The Sea as a Liminal Space in Francophone Migration Narratives

Migration across seas and oceans has become one of the most powerful phenomena in contemporary Francophone literature, where maritime space often embodies the hopes and hazards of exile.

This paper examines the representation of the sea as a liminal space in Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (2003) and Laurent Gaudé’s Eldorado (2006). In both novels, the sea functions as more than a geographical frontier. It is a symbolic crossing point where hopes of moving forward meet the harsh realities of displacement. This study highlights the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea as the sites of hope and possibility, but also sites of death and disillusion.

Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concept of liminality and the “Third Space”, Paul Gilroy’s notion of the Black Atlantic and Edward Said’s reflections on Exile, the paper explores how the sea embodies both transformation and trauma in the migrant journey. In Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique, the crossing of the ocean is represented as an ambivalent opportunity which nourishes the imagination of migrants while simultaneously exposing the impossibility of return. In Gaudé’s Eldorado, the Mediterranean emerges as a perilous crossing, a space of suffering that tests the resilience of migrants.

Although both novels have been studied independently in relation to migration and exile, little attention has been given to a comparative reading of the two texts on the shared representation of the sea for the migrants. This paper therefore fills a critical gap by demonstrating how Diome and Gaudé inscribe maritime space as a site of ambivalence. Ultimately, the study argues that the sea in these narratives becomes the ultimate metaphor of exile: a space where borders dissolve, identities of migrants is renegotiated.