Introduction. Crossing Drawn Borders: Comics and Migration

Abstract

This special issue of Scritture migranti (16/2022) aims to explore the representation of migration narratives in the medium of comics. Over the past three decades, comics have stood out as an expressive and versatile medium capable of narrating and representing with great poignancy various aspects of contemporaneity, including the complexity that characterizes migratory phenomena. The contributions included in this special issue move from different contexts to investigate how different narratives of migration are conveyed in comics form, how evidence is collected, and how the result is narrativized in the final work. The essays converse with each other through a range of analytical approaches from intersecting and complementing disciplinary perspectives, exploring various narratives of migration in contemporary works from different comics traditions and cultural contexts. They focus on the assumptions behind such migrations, analyze stories of geographies near and far, and span territories from Southeast Asia to the American continent via Europe. In doing so, this thematic issue builds a network of diverse investigations that chart new trajectories for further research on the intersection of comics and migration.