The refugee has emerged as one of the key figures of the twenty-first-century. This book explores how refugees imagine the world and how the world imagines them. It demonstrates the ways in which refugees have been written into being by international law, governmental and non-governmental bodies and the media, and foregrounds the role of the arts and humanities in imagining, historicising and protesting the experiences of forced migration and statelessness.

Including thirty-two newly written chapters on representations by and of refugees from leading researchers in the field, Refugee Imaginaries establishes the case for placing the study of the refugee at the centre of contemporary critical enquiry.