Tales of Transit ― Narrative Migrant Spaces in Atlantic Perspective, 1850-1950

Traditionally, migration has been studied at either the beginning or the end of the journey. Surprisingly little research has been devoted to what actually happens to people in between. The contributors to this collection draw on a variety of primary and secondary sources, including travel writings, fiction, and diaries, to explore immigrants' liminal experiences on ships and in exit ports on both sides of the Atlantic. Combining scholarship from the field of transportation history with that of social history and translation studies, Tales of Transit reveals the complexity of what people experience as they get uprooted or reattach themselves to a community. A novel addition to the literature of transatlantic movements of the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Tales of Transit demonstrates in vivid detail how migration was seldom a straightforward progression.

Michael Boyden is assistant professor in the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Ghent University, Belgium. Hans Krabbendam is assistant director of the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg, the Netherlands. Liselotte Vandenbussche is assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of Ghent University.