Precarious Crossings: Immigration, Neoliberalism, and the Atlantic by Alexandra Perisic (review)

Reviewed by: Precarious Crossings: Immigration, Neoliberalism, and the Atlantic by Alexandra Perisic A. Atinuke Irele Alexandra Perisic. Precarious Crossings: Immigration, Neoliberalism, and the Atlantic. The Ohio State UP, 2019. Pp. 240. US$99.95 hardcover, US$29.95 paperback, US$29.95 ebook. "The regional and the global are not necessarily in opposition but rather supplement one another" (177), Alexandra Perisic argues in Precarious Crossings: Immigration, Neoliberalism, and the Atlantic, a comparative transnational examination of migrant narratives. Perisic deliberately traverses linguistic traditions with her work in order to outline an argument for the multipodal and multifaceted function of the Atlantic Ocean within global neoliberal relations. Arguing comparative literature methodologies allow us to fully embrace the effects of what she terms "global neoliberalization," Perisic urges comparatists to resist the impulse to begin study of neoliberalism from the dominant countries, rather pondering, "would global neoliberalization generate equal enthusiasm if the story were told from the perspective of the Global South?" (2). An insistence on shifting the perspective from which we consider immigration allows Perisic, and us, to consider the conditions that shape global precarity as a state of existence that ties different subjects to one another despite colonial relations and legacies, national borders, and linguistic communities. Indeed, Perisic argues for using "precarity as a conceptual framework" in such a way that allows us to "account for the growing inequalities within the precariat itself" (12). In other words, the contemporary neoliberal world order has created a precarious class, the contours of which become much more clearly apparent when we allow ourselves to observe and analyze comparatively. There are multiple points from which Perisic's work departs: neoliberalism (or, more aptly, neoliberalization), migration, postcolonialism, and the Atlantic Ocean. Perisic insists that adopting a comparative approach that observes works written across multiple languages—in this case, French, Spanish, and English—combats the "neoliberal governance [that] mobilizes racialized and gendered modes of marginalization to prevent solidarity between groups" (3), positioning them in opposition to one another despite their shared precarity at the hands of transnational neoliberal markets, policies, and institutions. The comparative approach, thus, draws connections between conditions for migration via the perpetually significant Atlantic Ocean, without ignoring or attempting to flatten the differences and particularities that propel individuals from their points of origin. Literature is a useful vehicle for this analysis, not simply because it holds a looking glass to contemporary societies, but also because it theorizes and opens up space for new concepts and frameworks that can be used to analyze, and to resist, the contemporary neoliberal landscape. Perisic's emphasis on "global neoliberalization" as a process through which to understand the shift in contemporary immigrant literature is more convincing than her argument about the centrality of the Atlantic Ocean. Drawing connections to her [End Page 468] own experience reading migrant Bildungsroman as a young immigrant in France herself, Perisic deliberately pivots discourse about migrants from debates about identity, belonging, and nationalism. Rather, Precarious Crossings urges us to think about systemic connections between themes raised in novels that depict immigrants' journeys and lives before, during, and after their displacement from their countries of origin: "Contemporary trans-Atlantic immigrant fictions require a theoretical framework that extends beyond an analysis of the representation and self-representation of immigrants within a national setting" (14). Instead of analyzing the experience of the migrants upon arrival in their new host/home countries, Perisic calls for a shift to reading the causes and underlying themes that preempt, spur, and facilitate the movement in the first place. Thus, the immigrant experiences portrayed in the novels Perisic selects point to global economic systems that order social, personal, and eventually, national affiliations. Furthermore, they allow us to finally pay attention to migration patterns that move beyond, or even eschew, colonial ties while drawing postcolonial connections to twenty-first-century neocolonial or neoimperial capitalistic dominance. Shifting the approach in this way brings the United States into the discussion differently and accounts for the contemporary conditions that unite various populations into global precarity while also calling attention to regional, national, and cultural specificities. The chapters in Precarious Crossings take on thematic similarities between texts from a wide range of countries and settings: the contemporary circulation...

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