Abstract: Two notions are at the heart of Georges Perec's Ellis Island: vagrancy and hope. Of these two words strangely termed “soft”, hope is the most present in the text. But it is to be put into perspective (the dreams of migrants were lulled by artificial images) and presented as inaccessible to those who come to visit the place today. The problematic memory of what led to exile feeds a sense of helplessness and participates in the writer's claim of vagrancy, of which migrants become an image.
