In this book, Powell examines the ways that identities are constructed in displacement narratives based on cases of eminent domain, natural disaster, and civil unrest, attending specifically to the rhetorical strategies employed as barriers and boundaries intersect with individual lives.

In this book, Powell examines the ways that identities are constructed in displacement narratives based on cases of eminent domain, natural disaster, and civil unrest, attending specifically to the rhetorical strategies employed as barriers and boundaries intersect with individual lives. She provides a unique method to understand how the displaced move within accepted and subversive discourses, and how representation is a crucial component of that movement. In addition, Powell shows how notions of human rights and the "public good" are often at odds with individual well-being and result in intriguing intersections between discourses of power and discourses of identity. Given the ever-increasing numbers of displaced persons across the globe, and the "layers of displacement" experienced by many, this study sheds light on the resources of rhetoric as means of survival and resistance during the globally common experience of displacement.

"By considering topics ranging from refugees to the forced removal of populations in the U.S., this book addresses both the complexities and differences attending to particular situations and the larger public policy issues facing disenfranchised people. Katrine Powell's rhetorical analysis provides new and insightful understanding of these important problems of great concern to everyone, the temporarily placed and the displaced." - Amy Shuman, Ohio State University, USA "Powell brings together a wealth of sources to analyze the transnational and contested implications of displacement and to draw attention to the commonalities, such as a sense of abandonment." - Nedra Reynolds, University of Rhode Island, USA