On the Borders of Life: Migrant Figures and their Marginality in Literature

Abstract

This paper seeks to shed light on the problem of marginal man and his divided identity in the works of contemporary Balkan-born authors living and writing within the German-speaking area. After experiencing the drama of adjusting to a foreign country, authors like Ilija Trojanow, Cătălin Dorian Florescu, and Saša Stanišić deal in their work with topics involving migrants, describing the immigrant's exhausting struggle in the new surroundings and emphasizing the feeling of alienation. An immigrant experiences an unpleasant reorientation to different life patterns and is often excluded in a sociological, cultural, and linguistic sense. This marginalization of immigrants as well as their inner conflict (as a product of living between two cultures) is the primary focus of this paper. On this journey, the ideas of the American sociological school of the 1930s are used; Park and Stonequist's concept of a marginal man is applied to the interpretation of the characters and motifs. This will cast some new light on the dual personality of modern immigrants.