The Great Displacement: Reading Migration Fiction at the End of the World

Abstract

This paper examines how contemporary works of fiction and nonfiction reflect on anticipated cases of climate dislocation. Building on existing research about migrant agency, climate fiction, and human rights, it traces the contours of climate migration discourse before analyzing how three twenty-first-century novels enable us to reimagine the “great displacement” beyond simplistic militarized and humanitarian frames. Zooming in on stories by Mohsin Hamid, John Lanchester, and Margaret Drabble that envision hypothetical calamities while responding to present-day refugee “crises”, this paper explains how these texts interrogate apocalyptic narratives by demilitarizing borderscapes, exploring survivalist mindsets, and interrogating shallow appeals to empathy.