Former refugee Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature this month for what the Nobel organization described as “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

Gurnah, who fled from his native Zanzibar to England in the 1960s amid persecution, has published ten novels and multiple short stories. His best known work may be Paradise, from 1994, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and tells the tale of a boy struggling with colonialism and violence in East Africa. By the Sea, from 2001, more explicitly confronts issues of migration, refugee status, and identity as it reveals the relationships between two immigrants in England.  

Gurnah is far from the first acclaimed writer to have moved between countries. Even looking just at recent Nobel laureates, migrants are plentiful. Peter Handke grew up in Austria but has spent decades living in France; Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan and moved to the United Kingdom as a child; Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ukraine but at times has lived elsewhere in Europe due to her criticism of the then-Soviet Union. The list goes on. While the act of migration may not be central to all their work, experiences attempting to integrate into different cultures are common touchstones.

In fact, in other fields immigrants are disproportionately likely to win Nobel Prizes, at least in the United States. Since 1901, immigrants have comprised 35 percent of the U.S. residents to win Nobel Prizes in chemistry, medicine, and physics, according to analysis from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). Included in that group are three laureates in 2021: Scottish-born David W.C. MacMillan, who won for chemistry; Japanese-born Syukuro Manabe, who won for physics; and Lebanese-born Ardem Patapoutian, who shared the prize for physiology or medicine.

Some of this scientific success may be explained by the high quality of U.S. academic institutions, which draws outstanding researchers from around the world. NFAP points to key laws including the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur Jaddou, meanwhile, has attributed immigrant success to the United States being “a country of possibilities.”

Whatever the reason, the fact that immigrants are so visible at the highest level of literature and science is also a reflection on the prominent role that migration plays more generally. Although less than 4 percent of the global population is comprised of international migrants, the experience of crossing borders plays an outsized role in our popular culture, our stories, and our lives.

Best regards,
Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
[email protected]