What positions towards meritocratic expectations are assumed in the late twentieth-century, post-migrant bildungsroman? The bildungsroman – or novel of formation – is intricately linked to notions of individual development and ‘progress’. This project considers the ways in which the genre is put to ‘use’ by writers in a range of Anglophone contexts in the second half of the 20th century, i.e. times and contexts that are perceived as having been marked by significant waves of migration. In what ways are postmigrant conditions, situations and experiences enmeshed with meritocratic societal narratives? In how far are concepts of achievement translatable across source and target contexts and how do those born into a target context after the ‘event’ of migration navigate potentially conflicting conceptualisations of what one should aspire to? And what kind of vehicle – or corrective – does the bildungsroman become in relation to these conceptualisations?
Researcher: Ceydanur Temurok
Presentations:
- "I [...] wore my English like a mask" - English as an ambivalent world of possibilities in Post-Migrant Narratives: A Study of Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019). Presentation at BAAHE, December 2024, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.
- Spaces of belonging and thriving: Conformity, trespassing, and achievement in Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water (2021) and Small Worlds (2023). Presentation at ALA, June 2025, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya.
- "London is [...] divide up in little worlds" - Looking for a language for migrant and postmigrant experiences of class in Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956) and Phillips's In The Falling Snow (2009). Presentation at ACLALS, July 2025, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya.
- The literary explorations of postmigrant experiences of class in Caryl Phillips's In The Falling Snow (2009). Presentation at NarraMuse, September 2025, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.
- Translating postcolonial pasts into postmigrant presents: Identity formation in Hafsa Zayyan's We Are All Birds of Uganda (2019). Presentation at Gaps, May 2026, Universitat Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany.
- Postmigrant narratives of formation: Identity and Cultural Translation in Hafsa Zayyan's We Are All Birds of Uganda (2019). Presentation at LW Faculty Research Day, May 2026, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.
Publications:
- "I [...] wore my English like a mask": English as an ambivalent world of possibilities in Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019). Published in English Text Construction (ETC), July 2026.
