Clandestine Mediterranean: Arab-African Undocumented Migrant Literature 

Focusing on postcolonial Arabic and English literature, Al-Mousawi will examine journey narratives from the Mediterranean’s southern shores to the global North, and in doing so, will examine past and present conceptualizations of the Mediterranean as both a dividing border and unifying contact zone. She will explore how the clandestine migrant figure in the Arab and Afro-Arab world is imagined through what she refers to as the paradox of cosmopolitanism and containment of the Mediterranean. 
As a EUME Fellow, she will prepare her book manuscript and  expand her focus beyond North Africa on undocumented migration across the Saharan divide (the North-South divide within Africa). This will enable her to explore how identities are racialized across the Saharan divide. Further exploration of narratives from West Africa would provide a more nuanced view of how Africa has been re-shaped in terms of its borders and relationship to Europe.