Migration-As-Travel: re-thinking Transit Migration through Migrant Narratives
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2317-9651.i31p104-131Keywords:
transit migration, minor literature, autonomy of migration, affection, testimonioAbstract
This article examines two testimonies written by undocumented migrants (El viaje del Pollo: la odisea por el sueño americano (2014) by Fabián Quito and Sobrevivientes: Ciudadanos del mundo (2018) by Pascal Ustin Dubuisson) which narrate their journeys through unconventional tropes such as the figure of the tourist, the adventurer, and the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship, in order to propose the idea of migration as a form of precarious cosmopolitan travel. Drawing on the theory of the autonomy of migration and Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “minor literature,” it argues that these testimonies go beyond their denunciatory function and operate as epistemic interventions that reconfigure the ways in which migrant transit is represented. The article suggests rethinking migration beyond the grammar of trauma, integrating new ways of feeling, narrating, and politicizing human displacement.
Downloads
References
Ahmed Sara. Affective Economies. En: Social Text, 22-2, 2004, p. 117-39.
Borrelli, Lisa, et al. States of Suspicion: How Institutionalized Disbelief Shapes Migration Control Regimes. En: Geopolitics, 27-4, 2022, p. 1025-41.
Collins, Francis L. Desire as a Theory for Migration Studies: Temporality, Assemblage and Becoming in the Narratives of Migrants. En: Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44-6, 2018, p. 964-80.
Cornejo Villavicencio, Karla. The Undocumented Americans. New York: One World, 2020.
Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix. Kafka: Por una literatura menor. Versión de Jorge Aguilar Mora, Ediciones Era, primera ed. 1978; reimpreso 1980.
Dubuisson, Ustin Pascal. Sobrevivientes: Ciudadanos del mundo. ILCSA Ediciones, 2018.
Ette Ottmar. Hacia una poética del movimiento: literaturas sin residencia fija. En: Afinidades, 2, Editorial Universitaria, Granada, 2009, p. 85-96.
Gugelberger, Georg, and Michael Kearney. Voices for the Voiceless: Testimonial Literature in Latin America. En: Latin American Perspectives, 18-3, 1991, p. 3-14.
Guiñansaca, Sonia. Nostalgia y fronteras. Severo Editorial, 2023
Papadopoulos, Dimitris; Tsianos, Vassilis. The Autonomy of Migration: The Animals of Undocumented Mobility. En: Hickey-Moody Anna (ed.) Deleuzian Encounters: Studies in Contemporary Social Issues, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007.
Papadopoulos, Dimitris; Tsianos, Vassilis. Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the Twenty-First Century. Pluto Press, 2008.
Pessar, Patricia R.; Mahler, Sarah J.. Transnational Migration: Bringing Gender In. En: International Migration Review, 37-3, 2003, p. 812-46.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Lenguas viajeras: hacia una imaginación geolingüística. En: Cuadernos de Literatura, 18-36, 2014, p. 238-253.
Puga, Ana; Espinosa, Víctor. Performances of Suffering in Latin American Migration: Heroes, Martyrs and Saints, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Quito, Fabián. El Viaje del Pollo: La Odisea por el Sueño Americano. Editorial Cuenca, 2014
Ruiz, Alexandra R. Crucé la frontera en tacones: Crónicas de una TRANSgresora. Madrid: Editorial Egales, 2023.
Stock, Inka. Time, Migration and Forced Immobility: Sub-Saharan African Migrants in Morocco. 1st ed., Bristol University Press, 2019.
Stone-Cadena, Victoria; Álvarez Velasco, Soledad. Historicizing Mobility: Coyoterismo in the Indigenous Ecuadorian Migration Industry. En: The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 676-1, 2018, p. 194-211.
Vogt, Wendy A. Crossing Mexico: Structural Violence and the Commodification of Undocumented Central American Migrants. En: American Ethnologist, 40-4, 2013, p. 764-80.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Maria José Gutierrez Jimenez

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits the dissemination of the work with recognition of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are allowed to enter into additional contracts separately for non-exclusive use of the version of the work published in this journal (such as publication in an institutional repository or as a book chapter), with recognition of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are allowed and encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their personal page) at any point before or during the editorial process, as this can generate productive changes, as well as increasing the impact and citation of the published work (see The effect of open access…).
