. This article presents a comparative reading of Maria Velho da Costa's novel Myra (2008) and Teresa Villaverde's film Transe (2006), two works that examine the position of the migrant from eastern Europe, in a Portuguese and European context. Both the novel and the film are structured around the dysphoric journeys made by their protagonists, Myra and Sonia, punctuated by episodes of kidnapping, imprisonment, and fruitless attempts at escape. Drawing on the concepts of transdifference, transit and transgression, and in articulation with the chronotope of the road, this essay analyses how these two works depict a monstrous and abject dimension of human existence, contesting instituted binarisms and denouncing the violence inherent to the territories and identities of the frontier