Paper short abstract:

Integration of immigrants is usually talked about as integration to a society which in many ways can be seen as quite on abstract way to address integration. But immigration also refers to spatial relocation, people moving from one place to another (often through many other places and locations). This paper focuses on immigrants life histories analysed as autobiographical spatialities.

Paper long abstract:

People situate themselves in the past and the present (also to the future) both temporally and spatially. Life histories or personal narratives are usually analyzed in relation to temporally and socially varying contexts. The questions of how life histories relate to multiple spatialities or how people construct personal or collective spatialities in their narrations on everyday life have not received much attention. How do people narrate and verbalize their experiences in and on urban spaces? How do individual stories relate to wider societal contexts and understandings of urban spatiality and spatial practices? This paper is based on an ongoing study on Russian immigrants' experiences on integration in general and specifically on spatial integration. It is a part of a larger research project focusing on narratives on evacuees from Karelia, immigrant from Russia and Ingrian re-immigrants from the Soviet Union.