Migrant Memories Research Articles

The image of the absent narrators: personal migrant memories in Žilnik’s docu-experiments

ABSTRACT The study is concerned with the possibility of reframing the visibility of migrants onscreen in Želimir Žilnik’s documentary films. It is claimed that Žilnik’s selected works such as the Kennedi trilogy open up a space for reversing the lens of the dominant hegemonies of viewing by enacting a productive instability in performing their actual lives on the one side but also provoking the spectators to reconstruct stories in the same way the protagonists do. In including the voice of the migrant, as well as (de)constructing his own presence, we can understand Žilnik’s films as formulating a political background in the very logic of the frame that disrupts self-colonising or balkanising perspective as it gives voice to those that were usually silent, silenced or implicated. The study proposes a possible space, both physical and epistemological for the articulation of the right to be seen in films that thematise those usually found on the outskirts of social visibility by proposing that complex narratives and images irreducible to the general idea of ‘the Balkans’ can be a transformative social and cultural gesture as it rearticulate power-positions of those marginalised of the level of counter-narrative, counter-archive, and the counter-image.

London's little histories of the Sikhs: Rav Singh in conversation

ABSTRACT A little History of the Sikhs is a London-based initiative that explores traces of Sikh history found within the museums, memorials, parks, and streets of London. Through walking tours, they work to introduce their audiences to the shared history of the Sikhs and Britain and touch upon critical moments in the making of British Asian history, such as Partition. In this interview with the Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination project team, Rav Singh, founder of A little History of the Sikhs, will discuss the role of urban space in London in the preservation of cultural memory, reflect on participants’ engagement with the tours and the significance of preserving and transmitting memories of empire, Partition, and migration in the diaspora.

Partition at 75: reflections on migrant memories in the British South Asian diaspora

ABSTRACT In 2017, the 70th anniversary of the Partition of British India was widely discussed in the UK, not only within academic and cultural circles, but also in popular culture. Five years later, on the 75th anniversary of Partition, the scholarly, cultural and community interest in the events of 1947 intersected with the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of the South Asian population from Uganda, and the 70th anniversary of the Language Movement that led towards Bangladesh independence in 1971 - the 50th anniversary of which was celebrated just the year before. Based on the work of the Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination research project (Loughborough University) this article will explore the entanglement of the memories of these events within the South Asian diaspora, and how their transmission and communication shape the construction of contemporary diasporic identity and concepts of community, belonging and ‘home.’

METHODOLOGY AND MEANING OF THE 3D MODELLING OF THE LOST BAALSHAMIN TEMPLE IN PALMYRA

Abstract. The Baalshamin temple in Palmyra was completely destroyed by ISIL in 2015. To address this issue, the “Collart-Palmyre Project” at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) digitally published the scientific archive of Paul Collart who was in charge of the excavation of the temple in the 1950’. Since 2017, the Project makes the archives accessible on an online open access database (tiresias.unil.ch). A 3D reconstruction of the temple has been realized by the UNIL team in collaboration with ICONEM. The 3D models (including handily drawn elements) are now being integrated onto a PoTree platform ( https://github.com/potree/potree) that allows archival items to be geolocated, associating them with the architectural or archaeological objects they document.The challenge here was to access metadata on the 3D model and to ease access to the archives through online tools.We also published a diachronic 3D model showing the different periods of occupation of the site (from the second century BC to the ninth century AD). Partnership with NGO’s also permit the presentation of 3D models to displaced Syrian refugees in the Spirit of the Faro Convention. Last but not least, the Project follows the guidelines of the London Charter and the Sevilla principles for Virtual Archaeology and questions the broader facets of neo-colonialist, economic and nationalist agendas that emerges from the 'migration of digital heritage' as assets to be exploited. This project wants to explore how these digital assets provide a scaffold for the memories of migrants.

Valaam memory breaks: valaam’s memorial community in search of the lost island

The article is focused on the memorial community of Valaam, which evolved after the buildings of Valaam Monastery were handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church and the locals were forced to leave the island. I turn to an analysis of a variety of recollections and different forms of incorporating the history of the archipelago into the personal biographies of its recent inhabitants. Considering Valaam as an essential place of memory in the biographies of its former inhabitants, I try to answer the question of why, unlike other migrants who return to their homeland in search of traces of their past, the resettlers from Valaam refuse to come back, preferring to speak of the island as lost and inaccessible. The article gives a brief history of the post-war development of the archipelago, the emergence of a community of “keepers” in the 1970s and 1980s, and traces several biographies of local residents whose youth was linked to life and work on the island. Drawing on research on the memories of migrants, I argue that the contemporary memory of the archipelago is a territory of phantom pain caused not only by forced displacement, but also by the loss of the former locals’ status as experts and defenders of the historical and cultural heritage of Valaam. The article draws on field material from the years of 2020-2021.

Telling translocal histories: Reading the migrant life-worlds in Gulf-Keralan writing

This article discusses three Malayalam texts written by Gulf-Kerala migrants: V. Musafar Ahammed’s (2014) Kudiyettakkarante Veedu [House of the emigrant], a collection of memoirs; Benyamin’s (2016) Kudiyettam: Pravasathinte Malayalivazhikal [Emigration: Malayali routes of exile], an anthology of essays; and Sam Pynummoodu’s (2016) Kuwait Indian Kudiyetta Charitram: Kuwaitile Indian Pravasavum Malayali Sanidhyavum [A history of Indian emigration into Kuwait: India’s Emigration to and Malayali Presence in Kuwait], a historical work. This essay introduces them as microhistorical writings that attempt to document Kerala’s diasporic history — in particular, the history of the Gulf-Keralan diaspora to which the writers belong. At the micro-level, these diasporic histories are distinguished by their multiplicity, particularity, and dialogic association. Furthermore, this essay maintains that the writings acknowledge the agential force of the migrant subject, thereby reinforcing the primacy of the migrant writer and migrant protagonists. In the course of translating subjective experiences into vivid moments of articulation, migrant memory summons a heterogeneous narrative fabric that is characterized by epistemic disjunctures and methodological shifts. Consequently, these texts present an alternative to the canonical literature (as manifested within the ambit of state and academic engagements) on Gulf-Kerala migration, thereby reinventing the dominant historical discourse and recontextualizing history in the private realm of embodied narratives.

The Transformation of Family Memory of Migrants in the Light of Intergenerational Dynamics: on the Example of the Lipetsk Region

The article is based on the results of questioning and interviewing representatives of the first, one and a half and second generations of migrants in the Lipetsk region. On the basis of praxeological and transnational approaches, the family memory of migrants was considered as a configuration of relevant narratives and practices that simultaneously take into account the historical cultures of the country of origin and the host society. Family commemorations play an important role in the construction of the identity of migrant communities in the Russian provinces. The study revealed the persistence of the factor of family and compatriot relations as the main reason for choosing the place of resettlement. Analysis of the results of the survey and interviewing indicates a high level of openness of the first, one and a half and second generations of migrants in relation to the Russian language and secular holidays in Russia. At the same time, migrants continue to consider the religious holidays of the country of origin and belonging to the diaspora as markers of their identity. The study showed that migrants continue to actively oppose the images of the host society and the country of origin, which indicates the coexistence of communities of memory of local residents and migrants as "parallel" to each other. Significant differences between the generations of migrants in assessing the change in lifestyle after migration, in the level of involvement in the religious traditions of the country of origin, in the subject of nostalgia were revealed.

Dancing through time: A methodological exploration of embodied memories

This article responds to an absence of memory studies research methodologies for exploring embodied memories, including its form and content, the lived practices it involves, and its embeddedness in wider socio-political discourses. While conceptualisations of embodiment are central in the field of memory studies, its methodological consequences remain under-developed. We are proposing dance-based methods as having significant potential to address alternative ways of knowing and relating to the past. Drawing on empirical work on both professional and social dance among British Bangladeshi women in London, conducted as part of the 5-year research project Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination, we found embodied remembering to be a social form of doing that can serve to create, preserve and negotiate shared pasts.

MIGRANT HERITAGE: A Dialogue of Objects and Memories in a Barcelona Ethnographic Museum

ABSTRACTThis article describes the “Dialogues with Africa” project of the Barcelona Museum of World Cultures, which consisted of workshops using personal objects of African guests residing in Catalonia, and objects from the museum's African collections. The dialogues revealed the existence of both a migrant memory connected with objects chosen for their capacity to evoke origins and a museum memory linked with artifacts that were chosen as representing distant cultures. The main aim is to describe this migrant memory in relation to the objects and analyze how it connects with the museum's institutional memory in order to contribute to the discussion of the role of ethnographic museums in a plural society. We suggest that incorporating migrant memory will make possible an opening up to new meanings for objects that have been turned into heritage from an exoticizing standpoint, and that this is in keeping with a more inclusive anthropological museology.

Remembering Italian America: Memory, Migration, Identity

Remembering Italian America: Memory, Migration, Identity

Witnessing migrant memories through literature: The case of Nagorno-Karabakh in transnational perspective

This comparative essay explores the relationship between memory and migration/integration through the example of two recent literary texts—the German-language novel All Russians Love Birch Trees by Olga Grjasnowa and a story from the Russian-language “novel in voices” Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich—that portray personal memory of ethnic violence in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1990. In Grjasnowa’s novel, the protagonist’s traumatic memories cannot be integrated into German memory culture, despite the fact that she, as a legal immigrant, enjoys the status of political subject. In reversed dynamics, Alexievich’s protagonist, who remains vulnerable on the political and social level, has been able to articulate her trauma in the presence of the empathetic listener—the implied author. Analyzing narrative devices that aim to engage the reader as a respondent to the characters’ suffering during the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the 1990s and after their arrival in Germany and Russia, this essay identifies a call for a holistic integration of migrants on both the civic level and the level of memory through the medium of secondary witnessing.

Night on earth

This article is a short story involving migrant memories and inter-species triggers. The night inspires a series of recollections among the protagonists.

Migrant Memory, Movement, and Misrecognition: Reactivating Diasporic Experience Toward an Anticolonial Politics of Place

How might diasporic experiences of loss and displacement aid immigrants in responding to and acknowledging Indigenous lands and territories? Drawing from my own immigrant experience, I retrace and reinvent my movement in Tkaronto through walking practices that recover memories of migrancy as a newcomer to the land known as Canada. Such memories can be useful sources for immigrants to consider their relationship to settler colonialism. Reactivating them through movement might elicit a new responsiveness to the land as well as recognition of its caretakers and their struggles. I reflect on the possibilities that such a practice of walking and thinking through embodied memories can open up for undoing the coloniality of thought that underpins migrant aspirations for “a better-than-survival kind of living” (Berlant) and that so often results in assimilation to, and participation in, a settler colonial state.

The Interaction of the Memory of Migrants and the Hosting Community as a Factor in the Development of Regional Identity: the Case of the Kemerovo Region

The subject of the study is the interaction of the cultural memory of migrants and the hosting community. The object of the study is a case of such interaction in the Kemerovo region. The Kuzbass regional authorities support the work of national public associations, through which migrants can support the practices of the country of origin, and also create cultural centers to involve members of the host community in the cultural practices of migrants. Also, the cultural policy of the region involves the involvement of national organizations in urban and regional cultural and educational events. Such a strategy of working with migrants makes it possible to reduce the conflict potential of a multinational entity. The basis for the formation of regional identity is the industrial specifics of the region, which unites all residents of the region, regardless of nationality.

Миграция из Центральной Азии и Казахстана в Алтайский край в 1990–2010 гг. через призму социальной памяти

This article analyzes the process of formation and development of the social memory of migrants from Central Asia and Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet space on the basis of oral history sources created during a historical and ethnographic expedition in the Aleysky district in July 2022. When considering the current problems of migration, it was found out that the social memory of migrants from different Soviet republics is repeated in the storyline, as well as trigger points became the beginning of the formation of traumatic memory. The study revealed that such a memory lives for three generations. It was also indicated that one of the reasons for the "closeness" and silencing of this problem was the fear of speaking out publicly and ignoring the "official" history of these problems.

Temporal dynamics of persistent germinal centers and memory B cell differentiation following respiratory virus infection.

SummaryFollowing infection or immunization, memory B cells (MBCs) and long-lived plasma cells provide humoral immunity that can last for decades. Most principles of MBC biology have been determined with hapten-protein carrier models or fluorescent protein immunizations. Here, we examine the temporal dynamics of the germinal center (GC) B cell and MBC response following mouse influenza A virus infection. We find that antiviral B cell responses within the lung-draining mediastinal lymph node (mLN) and the spleen are distinct in regard to duration, enrichment for antigen-binding cells, and class switching dynamics. While splenic GCs dissolve after 6 weeks post-infection, mLN hemagglutinin-specific (HA+) GCs can persist for 22 weeks. Persistent GCs continuously differentiate MBCs, with “peak” and “late” GCs contributing equal numbers of HA+ MBCs to the long-lived compartment. Our findings highlight critical aspects of persistent GC responses and MBC differentiation following respiratory virus infection with direct implications for developing effective vaccination strategies.

Development and Problematic Issues of Ukraine's Partnership with the Neighbouring EU Member States

The paper highlights development and some problematic issues of Ukraine's relations with the neighbouring European Union Member States - the Republic of Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Slovak Republic, that have been escalated and exploited from time to time by the Russian Federation. This situation poses a potential threat to Ukraine and international security in the Carpathian region and needs to be resolved as soon as possible. This also emphasizes the aggravation of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations after a conservative and essentially authoritarian government, headed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, had come into power in 2010. A perceptible increase in tension between the parties is related to Ukraine's 2017 Education Act and the situation of the Hungarian national minority in Transcarpathia. Additionally, the paper focuses on Ukrainian-Polish contradictions in issues of historical memory and problems of Ukrainian migrants in Poland, Ukrainian-Romanian territorial disputes and some problems of Ukrainian-Slovak relations, in particular regarding the "Rusyns question" and so on. The author stresses that Ukraine belongs geographically and politically to Central Europe, therefore the states of this region are its most obvious friends and partners, and the task of governmental, regional and public institutions, international organisations and regional groupings is to overcome existing conflict situations and problems in mutual relations by joint active and consistent efforts. The factor of European integration, economic cooperation and interdependence of neighbouring countries, security challenges in Europe from Russia's aggression and the latest threats in contemporary international relations are strong levers for this, as well as for deepening interstate partnership and neighbourly, mutually beneficial cooperation between peoples of the Carpathian region

Kreowanie konkurencyjnych pamięci migracyjnych. Patrycja Trzeszczyńska, Diaspora – pamięć – miejsca. Ukraińcy z Polski z lat 80. XX wieku w Kanadzie. Studium etnograficzne, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2019, ss. 346

Creating Competitive Memories by Migrants. Patrycja Trzeszczyńska, Diaspora – pamięć – miejsca. Ukraińcy z Polski z lat 80. XX wieku w Kanadzie. Studium etnograficzne, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2019, ss. 346. The article presents the latest monograph by Patrycja Trzeszczyńska (Diaspora – Memory – Places: The Ukrainians from Poland of the 1980s in Canada. An Ethnographic Study), which analyzes the functioning of the memory of migrants from Poland. The inspiration to undertake to carry out the research was the author’s intention to continue her studies on the memory of the Lemkos. On the basis of the impressive material collected in the course of P. Trzeszczyńska’s three-year field research (conducted in the years 2014–2016), the anthropologist proved the occurrence of a vital ‘diasporic’ transformation in the identity of the migrants who, even if they remember the trauma experienced by their parents, this memory is no longer necessary for them to construct their own Ukrainian identity. In this situation, looking for Lemkos in Canada turned out groundless, since each new wave of migrants from Poland brought along their own memory (or post-memory) of the past, which led to the internal differentiation within the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada as far as both generations and regions are concerned. Thanks to the penetrating analysis of the functioning of the generational memory of migrants from Poland, the author of the monograph expanded the knowledge on the role of memory in the process of creating and enriching cultural identity of contemporary (no only diasporic) communities.

Migration and migratory communities in the focus of memory studies

The article is devoted to the analysis of the specificity and transformation of the research field of the collective memory of migratory communities. It was shown that the era of multiculturalism, which contributed not only to an increase in the number of studies, but also to the expansion of the very aspects of the study of the topic, played a key role in the study of the memory of migratory communities. Three main areas of research were identified and analyzed: a) personal and group memories of migration, as well as the specificity of the collective memory of various migration groups; b) the study of collective perceptions of the past of migrants in the context of the politics of incorporation and the politics of memory of host societies; c) study of the representation of the historical experience of migrations and migratory communities in museum practice. The idea was substantiated that the theoretical and practical potential of addressing the memory of migratory communities contributed not only to the transformation of the research optics of memory studies, but also showed the inevitability of significant changes in the understanding of ontology of collective memory. This found expression in the actualization of the transcultural turn, focused on overcoming methodological nationalism and considering collective memory not only within the framework of certain cultures or communities, but also it’s dynamic beyond cultural and social boundaries. The article analyzes the significance of the transcultural turn for research into the collective memory of migrants.

Towards a History of Mountain Runaways“Migrants” and the Genealogies of Mountain Rescue and Struggles

This paper looks at current migrant crossing on the Alps from the standpoint of a history of runaways. It interrogates the traces left by the recent migrants’ fleeting presence at the Northern French-Italian Alpine border situating these in connection with both the memory of past migrants’ passages and with mountain rescue practices and solidarity networks that have shaped those Alpine valleys. It starts with a section on mobile infrastructures of solidarity deployed at the French-Italian Alpine border, retracing its brief history as well as of the sedimented memory of the struggles in the Susa Valley. The paper moves on with a section about the history of mountain rescue at the French-Alpine border, showing how foreigners and also Italian “clandestine emigrants” were rescued there in the past. It concludes by advancing a history of mountain runaways as an analytical framework to politicise migrants’ passages on the Alps.