Rethinking Transnational Places as Migratory Ecotones

Abstract

This paper revisits the concept of ecotone to shed a different light on migratory spaces. The notion of ecotone was first applied for the study of the contact zones between ecological systems. Over the last two decades, it has been used by scholars of postcolonial literature for the analysis of spaces of cultural interactions. Bridging this strand of work with the debate on more-than-relational space, this paper outlines the concept of migratory ecotones understood as the outcome of the process of territorialization of intersecting transnational circulations. Migratory ecotones are ambivalent spaces underlain by contradictory forces: a principle of encounter and cultural interaction, but also a principle of power, conflict, distribution, and hierarchy. We argue that ecotones are more-than-relational spaces in three regards: current encounters are shaped by the material environment in which they are taking place, by the political forces constraining the capabilities of migrants, by past encounters and events weighing on present ones. The theoretical considerations developed in this paper will be supported by a literary analysis of a short story by Canadian writer and artist Shani Mootoo and by the political geography analysis of a border camp, the Jungle of Calais.