Introduction

The introduction to the volume discusses what screen representations can do to contribute more fully to a much-needed public debate about the current significance of migration, mobility, border crossing and dislocation, to our sense of identity and being in the world. It aims to offer a deeper understanding of the relationship between media, power and agency in a world still defined by power imbalances, in which the marginalized are finding new ways of making their voices heard. Cinema has the power to offer a counter discourse to those more readily available in the public domain. However, the introduction also discusses the limits to the power of cinema to subvert inherited beliefs and political decisions. The introduction argues that the ways in which migrants and migration are represented on screen, matters from political, economic, ethical and industry perspectives.