Invisible Travellers: Child Refugee Identities in Alan Gratz’s Refugee Novel

Authors : Mustafa BÜYÜKGEBİZ

Pages : 13-24

Doi:10.46250/kulturder.1268581

View : 48 | Download : 46

Publication Date : 2023-06-10

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The global policies and conflicts that developed with the beginning of the 20th century have triggered global refugee crises for more than a century and made the crisis of belonging and adaptation problems controversial. The First and Second World Wars and the subsequent Cold War period, the freedom struggles of the colonial states, the Gulf War and finally, the Syrian civil war have always kept the refugee crisis on the agenda. Refugee problems and migrant identities, which also find a vast place in literature, have been widely discussed from a postcolonial perspective. However, refugee children and their psychological struggles have generally remained invisible, both politically and socially, and these children, who have to face adult problems in their children\`s world, have always been left out of the agenda. In this context, Alan Gratz\`s novel Refugee makes the invisible visible and provides a good basis for discussing refugee children and identity crises. The novel, which consists of three different stories set at different times, has linked past refugee crises with today\`s problems and has attracted a lot of attention globally by conveying the 1938 Germany, 1994 Cuba and 2015 Syrian refugee crises from the perspective of young adolescents. In conclusion, this study aims to focus on the different child refugee characters in Alan Gratz\`s novel Refugee, discuss the identity crises of the invisible child refugees from postcolonial and neo-colonial perspectives, and put the subject on a scientific basis.
Keywords : mülteci edebiyatı, mülteci krizi, kimlik sorunları, postkolonyalizm, çocuk mülteciler