Contribution short abstract:

This presentation reflects on the relationship between personal migration experiences and seemingly disconnected public discourses on migration. It will think with Arendt’s essay whether the sharing, the making public, of personal migration experiences can be a basis for rebuilding a shared world.

Contribution long abstract:

This presentation reflects on the relationship between personal migration experiences and public discourses on migration. It is part of a broader endeavour to understand how such migration experiences affect how people talk and think about migration in the context of profound socio-economic and political transformations in regions experiencing large-scale emigration. Interest in this question arose from an apparent divide. On the one hand, sizeable out-migration means that many people experience migration, either because they themselves migrate or because people close to them leave. On the other hand, such regions are often hostile to immigration. Personal experiences of migration, often discussed only in private, if at all, are faced with a louder and seemingly disjointed public discourse on migration. This divergence is linked to who is seen and talked about as a migrant, as migration is often represented as immigration of ‘visible others’ who are fundamentally different from a homogeneous and fixed ‘host society’.

This presentation asks what difference it might make to bring various personal experiences of migration into the public discourse. Firstly, it will think with Hannah Arendt’s 1959 essay whether situations of large-scale migration can lead to the shattering of shared worlds and a retreat into private space. Secondly, it will explore whether the sharing, and thus the making public, of personal experiences of migration can be a basis for brotherliness and/or friendship and hence for commoning and rebuilding a shared world. Finally, it asks whether academic knowledge production about migration could also benefit from such a perspective.