Mobility in a Globalized World: A Study of Migration and Deterritorialization in Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans

Abstract

Human mobility (or ‘velocity’) is one of the most common concepts employed in the era of globalization. Such mobility gives rise to what the scholar John Noyes called ‘modern nomads’: tourists, athletes, dancers, students, migrants, and others. This article discusses one of the most obvious forms of human mobility in the postmodern, globalized age: migration. The United States of America (the U.S.A.) is the land of immigrants that assimilates people and helps them to integrate despite ethnicity, race, culture, and gender. Cristina Henriquez’s novel The Book of Unknown Americans (2014) depicts attempted assimilation, focusing on migrants who cross the borders and reterritorialize in the U.S.A., to achieve their dreams. However, the U.S.A. mostly fails for dreamers. The protagonists find that they have lost their identities, dreams, and their abilities to cope in any territories. They are forever deterritorialized, with a permanent sense of exile.

Keywords: Deterritorialization, Globalization, Migration, Mobility, Nomad.

Highlights:

1. Immigration struggles: protagonists face cultural, emotional deterritorialization, and feel as nomads in the American society.

1. Identity crises: protagonists are nostalgic to their formal life and unable to fit in the cosmopolitan U.S.A., the land of immigrants.

1. Globalization dark face: despite the promises of prosperity, cultural intermingling and cohesion, globalization leads to alienation and nomadism.

1. Racial tension: constant movement mandated by globalization increases self-conscious about race, identity, and heritage .

1. U.S.A. mostly fails for the dreamers.