Migrations of the Human : Decolonial Subjectivities in the Long Present

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open intiative. Migrations of the Human examines how contemporary narratives of migration challenge established ideas of citizenship, belonging and the human itself. Drawing on decolonial thought, postcolonial critique and deconstruction, the book explores how the figure of the migrant unsettles the dominant philosophical and political frameworks inherited from colonial modernity. Through readings of literary texts, documentary film, visual art and theory, the study traces a series of “decolonial subjectivities” that emerge from past and present histories of migration across the Caribbean, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. The book engages thinkers such as Sylvia Wynter, Jacques Derrida, Édouard Glissant and Walter Mignolo alongside works by Toni Morrison, Amitav Ghosh, Patrick Chamoiseau, J. M. Coetzee, Shailja Patel and Behrouz Boochani. It examines how migrant narratives reimagine community, rights and political belonging in a world marked by displacement, ecological crisis and intensifying border regimes. The book argues that migration is not merely a humanitarian or economic issue but a transformative philosophical event that forces a rethinking of what it means to be human beyond the colonial category of “Man”. By foregrounding the experiences and representations of migrants, refugees and subaltern communities, Migrations of the Human offers a new framework for understanding contemporary struggles over citizenship, democracy and planetary coexistence. Wide-ranging and theoretically ambitious, it presents migration as a powerful site for imagining new forms of human community in the twenty-first century.