The Impact of Migration on the Identity of the ‘Stones in His Pockets’ Characters: A Critical Reading of the Marie Jones’ Play

In the simplest definition, migration is a kind of displacement, and the concept of ‘Identity’ is highly important in migration studies. By entering a new place, the immigrant is always exposed to redefine his or her identity in a way that in the mechanism of intercultural translation, he may abandon his values and identity and transform himself to another person. Aiming to investigate the impact of migration on identity, the current study presents a reading of Stones in His Pockets play by Marie Jones and also answers the question of how the migration experience affects the characters of the play and changes their identities? Stones in His Pockets is a play that represents critical and different forms of the migration experience. This study has employed a descriptive-analytical qualitative method and has benefited from ‘Intercultural Translation theory’ by Farzan Sojoodi, ‘Third Space theory’ by Homi K. Bhabha. The results indicate how the experience of migration has affected the main characters of the play. This effect, in various types of migration such as ‘migration to secondary place’, ‘returning to the initial place’, and ‘spiritual migration’ causes the identity of characters to be unaccepted by others and also themselves. It has also caused their identities to be in a state of distortion and in-between.