Antje Ellermann, Frederik Kohlert, Sarah Leavitt, and Mireille Paquet, eds. Crossing Lines: Comics About Human Migration. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2025. $26.95 CAN. ISBN 9781049801223. https://utpdistribution.com/9781487533359/crossing-lines/
Scholarship on
the representation of migration in comics has produced a substantial body of
monographs and critical studies, while recent graphic narratives—whether
autobiographical or working through genres such as comics journalism and
dystopian fiction—abound with stories of diasporas, climate refugees, and the
everyday challenges faced by migrants and migrant communities in their
countries of destination. Crossing Lines joins this growing body of
work examining migration, its causes, and its consequences through the medium
of comics. What distinguishes the project is its collaborative premise: by
bringing together academic researchers and comics creators, it puts the medium's
capacity to tell migration stories to the test. As the editors observe in the
introduction, emphasizing comics' potential to foster social change, the medium
“can facilitate dialogue, fight disinformation, and generate empathy, thereby
providing citizens with a more nuanced view of human immigration through
narratives” (4).
Crossing
Lines originated in a workshop organized by the editors in 2022 at the
Centre for Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia. The event
brought together nine Vancouver-based comics artists, community practitioners,
and nearly forty scholars from UBC, Concordia University, and the University of
Victoria. During the workshop, participants formed nine working groups, each
led by a comics artist, to explore a specific dimension of migration and
displacement that would ultimately take shape as a comic narrative. From the
outset, each group was asked to ground its project in peer-reviewed research
and to examine migration in all its complexity, avoiding simplistic or
stereotypical representations. Interdisciplinarity lies at the heart of both
the workshop and the resulting volume: contributors represent fields as diverse
as anthropology, occupational therapy and social work, law, media studies, and
Asian studies, complementing the editors' expertise in political science and
English. Through this collaborative process and the subsequent editorial work, Crossing
Lines ultimately took the form of eight comics, each created by a comics
artist working with a team of three or four co-authoring scholars—a total of
twenty-eight contributors, in addition to the eight artists and four editors.
The result is a genuinely polyphonic collection that benefits from a diversity
of perspectives and, importantly, includes a significant representation of
migrant authors.
As one might
expect, some comics are more effective than others, although all the stories
carry considerable emotional weight. They also display a remarkable diversity
of formal approaches and artistic styles. Kathleen Gros's "To/From"
is among the collection's strongest contributions. Through a series of
full-page illustrations, it explores the prejudice and exclusion embedded in
the seemingly innocuous question "Where are you from?," juxtaposing
the journey of an Afghan refugee and her family with the history of colonialism
on the ancestral lands of what is now British Columbia. Jonathon Dalton's
"Crossing Lines," the comic that lends the volume its title, presents
six parallel storylines following six groups of travelers whose radically
different experiences of crossing the Canadian border are determined by their
legal status. Doug Savage's "Migratory Birds," in turn, reflects on
the notion of citizenship through the naturalization ceremony of two characters
in a world populated by anthropomorphic birds, including xenophobic Canadian
geese and an Indigenous bird that reminds the newly naturalized citizens of the
nation's silenced colonial past. In Hannah Myers's "Greener Grass?,"
the premise of a video game centered on the experiences of highly skilled
migrants allows two friends to recognize both the obstacles migrants
face—including barriers to employment and housing—and the privileges they
themselves enjoy as Canadian citizens.
Emily Chou's
"In Search of Bruce Lee" departs from the preceding stories by
relying almost entirely on visual storytelling. It focuses on a migrant's
intercultural and intergenerational connections through his admiration for the iconic
actor and martial artist, reserving text for onomatopoeia and unintelligible
speech balloons that convey the protagonist's struggle to navigate an
unfamiliar language and culture. Scarlet Wings Kaili's "The Waiting
Room" adopts a more somber tone, foregrounding the physical and
psychological toll of migration by emphasizing the protagonist's stress,
insomnia, and involuntary loneliness. Jess Pollard's "Butterfly,"
meanwhile, explores the shift in social status experienced by two migrants in
relation to the lives they left behind in their countries of origin, their
aspirations—whether for freedom or economic opportunity—and the sacrifices they
have made to build a new life. Finally, Alyssa Hirose's "Belonging"
offers an original exercise in abstraction, representing belonging and
integration through a shape-shifting form that alternately blends with and
stands apart from its surroundings, using synesthetic effects to evoke emotion.
Each of the eight comics is followed by a brief discussion of its central
theme, five discussion questions addressing issues ranging from content to
formal choices, and an annotated bibliography of five additional sources for
readers wishing to explore the topic further. Although the explanatory sections
are occasionally overly explicit and may constrain the interpretive openness of
the comics they accompany, they are, overall, an excellent addition that makes
the collection particularly well suited for use in humanities or social
sciences courses on migration at either the undergraduate or graduate level.
Indeed, the
format of Crossing Lines—with the discussion questions and suggested
avenues for further exploration accompanying each comic, together with the
richness of possible interpretations and the complexity of the issues they
address—makes it an exceptionally valuable pedagogical resource. Yet the
collection's strengths extend beyond its rich and compelling stories. The
workshop that gave rise to the volume offers a replicable model of
collaborative practice, one that could be implemented with relative ease in
groups of four or five students as a semester-long project. In such a setting,
students would not only read comics but also create their own, drawing
inspiration from ecosocial issues and causes they care about. Ultimately, Crossing
Lines is a commendable project that brings together a remarkable range of
voices while bridging the gap between scholars, activists, and comics creators.
Although the individual contributions are inevitably uneven in quality, the
volume as a whole is an impressive and worthwhile achievement.
