Dimensionen der Migration im Unterricht erlesen: Überlegungen zu Miika Nousiainens Roman Juurihoito

In my paper, I sketch how Miika Nousiainen’s novel Juurihoito can be read from the point of view of migration studies and, thus, offers instances of intercultural learning about migration and emigration from Finland. This approach completes the analysis of the novel from the perspective of literary and translation studies (which, however, I do not discuss in my paper) by providing a wide range of topics for (inter-)cultural learning from the scope of migration studies. This, in turn, raises the question, if this novel represents a kind of ‘literary textbook of migration studies’. Before discussing this question, I concisely outline Nousiainen’s oeuvre and comment on his recurrent topic(s) related to identity, sketch
key aspects of migration and migration studies and I briefly relate Nousiainen’s novel to the field of fictions of migration. Then I propose readings of the novel through the lenses of migration studies in order to illustrate how different approaches to describing and analyzing phenomena related to migration can be explored and even critically assessed in teaching contexts when applied to the characters and events presented in the text. The perspectives included into my readings cover approaches to migration like push- and pull factors, binary dichotomies, categories of migration as well as intergenerational effects of migration, aspects of integration and inter- and transcultural identities, discrimination against minorities. Although all of these readings lead to different interpretations, all of them disclose and illustrate the ubiquity of migration in our lives. At the same time, the different readings of Nousiainen’s novel illustrate its potential as ‘literary textbook of migration studies’ that, of course, has to be combined with additional sources to contextualize and stress different aspects.