Afroeuropean Mobilities in Francophone African Literatures

"Engaging Francophone African literary texts, this book challenges reductive readings of postcolonial mobility in migration and diaspora studies. Its complex framing of Afroeuropean mobilities surfaces educational, professional, leisure, urban and other mobilities obscured by otherwise dominant imaginaries of the clandestine African migrant."
—Polo B. Moji, Author of Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives (2022), University of Cape Town, South Africa

"This is the first book to bring together the new mobilities paradigm with postcolonial African literature. Toivanen deftly analyses a wide range of embodied experiences, spaces, vehicles and creative practices of mobility within Afroeuropean fiction. From clandestine migration to everyday commuting, from tourism to diasporic return, she opens a refreshed mobile perspective on a rich body of Francophone literature that will be of great interest to both mobility scholars and literary scholars."
—Mimi Sheller, Dean of The Global School, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA

This open access book contributes to the mobility humanities from the perspective of postcolonial literary mobilities and aims at enhancing dialogue between mobilities research and postcolonial literary studies. The study produces new perspectives on Afroeuropean mobilities in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic literatures from the mid-twentieth century to the present, covering a wide set of texts across literary genres. Focusing on representations of educational travel, tourism, diasporic returns, work-related mobilities, and clandestine migratory journeys, Toivanen examines portrayals of mobility practices and modes of transport to map out the meanings of embodied (im)mobilities in the Afroeuropean context. In addition to thematic analysis, the volume also explores the manifestations of mobility in literary form.

Anna-Leena Toivanen is an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Eastern Finland. She is the author of Mobilities and Cosmopolitanisms in African and Afrodiasporic Literatures (2021) and co-editor of Urban Mobilities in Literature and Art Activism (2024).