Professor Linhard’s manuscript __Unexpected Routes: Refuge in Mexico__ chronicles refugees’ (not always successful) attempts to flee from Europe to Latin America in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and during World War II. Escape routes took refugees to places where stark inequalities, racial and otherwise, were a consequence of colonization; and notions like fixed origins, static identities, and unchanging places were often used to justify and rationalize colonial rule. One of the main contradictions that the book explores is how refugees coveted a sense of rootedness, even though the world they had to flee (fascist occupied Europe) was one where a belief in fixed, eternal, essential, and rooted national and racial identities was leading to mass death and destruction. The book engages with the many contradictions and blind spots that come across in the works that narrate the lived experiences of people on the move.
In addition to this monograph, Linhard is also developing a research project on collective expressions of grief in relation to the deaths of migrants in different parts of the world.