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- Convenors:
-
Dilyara Müller-Suleymanova
(Zurich University of Applied Sciences University of Zurich)
Mareike Scherer (University of Zurich)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Friday 24 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to discuss intergenerational experiences of migration and transnational (dis-)involvement of the "second generation" or children of migrants, their perceptions of migration-related experience and shifting configurations of belonging.
Long Abstract:
In this panel we seek to approach the experiences, memories and meanings of migration and transnational relations from the perspective of the so-called "second generation" or the children of migrants (Levitt 2009; Bolzman et al. 2015). The core theme around which we want to build discussions in our panel is the second generation's (dis-)involvement with their alleged "homeland" - be that in the form of transnational (humanitarian, political, etc.) activities, engagement in migrant organizations, practices of remembering, acts of imagination and nostalgia, practices of belonging / "doing" identity or digital activities. We are interested in contributions that shed light on how second generation's lives are shaped by the experiences of migration, by possible tensions and conflicts implicated in the families' "origins" or the past (and present) of the origin countries, as well as by the socio-cultural contexts and discourses of the "host" country. We are interested in how children of migrants position themselves within these complex fields, how they negotiate, deal with and possibly transform socio-cultural constraints into opportunities and resources. Methodologically, we welcome (but are not confined to) submissions that use and possibly combine biographic and ethnographic approaches in data collection and analysis. We are interested in new methodological approaches in the anthropology of migration and would like to discuss possibilities and limitations of these when conducting research with young people belonging to the so-called "second generation".
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 24 July, 2020, -Gladys Akom Ankobrey (Maastricht University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper uses young people's experience of attending funerals in Ghana as a case to show the importance of trips to Ghana in their transnational lives. The empirical data sheds light on the meanings young people attach to their relationships with family and (parents') country of origin.
Paper long abstract:
Most studies on transnationalism analyse young people's experiences in relation to their parents' migration. Partly as a result of this, young people appear as passive in the wake of their parents' movements. Hence, there is little known about young people's transnational experiences through their own mobility and the meanings they attach to these. Drawing on 18-months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in The Hague and Ghana, this paper explores the dynamic nature of young Dutch Ghanaians' transnational attachments. We show the importance of trips to Ghana in young people's transnational lives by using their experience of attending funerals in Ghana as a starting point. Funerals occupy a central role in Ghanaian society and thus offer key opportunities for young people to gain knowledge about cultural practices and their relationships with family members in Ghana. We shed light on the complex ways in which young people acquire transnational resources through their mobility trajectories. These entail cultural and familial connectedness, and the ability to compare experiences in multiple international contexts. Rather than simply reproducing transnational linkages and orientations, young people recreate these according to their own needs. The study findings highlight the need to analyse youth's mobility trajectories in their own right as this allows for better understanding of the impact of migration on their lives.
Silvia Wojczewski (Medical University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
Interested in an intergenerational and biographical perspective on migration and family, I focus on the experiences of "diasporic" travel of three German women of African descent to show how the relation to the region of origin of their fathers took part in their process of coming of age in Germany.
Paper long abstract:
Whereas Aminata's father Lansana says of himself to be Guinean with a German passport, for his daughter things feel different. She feels rooted in Germany/Frankfurt, living and being socialized there, but she is also Guinean and African, feeling connected especially to other young Afrodescendent adults who grew up in Frankfurt or cities elsewhere in Europe. Jennifer Bidet and Lauren Wagner (2012) find that when studying diasporic practices and belonging, it is revealing to look into if or how second, third and more generations of descendants of transnational migrants, maintain or develop links to places of family origin. In my research I am interested in researching how the meaning of "origin" might shift throughout generations and how it can get disentangled from a country of parental origin and go more towards decentered diasporic practices. However, the importance of the relation to the parents or to a place of origin of parents who migrated has to be seen as a process - it can become important or obsolete for a person at different stages of her/his life. Analysing biographical interviews that I conducted during my fieldwork in Frankfurt, I focus on the experiences of "diasporic" travel of three of my interlocutors, German women of African descent in their 30s, to show how the relation to the region of origin of their fathers took part in their processes of coming of age in Germany where they occupy racialized subject positions - and in their personal understandings of what it means to become an adult.
Dilyara Müller-Suleymanova (Zurich University of Applied Sciences University of Zurich) Mareike Scherer (University of Zurich)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the way young people with origins in ex-Yugoslavia and Turkey deal with the history of their origin countries' violent past and war/conflict-related migratory experiences of their parents and what effects these have on various facets of their (post-)migrant lives
Paper long abstract:
What does it mean for the second-generation youth to grow up with the political legacies of their origin country, particularly with its violent past in the context of diaspora? In which ways young people engage with war/conflict-related migration experiences of their parents and what consequences these have on their (post-)migrant lives? Careful reading of life-stories of young people of Bosnian and Kurdish/-Alevi background, born and raised in Switzerland, complemented by ethnographic observations in diasporic spaces, reveals how political past (and present) of the origin country is integrated, reinterpreted and negotiated in the context of own biography and dealt with in everyday life. The analysis demonstrates in which spaces and situations young people are confronted with and negotiate their belonging to the origin country and its problematic past and how differently connection to the origin country can be established. These personal ways of dealing with the past (and present) have effects on various contexts of young people's lives such as their engagement in diasporic structures or their everyday interpersonal relations. In this context, the paper will also try to critically engage with the concepts such as "second generation", "diaspora" and "homeland"
Magdalena Elchinova (New Bulgarian University)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines how the second generation of 1989 refugees from Bulgaria to Turkey understand the dramatic migratory experience of their parents, what kinds of relationship they develop with the country of origin and what kind of social and cultural capital brought in from there they inherit.
Paper long abstract:
In the summer of 1989 about 350 000 people, mostly ethnic Turks fled from Bulgaria to Turkey within three months. Above 200 000 of them permanently settled in Turkey. This paper examines the perceptions of the second generation - people who were small children during the exodus or were born in immigration in Turkey - of their parents' traumatic migratory experience. One of the issues of discussion is their controversial relationship with Bulgaria - the country of origin of their parents and grandparents, and even of some of them. For many Bulgaria symbolizes the unfair treatment of their family by the communist regime in the 1980s; they feel no loyalty to the Bulgarian state but pick the fruits of Bulgarian citizenship which gives then advantage to other Turkish co-nationals and opens various possibilities for study and professional realization in the EU. Many other feel loyalty and affection not to the country but to their extended family members who live there; a lot of their sweetest childhood memories are related to Bulgaria or, rather, to the village or town where their parents grew up and where their grandparents, uncles and aunts still live. For yet others Bulgaria is the place with which they associate their aspirations - to study, launch a business or find a good job. In addition, the paper discusses the social and cultural capital from the country of origin the second generation of 1989 migrants from Bulgaria to Turkey inherit from their parents.
Subhasree Ghosh (Asutosh College, University of Calcutta)
Paper short abstract:
This paper interrogates the memories pivoting around the construction of home among the first and the subsequent generations of East Bengali migrant families based in Calcutta, to analyse whether one can identify a shifting trajectory in inter-generational conception of home.
Paper long abstract:
Taking the 1947 Partition that led to the creation of India and Pakistan as the backdrop, the paper analyses whether the trajectory of memory surrounding one's home and hearth undergoes any shift with the passage of years and generations. Pivoting on memory-history, this paper explores the idea of home as reflected in the memory of first and second generation migrants based in the metropolis of Calcutta. Situated at the intersection of memory and commemoration, the paper interrogates how memories are both allowed for and erased for the present. In the reminiscences of the first-generation migrants, the chiaroscuro of nostalgia of lost homeland and trauma of uprootment ceaselessly intertwine, even after seventy years. Against this would be juxtaposed the narratives of the second generation migrants, who did not experience the pain of uprootment. Having been born and brought up in Calcutta, understandably, they do not feel the same kind of attachment with East Bengal across the international border. However, at the same time, they are not completely scissored from the past. Being fed on a healthy dose of nostalgic stories, they deploy modern-day technologies, like blogs, social media platforms, digital archives, to stay connected with their past. The paper thus brings to the fore the various shades of memory which continue to inform, mediate and reconstruct the experiential world of the refugees and their progeny and in the process focus on the changing conceptions of home and belonging. Home thus emerges as a place that needs to be constantly (re-)negotiated.