A reading in the context of conflict and (De)culturalization methodology: Mathias Énard's Street of Thieves

This study analyses the phenomenon of migration, one of the most fundamental problems from the past to the present, from a literary perspective. The movement of individuals or communities to migrate to another place for political, economic, or cultural reasons and the difficulties encountered by the "migrant" person, the most important subject of migration, before, during and after the act of migration, especially the adaptation and (de)acculturation processes after migration, are also touched upon. The aim of this study is to analyse the novel The Street of Thieves, which deals with the process of a Moroccan young man's migration to Spain under the influence of the Arab Spring and his subsequent adaptation problem, by using the methodology of Conflict and Culturalization, a mixed model developed by Prof. Dr. Ali Tilbe to examine migration literatures in a more coherent and comprehensible way. Prof. Dr. Ali Tilbe has created a new scale by combining the conflict and migration culture model developed by Prof. Dr. İbrahim Sirkeci and Jeffrey H. Cohen with Lucien Goldmann's formative structuralism, Gérard Genette's narratology and John W. Berry's acculturation approach and presented it to the benefit of the field of migration studies in order to make the processes experienced by migrants in migration literature more detailed and the processes of adaptation and integration after migration more understandable. In the process of this analysis, the primary concern is to delve into the concept and theories of migration along with the importance of migration in literature. In accordance with this purpose, the Arab Spring actions, which are also mentioned in the novel that is the subject of this study (The Street of Thieves), and the effect of this process on migration, and the migration movements from Africa to Europe, especially to Spain, which is the prosperous space in the novel, will be discussed. As a result of the study, the novel will be analysed in depth by mentioning the conflict environments experienced before and during the migration process in the context of Conflict and (De)acculturation methodology, and it will be seen that the protagonist cannot realize the processes of adaptation and acculturation because of the migration process. Keywords: Migration, migration literature, migrant literature, migration culture, conflict and deculturalization model, Arab Spring, Mathias Énard, Street of Thieves