The third section of this volume, entitled ‘Memory and Migration’, looks at the problematics of memory in a global context by exploring the subject of migration/immigration that has become a major divisive issue of the twenty-first century. Section Three thus discusses the politics of remembering and forgetting in relation to two case studies that explore the subject of migration and memory in relation to the European colonial past and intercontinental migration. First, we discuss the National Theatre production of Small Island (London, UK, 2019), adapted by Helen Edmondson from Andrea Levy’s novel, which explores the history of the Windrush generation in the United Kingdom. Then I turn to André Amálio and Hotel Europa’s Portugal Is Not a Small Country in order to address the contested terrain of Portugal’s colonial history and migrations. By exploring the continuities between the racisms of the past and the present, the performance addresses histories of the enslaved and their survival, of the perpetrators and the beneficiaries, thus linking this historical trauma and loss to hopes for reconciliation, the repair of relations damaged by historical injustice. The chapter ends with an acknowledgement that there is much work still to be done on memory and migration from the perspective of colonization, refugee experience, and decolonizing performances, as well as from the perspective of the Anthropocene, remembering a future trauma in order to mitigate against climate catastrophe and global financial inequality.
.
