The centrality of narrative analysis in the investigation of social processes and practices has become an established fact in the human sciences. The focus on narrative and displacement in this volume provides a starting point for a reflection on current issues in narrative theory as well as a timely interrogation of the role of narrative in illuminating social phenomena that are central to modernity, such as migration and displacement.

At the centre of the analyses presented in this book are stories that are ignored, silenced and othered by contemporary public discourses on displacement, migration and settlement. Drawing on insights from narrative theory, linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics and cultural studies, contributors to the volume examine both how migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and marginalized minorities position themselves through narrative practices and how they are positioned in institutional and official narratives.

Contributors: Robert Barsky, Mike Baynham, Jan Blommaert, James Collins, Marco Jacquemet, Ana María Relaño Pastor & Anna De Fina, Grit Liebscher and Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain, John Haviland, Kay McCormick, Katrijn Maryns.

Mike Baynham is Professor of TESOL at the University of Leeds, UK. A sociolinguist by training and applied linguist by affiliation, his research interests lie in the application of insights from sociolinguistics to a range of educational and social issues, particularly literacy and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

Anna De Fina is Assistant Professor of Italian Language and Linguistics and Coordinator of the Italian Language Program at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. She is author of Identity in Narrative, A Study of Immigrant Discourse (John Benjamins, 2003) and co-editor, with Deborah Schiffrin and Michael Bamberg, of Discourse and Identity (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).