Migration and Us: Mobility, Refugees, and Borders from the Perspective of the Humanities

The project Migration and Us: Mobility, Refugeedom, and Borders from the Humanities Perspective (MyGrace) is supported by the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme (OP JAK). It involves five institutions: apart from the Institute for Czech Literature of the CAS, there are three other institutes from the Czech Academy of Sciences: the Institute of Ethnology, Oriental Institute, and Masaryk Institute and Archives, and the University of Ostrava. Through this interdisciplinary collaboration, the project aims to bring new knowledge about forms of migration and its impacts on society from the perspective of the humanities.

The ICL hosts a team working on one of the research areas, “Constructing Exile: From Exile to Migration.” Its research aims to critically reflect on the concept of exile and exile literary and communication practices which includes a historical and theoretical reconsideration of this phenomenon, mapping of actors excluded from the previous scholarship, and, importantly, situating exile in the transnational contexts of mobility within the long 20th century. The team is composed of researchers from all institutions involved in the project in order to link the methodological impulses of migration studies with the perspective, tools, and materials of literary communication scholarship. Researchers from the ICL are also involved in other research areas within the project.