Collective Identities in Migration. Biographical Perspectives on Ambivalences and Paradoxes

Roswitha Breckner

doi:10.13189/sa.2014.020103

Abstract

Notwithstanding the deconstruction of essentialist concepts of national or ethnic identity also with respect to the growing movements between nation states and developing transnational spheres (1-4), to construct collective belongings with references to imagined communities(5) based in nation, culture or ethnicity still seems to be a relevant social practice. At the same time, we can observe increasing ambivalences and even paradoxes inherent in these practices. They show when looking at biographical processes in which collective belongings concretely take shape. Based on empirical research on East-West European migration during the Cold War (6), I would like to demonstrate in this article how different biographical experiences interconnect when national, cultural, ethnic or other collective identities emerge, and also when they drop to the background in processes of undoing a collective identity.

Highlights

In social sciences, the significance of collective identities in migration processes normally is discussed by drawing on quantitative data from investigation in which the categories of belonging like ‘national’ or ‘ethnic’ are fixed in the questionnaires
I said to my mother, “You are Armenian; there are Armenians all over the world, why did you give birth to me in Romania? Couldn’t you have stayed in Odessa or where you were born?” And I think, at this juncture, I wish I had not been born in Romania, I really do.” (Stefan Georgescu)
In many interviews I conducted during my research, a specific dynamic of dealing with ascribed as well as accepted or chosen we-relations became apparent

Summary

Introduction

The significance of collective identities in migration processes normally is discussed by drawing on quantitative data from investigation in which the categories of belonging like ‘national’ or ‘ethnic’ are fixed in the questionnaires. In this evaluating coda[7] of a longer story about migration experiences within a biographical interview, Stefan Georgescu – as I call the interviewee – summarizes in a condensed way his experiences with his ethnic and national identities He places them in the context of the twentieth century; in a professional milieu of emigrated artists; and connects them with different life phases (‘young man in America’; ‘over thirty’). Being born in Romania from an Armenian family and after having lived in the US, in France and Germany for longer periods of his life, Stefan presents in this part of the interview an ongoing struggle with his attachments to different national and ethnic collectivities, ending up in ambivalence towards his links to Romania as his place of birth. In migratory situations biographers become aware of ambivalences in building we-relations and have to find ways to deal with attachments to and rejections of ascribed as well as experienced collectivities in changing life contexts and periods with changing relevance (5.)

The Biographical Perspective as Conceptual Approach in Migration Research

The research Context

We-relations in the Case of Stefan Georgescu

Conclusion