Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Adoption and migration in Monica Cantieni’s novel Grünschnabel This article investigates the literary representation of adoption and migration in Monica Cantieni’s novel Grünschnabel, set during the 1970s in Switzerland against the backdrop of the Schwarzenbach Initiative and rising xenophobic sentiment. Using qualitative literary analysis and close reading, the study examines narrative perspective, character construction, and socio- historical context to reveal how the adopted child’s sense of foreignness within her new family mirrors the marginalisation of labour migrants marked as “foreigners” in Swiss society. The methodology combines detailed textual analysis with comparative approaches, highlighting parallels between private familial dynamics (adoption) and public debates on migration, and incorporates intertextual analysis to situate Grünschnabel within broader discourses of Swiss memory, identity, and multiculturalism. The fi ndings demonstrate that Cantieni’s novel innovatively links processes of adoption and migration, exposing contradictions in Swiss self-image and national narratives of neutrality by foregrounding questions of otherness, belonging, integration, and surveillance. By portraying both familial and societal mechanisms of exclusion and control, Grünschnabel emerges as a signifi cant literary intervention that challenges dominant historical narratives and off ers critical refl ection on the roots of contemporary debates about migration and identity. This analysis contributes to Swiss literary studies and interdisciplinary discussions on cultural memory and social inclusion.
Source: Polilog: Studia Neofilologiczne
Author: Flinik, Joanna
Institution: Uniwersytet Pomorski w Słupsku
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7083416156
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