Introduction

Transnational Identities 287
velopments of the time of its creation. One must therefore transcend disciplinary
boundaries and examine this literature’s background: contemporary migration.
International migration is continually on the rise. The United Nation’s Department
of Economic and Social Affairs listed an estimated 191 million international
migrants in its 2005 population stock database, which constitutes an increase
of 115 million since 1965 (United Nations, “Estimated”). In other words, at
present three percent of the world’s population are international migrants which
makes it the highest since the beginning of the UN’s recordings (United Nations,
“International Migrants”). The number of migrants would “constitute the fifth
most populous country in the world” (“Global Estimates”). Accordingly, the International
Organization for Migration calls migration “one of the defining issues
of the twenty-first century” since “more people are on the move today than at any
other point in human history” (“About Migration”). Scholars predict that international
migration will continue to rise in the future (Hollifield 77; Castles and Miller
8) and have even gone as far as calling the present age “The Age of Migration”
(Castles and Miller). Migration clearly is an important aspect of more and more
people’s lives.
Necessarily, such a huge number of migrants will lead to diverse migrant experiences.
For a start, there are many different incentives for migration, which do
not always make it a voluntary endeavour. Many of today’s international migrants
are refugees (“Global Estimates”). An even larger number of people will have
migrated because of economic necessity, which accounts for the fact that 15-20
percent of all migrants are “unauthorized migrants” and also the “large increase”
of migrants to Western countries (“Global Estimates”). Such migrants might certainly
be influenced by neocolonial tendencies as Boehmer indicated (231) and
their negative experience may not be reflected in a migrant literature of a writer
such as Rushdie who celebrates the positive aspects of his exile (s.a.). 5 In addition,
the influence of all these migrants on the countries of immigration must not be
underestimated as Innes remarks (193). Thus, for example “Britishness” is altered
to include aspects of the immigrants’ culture (Innes 196). Insisting on the inevitable
displacement and unbelonging of migrants seems dubious in this context.
I therefore agree with McLeod that “conventional ways we use to think about
ideas such as ‘belonging’ no longer work” because they are based on “clearlydefined,
static notions of being ‘in place’, firmly rooted in a community or a particular
geographical location” (214). Nevertheless, I do not share his conclusion
that migrants are always “in-between” for whom “[h]ome is a problematic concept”
(216) because another trend in contemporary migration, namely the
“[e]mergence of transnational migration” (“About migration”), considerably
changes conceptions of home, identity and belonging for those affected by it so
5 The destructive influence of neocolonial forces is nevertheless not completely absent from
recent migrant literature. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Hari Kunzru’s Transmission, for
example, are very critical of the neocolonial influences on contemporary migrants’ lives.