One theme of the mix is the international play of loans, snatches, repurposings, retroengineerings and recirculations of beats, motifs, techniques, and melodies between musicians in the diaspora and beyond.

A change had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind, whistling through the crevices of our bed-room windows all night long, had made us shiver in our beds […]

The process of making and marking members of the nation as “foreign” or “strange”—this alienation and alienization—is clearly embodied by those migrants who are targeted by state policies. But the effects of displaceability are far-reaching.

Socially Mack and the boys were beyond the pale. Sam Malloy didn't speak to them as they went by the boiler. They drew into themselves and no one could foresee how they would come out of the cloud. For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. This last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.