From Nationalism to Transnationalism: Where Refugees Move

In this article I bring a differentiated analysis of nationalism and transnationalism as new perspectives to the debate on refuge and exile. The study aims to read refugees in national and transnational matters that contest the conception of restricted identity politics and idealized human rights universals. I negotiate alongside Anderson's concept of “imagined communities“ (1991) as ideological figments in transformation as refugees actuate a more transitory state (sic). Although devastatingly nation-belonging still defines legality of personhood its identifying matrix is called into question as refugees transcend similarly state borders as well as mental walls of human belonging. I establish the figure of the refugee as a critical category (see Brubaker 2012) that overall contests territorial limitations of identity construction and undermines precluding political constitution. The refugee is not defined as a marginal being of abnormality but instead poses a trans static unit that expostulates exclusionary and unifying identity politics. The refugee is not only a politicized figure itself but also a factor for politicizing the human being on transnational scope. Hence, s/he must be understood as an overall “central figure of our political history” (Agamben, 2008). The paper will further illustrate that citizen and non-citizen identity formation as a non-national experience is performed in discursive space. The examples adduced are placed in legal, literary and media spaces and confirm that identity construction is a performance in motion. I will conclude by aspiring to hybrid narratives that can avail a democratization of national space vanguarded by refugees (see Arendt, 1943).