This dissertation studies the uses, roles, and functions of genres in German migration-themed comics published in the 2010s. The study asks: What was the landscape of genres like in the 2010s as refugee and migrant comics started booming? Which genres do the comics utilise and how might these genres emphasise and even advance the rights of migrants? How do the genres used associate the comics with broader traditions of representing migration and thematising human rights issues? To examine these questions, the study develops a methodology combining comics studies, genre theory, and scholarship on human rights narratives.

The study gives an overview of the phenomenon of German refugee and migrant comics and presents close analyses of three representative works. The comics chosen for closer inspection are Reinhard Kleist’s Der Traum von Olympia: Die Geschichte von Samia Yusuf Omar (2015), Birgit Weyhe’s Madgermanes (2016) and Nino Bulling’s Im Land der Frühaufsteher (2012). Several genres and their creative combinations are discussed in the analyses. Particular attention is paid to the genres of biography, melodrama, testimony, reportage, and the generic aspects of the Brechtian artistic tradition. The analyses illuminate the comics’ entanglements with communicative and expressive conventions related to human rights conceptions in Western modernity.

The study highlights the central role of genres and the generic tradition of human rights narratives in German refugee and migrant comics. Genres shape how comics narrate migration, communicate human rights concerns, and conceptualise justice. Moreover, comics use genres to articulate moral and political claims about how individuals and societies should encounter migrants and deal with migration. Genres connect comics to the cultural sphere of human rights, where questions of humanity and rights are discussed by means of creative expression. In this way, comic art partakes in shaping, reflecting, and negotiating the norms and conceptions concerning migration, human rights, justice, and interpersonal responsibilities.