Traditionally, refugees have been represented as passive, silent, and abject. While such representations are often used to elicit sympathy and support, they do so at the risk of dehumanizing their subjects. By rendering refugees as apolitical and decontextualized, such representations encourage ways of imagining refugees that justify exclusionary practices; because they lack the rights and political voice of a citizen, refugees are not owed anything, and so their claims can be accepted or rejected at the will of the host country. This thesis explores the ways in which Rawi Hage, by representing refugees who are active and politically engaged, challenges these representations of the abject and passive refugee. Contextualizing the experiences of migrants and refugees within the history of colonialism and the neo-colonial present, Hage questions the ideas of nationalism and sovereignty that underlie exclusionary practices and suggests that we consider refugees as deserving justice as well as aid.

This thesis presents an analysis of the novel O Retorno by Dulce Maria Cardoso. The subject of the novel is a family which was forced to leave Angola where they had lived for a very long time and now have to “return” to Portugal. Like many other “retornados” they find the process very difficult. The hypothesis of the paper is that during the first period, as described in the novel, the experience can be compared to that of refugees even if “retornados” nominally are Portuguese citizens and speak Portuguese. In the analysis models elaborated by Juris Rozītis in Displaced Literature: images of time and space in Latvian novels depicting the first years of the Latvian postwar exile (2005) has been used. The conclusion is that the model based on “retornados” experiences in the novel compares well with that of refugees. There even is a clear delimitation between “retornados” and Portuguese society. The “fence” is not physical as was the case with the post-World War II refugee camps but instead mental. For being immaterial it is no less real. The main character finds himself in a limbo between a world that has already disappeared, his native Angola, and a world that is not willing to accept him and which he, as consequence, is not willing to accept. He also exists in a limbo between being a child and an adult.  In both cases he is incapable of exiting the limbo by himself.