The human rights that we are currently talking about are based on the concept of citizenship created together with the birth of modern states. As this is given only to fellow countrymen, it is limited and exclusive. For such characteristics, as soon a...
The human rights that we are currently talking about are based on the concept of citizenship created together with the birth of modern states. As this is given only to fellow countrymen, it is limited and exclusive. For such characteristics, as soon as crossing the border, the human rights as citizenship are threatened. The refugees are those beings. This study aims to examine the roles of literary imagination towards the human rights of refugees crossing the border through the novels targeting the refugees in our society like 『One day, a refugee』 and 「Spain Refugee Camp」. Comparing with other academic areas including laws, the biggest characteristics of literature as a place for discourse are the concreteness, individuality, and accessibility. The biggest characteristic of literary imagination is to look into and empathize with the concrete situations and changes of internal feelings of each individual with characteristic name instead of abstract beings whose truth could not be imagined. Also, the literary imagination gives a message about the necessity of preparation and effort to prevent such conflicts and collisions by showing the imaginary look of dystopia, rather than hoping for the best of future society together with refugees. And all of these processes could be easily experienced by everyone in everyday language, which is the biggest characteristic and charm of literary imagination. Thus, when there are more and more literary works imagining and talking about refugees, the width of ‘our’ understanding of and empathy with refugees could broaden, and ‘our’ imagination towards them would become more abundant. This is the future direction of literary discourse of human rights, and this is the role of literary imagination about refugees.