Paper short abstract:

This paper draws attention to the ways in which individuals remember in migratory and post-war contexts, and how they manoeuvre and place their memories in public spaces that are strongly defined by national remembrance and thus undercutting alternative histories.

Paper long abstract:

Memories are created, manifested but also contested and silenced in social fields. Using two case studies, Mostar and Vienna, I will examine how individuals remember, and how they manoeuvre and place their memories in public spaces that are strongly defined by national remembrance and thus undercutting alternative histories. The first examines the rewriting of local history and urban memory in Mostar after the 1992-95 war and the ways in which individuals position themselves in this new mnemonic landscape where personal and collective memories are likely to diverge. The second example explores the specific case of labour migrants who entered Vienna as so-called 'guest workers' in the 1960s and 1970s. It investigates how Turkish labour migrants place their memories in Vienna's cityscape, where the histories of guest workers are not part of public remembrance but where national remembrance of the Ottoman sieges still prevails. By analysing these two case studies, this paper puts everyday spatial mnemonic practices into focus and explores processes of individuating the city (de Certeau 1984). The focus on place and remembrance in this paper allows us to explore the ways in which individuals generate continuities between different life periods as well as between different localities in times of social change.

Monika Palmberger is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Vienna and at the University of Leuven. She is author of the book "How Generations Remember" (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) and co-editor of "Care across Distance" (Berghahn 2018) and of "Memories on the Move" (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).