Narratives and social experiences of migration Agnese Vardanega University of Koper, July 5th 2011

Even if the concept of narrative has entered sociology at the beginning of the 90s, the origins of the use of (auto)biographies, private documents and collective stories as a source of information can be traced in the early work of Thomas and Znaniecki. The Polish Peasant is a study on the changes introduced by the experience of migration at an individual and a social level, and it is based on narratives: letters, diaries, life-histories. Narratives are the basic way human beings give their experiences coherence and meaning (storytelling). While personal experiences are fundamentally subjective, narratives are cultural objects and have a collective nature: even individual life histories can be seen as social constructions, since they use shared structures and categories. Migration is not only the experience of crossing a border: it is part of a life project, often negotiated within the group or the community of origin. It implies entering a new community and culture, and represent a threat to personal and collective identities. In this regard, narratives play an important role in giving this experience a meaning, in defining roles and expectations, and as a cognitive resources for re-defining identities. Stories about the experience of migrants can be of interest both from a historical and a sociological perspective, and can be found in several forms within each culture: songs, tales, pictures, novels and movies. In this workshop, students will be invited to work on their memories, to find narratives about the migration experiences within their own cultures; they will also be guided to analyse them in terms of stories to find out the categories that describe, and frame, individuals experience of migration.