Private Stories, Public Issues: Representations of Migration in Angus Macqueen’s The Last Peasants. Journeys
Private Stories, Public Issues: Representations of Migration in Angus Macqueen’s The Last Peasants. Journeys

Summary/Abstract: The documentary trilogy The Last Peasants (2003), directed and produced by AngusMacqueen, seeks to reveal the „private stories‟ behind Romanians‟ illegal migration toWestern Europe against the background of major transformations in the post-CommunistRomanian society still in transition at the turn of the twenty-first century. The paperfocuses on one of the films of the trilogy, Journeys, which is the most explicit in itsrepresentation of the dangers that Romanian migrants had to face, prior to Romania‟sjoining the European Union, while crossing borders to „go West‟ in hope of living their„Western European dream‟. The exploration of the rhetorical and narrative strategiesemployed by the British director in this filmic text aims, therefore, at casting light on howimages of the sending Romanian society, the Western European hosts and the Romaniandiaspora are constructed, in an attempt to challenge the audiences and to raise theirawareness of the need for a better understanding of such a complex social phenomenon asmigration, as well as for the change in attitudes in host-migrant interactions.

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