Exile, the concept and the experience, conveys a significant although neglected heuristic force in our contemporary world in which new migratory movements include such diverse categories as migrant, refugee or undocumented person, types of experiences that need to be examined together. To study exile as an experience brings back the human dimension into discourses on migration and invites to conceive of a more ethically and politically inclusive society. These considerations have called forth the attempt to create a multi-disciplinary research field called "études exiliques" [exile studies] present in the Anglo-Saxon domain but inexistent in the francophone one.
