The Migrant Caught In-Between
Some artists, too, explore the liminality of the migrant. Whether between home and the unfamiliar, or legal and “alien” status, how does each of them treat the state of being in-between?
- Frida Kahlo | The Bus (1929)
- Jacob Lawrence | Migration (1941)
- Led Zeppelin | “Immigrant Song” (1970)
- Fiddler on the Roof | “Far From the Home I Love” (1971)
- Genesis | “Illegal Alien” (1983)
- Brendan Graham | “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears” (1995)
- Kovi Konowiecki | Borderlands (2016)
- Los Tigres del Norte | “Somos Mas Americanos” (2013)
On a rickety bus bench, Frida Kahlo lines up a whole society in transit — a housewife, a worker, a barefoot Indigenous mother nursing her baby, a money-bagged gringo — strangers thrown together between stops. Across paint, photography, and song, these eight works circle the same figure: the migrant suspended between a home left behind and a place not yet reached.
Key concepts
- Liminality
- The unsettled state of being on a threshold — no longer in the old life, not yet in the new; the photographer behind Borderlands puts it exactly: his subjects live 'between belonging and abandonment.'
- The Spectrum Of The Migrant Figure
- Art doesn't draw the migrant one way — Led Zeppelin makes the voyager a roaring conqueror; Fiddler makes her a daughter aching to leave the home she loves: same in-between, opposite registers.
- The Label 'alien'
- A legal status that also means 'stranger, not-one-of-us' — Genesis's 'Illegal Alien' leans on the loaded word, and Los Tigres del Norte fire back against it.
- The Border Crossed Me
- The reframe asking who really moved: Los Tigres argue Mexicans in the U.S. are 'more American' because the land was Mexican first — so the border crossed them, not the other way around.
What to know
-
01
These artists treat in-betweenness across the full emotional range — Zeppelin makes it conquest, Fiddler heartbreak, Genesis humiliation, Los Tigres defiance — so 'liminality' isn't a single mood but a space artists fill with whatever they most need to say.
Keep reading the full lesson
The rest of this lesson — every key insight, the cross-subject connection, the Are We There Yet? theme tie-in, and practice questions — comes with full access.
Unlock full access →$9.99/month, or $29.99 for the whole season — see plans.
New here? Create a free account to read the free section first.