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?
