(Post)migratory Identity Crises in French-speaking Belgium

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to exploit, for purposes of literary character analysis, the notion of identity crisis, recently developed by Nathalie Heinich in her book Ce que n’est pas l’identité. To do this, the author draws on examples taken from novels by Leïla Houari (Ni langue ni pays) and Girolamo Santocono (Dinddra), both contemporary Belgian authors of migrant origin. Their characters, migrants or descendants of migrants, live experiences akin to that conceptualized by Heinich. The author questions the reasons for these (post)migratory identity crises, their course and their results. It turns out that the identity of migrants and their descendants, marked by fundamental instability, is particularly prone to the crisis. While their identities can often be described as being in crisis, the crises they go through usually result in a positive outcome.