences, it ended up being okay and, although sacrifices were made, the people were able to be given houses and food and a way to rebuild their lives.

Goyal wraps up his article by talking again about how Hamid wants the migrant to be a universal figure and how the whole world could be a refugee camp, but Said disagrees and believes that in that situation, people would simply cling to their identities even more (255).  

IV

I enjoyed how Goyal talked about the interludes and how they showed that the world is always changing, not just the main plot we’re focused on.

I LOVE the amount of “they say” in this article. It really adds to the fact that there are so many voices talking, even though they’re not all directly talking to each other.

The rhetorical questions in this article are amazing as well

V