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Paper short abstract

This paper examines intergenerational transmission of memories among Georgian families from Abkhazia in Moscow – with a focus on what creative methods can contribute to the anthropological work with silence, as well as on postmemory’s role in second-generation senses of belonging.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the intergenerational transmission of memories and imaginations of home among Georgian families who fled the war in Abkhazia in the 1990s and settled in Moscow. Despite more than 30 years having passed, conversations about Abkhazia continue among the displaced, and this topic remains profoundly painful. Most of these families either cannot return to Abkhazia or choose not to, given the current political situation. Thus, young people learn about their homeland through their parents’ and grandparents’ recollections and longing, intermingled with socially and politically constructed narratives of historical and current events related to the unresolved conflict. However, they also learn from silence as this is a topic not spoken aloud in Moscow and although often discussed within the families – circulating around recurring nostalgic narratives, leaving gaps of silence and silencing.

While conducting my PhD fieldwork on senses of belonging among young people of Georgian origin in Moscow in 2021-2022, I constantly encountered these silenced spots. In this paper, through focusing on a creative workshop I designed for young people, I discuss how anthropology can work with silence through visual methods, and how unspeakable postmemory — alongside their parents' repeating nostalgic stories — seems to create intragenerational bonding among second-generation migrants that affects their senses of belonging.