Représentations de l’étranger et de l’immigré dans la littérature contemporaine pour la jeunesse, France et Thaïlande
Author: Hutasangkas, Virine
Under the direction of: Cécile Boulaire
Tours University
Texte français
Keywords: Languages, Literatures and Civilizations, Thailand, Children’s literature, Multiculturalism, Thailand, Immigrant, Foreigner, Refugee, French children’s literature, Thai children’s literature, Emigration and immigration, Foreigners in children’s literature, Multiculturalism in children’s literature.
Abstract
Since the 19th century, France has accommodated immigrants from different origins : Southern Europeans, Maghrebins, Africans, Eastern Europeans, and Southeast Asians. During the same decades, southern Chinese fled poverty and communism, while Vietnamese and Cambodians fled civil wars to Thailand. This dissertation studies the way children’s literature treats questions about immigration while comparing two contrasting contexts : narratives for children in France and in Thailand. Our corpus gathers texts published from 1975 to 2015, the period in which children’s literature from both countries began questioning immigration. The texts selected were written by both natives and children of immigrants. The two groups offer different perspectives on challenges of being immigrants, and also writing techniques of immigrant representation. Thus, this dissertation correlates the reality of the immigration to the image portrayed in children’s books, compares the narrative and literary choices made by authors and their systems of values, and, finally, analyzes this literature altogether in a multicultural perspective. Do these texts really contribute to influence new generations the new way to think of these questions about identity and otherness ?
