Tales of Transit: Narrative Migrant Spaces in Atlantic Perspective, 1850-1950(American Studies)

Tales of Transit brings together advances from the fields of transportation and social history, translation studies and literary scholarship to cast new light on the great transatlantic migration movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. For a long time, these movements have been studied from the perspective of the sending and receiving societies, while not much research was devoted to what happens in between. The contributions in this collection move these in-between places to center stage by focusing attention on immigrants' liminal experiences on board steamers and in exit ports on both sides of the Atlantic. Drawing on a variety of archival sources as well as travel writings, fiction, and memoir literature by first-, second- and even third-generation immigrants, Tales of Transit highlights how transatlantic migration during the period 1850-1950 was seldom a straightforward, one-way movement. The viewpoints represented in this volume go against the stereotype of the migrants as huddled masses and shows them actively engaging in complex rituals of engagement and disengagement.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements, Introduction, PART 1: RETHINKING ATLANTIC MIGRATION, PART 2: OFF THE BEATEN TRACK, PART 3: LIMINAL SPACES, About the Authors, Index

About the Author :
Michael Boyden is Assistant Professor of American Culture at Ghent University College, Belgium Hans Krabbendam is assistant director of the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg and author of Vrijheid in het verschiet. Nederlandse emigratie naar Amerika, 1840-1920.

Review :
"Tales of Transit provides a fascinating perspective of the agency, reflections, and translations of dynamic men and women crossing the Atlantic to many destinations in the Americas. They critiqued "home" as an unsatisfactory space, at transit/transition places translated experiences for relatives, on the voyage negotiated with companies and sailors, after arrival worked, self-positioned, and participated in reciprocal transcultural exchanges. For many, lives remained in spatial process as they moved on, returned, migrated again, crossed social, linguistic, and emotional dividing lines. The authors present a social-cultural history at its best: through the eyes, experiences, and writings of actual women and men engaged in complex trajectories." Dirk Hoerder, Prof. emeritus, History, Arizona State University "Taking as its key concepts liminality and contacts zones this volume shows how migrants, mediators and ties changed, and moved back and forth between being visible and invisible, or both at the same time. Together the contributions to this volume bring out what the rules and rituals of engagement, disengagement and re-engament were on the way from 'here' to 'there', thus taking a novel approach to transatlantic migration between 1850-1950." Marlou Schrover, Professor of Migration and Social Differences at Leiden University