Narrative-biographical Interviews Research Articles

Tuvan Family Photo Album: Social Practices of Creation and Storage

The authors analyze the social practices of creating and storing a Tuvan family photo album throughout the XX - early XXI century. The sources of the study are the materials of narrative biographical interviews with ten respondents - indigenous residents of Tuva of different ages which were recorded by the authors in April - May 2023. The appearance of photo albums, the features of their creation and storage reflect the general history of photo albums in the Soviet state, and now in Russia. The authors point out that in the history of photo albums there appear the Tuvan traditions, for example, in photo frames inside the yurt there are photographs of relatives, domestic animals (horses), and elements of national cuisine. But due to the events of the XX century, the issue of loss and theft of photographs and photo albums became relevant for Tuvans. In the XXI century, Tuvans have a wide variety of photo albums on different media, and today family photo albums also represent the ethnicity of people.

The Processual Nature of Volunteer Engagement: A Reconstruction of Career Patterns Based on the Narratives of Interviewees Involved in Non-Profit Activities

The article is intended to reconstruct the career stages of volunteers. As a result of the biographical data analysis, three stages of the volunteering career were outlined: preparation, institutionalization, and, potentially, professionalization. The conditions and contexts of their occurrence were also reconstructed. Secondly, the patterns of volunteering careers were described, namely, the ‘structured action scheme’ with its ‘axiological’ and ‘pragmatic’ variants; a ‘post-trajectory’ pattern, and the pattern of ‘mature participation’ and ‘biographical metamorphosis’. In this qualitative sociological study, transcriptions of narrative biographical interviews were analyzed. The procedures of the classic version of the grounded theory methodology were applied. Some concepts developed by Fritz Schütze in the field of the biographical analysis were also used.

PROBLEMS OF INTEGRATION OF KANDAS INTO KAZAKHSTANI SOCIETY BASED ON THE RESULTS OF FIELD RESEARCH

This article deals with the actual problem of integrating kandas into the Kazakh society. The authors set a goal to study the process of migration and adaptation of repatriates in Kazakhstan based on the theory of A. Ager and A. Strang, according to which there are 10 criteria for the success of integration. The findings of the study are based on the documentary and conceptual analyzes of the media and social networks. Documents and laws on migration were also analyzed in order to understand the practical implementation of the adopted regulations. In addition, field research was taken as the basis of the study - narrative-biographical interviews with repatriates in 3 regions of Kazakhstan: Almaty region, Esik; East Kazakhstan region, Shygys village; and North Kazakhstan region, Sergeevka village. These field studies were carried out in July-August 2023 under the project “Identification aspects of the kandas integration to Kazakhstani society” to study the degree of their integration into society and the features of their self-identification. Existing problems were revealed and tasks were set for solution in the foreseeable future.

СЕМЕЙНЫЕ ФОТОАЛЬБОМЫ ТУВИНЦЕВ СЕГОДНЯ

The article analyzes the social practices of creating and storing a Tuvan family photo album in the XXI century. The sources of the study were the materials of narrative biographical interviews with ten respondents - the indigenous inhabitants of Tuva, Tuvans of different ages, which the authors of the article recorded in April - May 2023. In the XXI century. Tuvans have a wide variety of p hoto albums on different media, and today, family photo albums, among other things, represent the ethnicity of people.ethnicity of people.

Caring masculinities among working‐class men in blue‐collar occupations in the UK: Understanding biographies of care

AbstractResearch considering men, boys, and the concept of caring masculinities has proliferated in the last five years, although attention has predominantly been given to privileged men's practices of care in the private realm. In this article, we explore caring masculinities among working‐class men in the United Kingdom employed in blue‐collar work, highlighting the possibilities for transformation and change stemming from men in the margins. Drawing on narrative biographical interviews, we analyze in‐depth case studies from two men. Their biographies illustrate practices and an ethos of care interwoven throughout both paid‐work and other aspects of their lives, drawing attention to how caring dispositions are formed through histories of care throughout the lifecourse for working‐class men. We also consider how care can circulate in workplaces that have been considered “low on care”, and how these men draw on working‐class values of care and solidarity to challenge logics of capital at work.

Is Homicide a Turning Point in the Life of Perpetrators? A Narrative Analysis of the Life Stories of Marginalized and Middle-Class Male Homicide Offenders in Metropolitan Buenos Aires, Argentina

This paper aims to analyze the relevance given to violent deaths and imprisonment by male homicide perpetrators in their biographical reconstructions. Drawing on narrative criminology, this study examines the offenders’ emic terms, rationalities, and stories. The analysis is based on seventy-three purposefully selected narrative-biographical interviews and field observations in prisons and homes of former convicts (2016-2020) in Metropolitan Buenos Aires, Argentina. The corpus was analyzed following an inductive thematic coding strategy using ATLAS.ti. Three central narratives about homicide and incarceration emerged: “opportunity,” “rock bottom,” and “disruptive.” For most, homicide was described as a biographical opportunity to rethink their lives, pursue new pathways, and “stabilize” a previously uncontrolled lifestyle. However, homicides perpetrated by respondents with higher socioeconomic status were disruptive events. Participants used stoic rationality—the positive appraisal of painful experiences—to structure their sense-making and stories of violence. This rationality permeated perpetrators’ presentations of themselves, their turning points and lived experiences, and the violence performed and suffered. This paper grapples with the widespread assumption that homicide is a radical change in the lives of offenders and questions the universal meaning of violent death. Performing violence is not only neutralized but is also seen as an expected and inaugural event in life stories, dependent on the worldviews of the social actors.

Why? How Perpetrators of Male-Male Homicide Explain the Crime.

This paper identifies the explanatory narratives used by perpetrators of male-male homicide in Buenos Aires (Argentina) to make sense of this crime. Drawing upon narrative criminology and masculinities theories, this study enquires into the rationalisations of perpetrators, considering their emic terms, rationalities and stories. Fieldwork was conducted between 2016 and 2020, and a convenience sample strategy was employed for participant recruitment. The analysis is based upon seventy-three narrative-biographical interviews with offenders, and field observations in prisons and homes of former convicts. The corpus was analysed following an inductive thematic coding strategy using Atlas.Ti. Eight narratives were typified, considering how men talked about agency and change, and the explanatory locus of the stories: 'rebel', 'affected', 'idiot', 'either him or me', 'repeating the story', 'gang', 'betrayed' and 'victim'. These accounts revealed two paradoxes about violence perpetration storytelling and its discursive management: men can commit a homicide and present themselves as not responsible for it and, simultaneously, they use, reconfigure and negotiate expert theories and scientific labels to explain away, excuse and justify lethal violence. This study argues that accounts are not merely neutralisation strategies, but the rationalisations of the perpetrators' experiences, and the foundation for how they relate to and inhabit penal institutions. This paper contributes to the understanding of how those explanations shape past and future actions, and how masculinities, biographical processes and violence performance are interconnected.

Building size among economists: how academic career trajectories pave the way to symbolic visibility

ABSTRACT Economists receive high social recognition in media, politics and business discourses where they often obtain a status as ‘star economists’ and ‘financial prophets’. This paper investigates the social conditions that make the formation of size in the economic sciences possible. It analyses the institutional constraints, professional networks, forms of academic knowledge and publication strategies of early career economists as part of an academic dispositif. A position of ‘size’ is achieved when academics take a privileged scientific discourse position via publications, presentations and various evaluation reports for journals, funds and other academic institutions. To understand the formation of privileged academic discourse positions, we need to investigate the entire construction processes that start already at the earlier phases of the professional biography. Based on narrative-biographical interviews with economists in UK and Germany, this paper will focus on four sorts of resources that are analysed as ‘biographical discourse capital’. Biographical resources as ‘discourse capital’ are mobilised by early career researchers to solve practical problems in their daily life. The paper shows how specific tacit and conceptual knowledge interact with access to professional networks in order to find a ‘proper topic’ that help young economists to finally publish an A+ or ‘Four* ’ paper.

Creating connections for expansive learning in crisis-laden times of long-term unemployment

This paper deals with the crises of long-term unemployment using subject theory, biographical research and critical theory as the framework. Based on narrative-biographical interviews with long-term unemployed people, I identify the factors and conditions that turn long-term unemployment into a crisis, arguing that expansive learning processes and the competence of utopian thinking are essential for creating visions of one’s occupational future as well as (social) utopias, thus, being a way out of these crises. The findings of the data show that subjective crises in times of prolonged unemployment are not always caused by unemployment itself and that existing visions of the occupational future cannot always be pursued

Development and Health of Adults Formerly Placed in Infant Care Institutions - Study Protocol of the LifeStories Project.

A growing volume of research from global data demonstrates that institutional care under conditions of deprivation is profoundly damaging to children, particularly during the critical early years of development. However, how these individuals develop over a life course remains unclear. This study uses data from a survey on the health and development of 420 children mostly under the age of three, placed in 12 infant care institutions between 1958 and 1961 in Zurich, Switzerland. The children exhibited significant delays in cognitive, social, and motor development in the first years of life. Moreover, a follow-up of a subsample of 143 children about 10 years later revealed persistent difficulties, including depression, school related-problems, and stereotypies. Between 2019 and 2021, these formerly institutionalized study participants were located through the Swiss population registry and invited to participate once again in the research project. Now in their early sixties, they are studied for their health, further development, and life-course trajectories. A mixed-methods approach using questionnaires, neuropsychological assessments, and narrative biographical interviews was implemented by a multidisciplinary team. Combining prospective and retrospective data with standardized quantitative and biographical qualitative data allows a rich reconstruction of life histories. The availability of a community sample from the same geographic location, the 1954–1961 cohort of the Zurich Longitudinal Studies, described in detail in a paper in this issue (Wehrle et al., 2020), enables comparison with an unaffected cohort. This article describes the study design and study participants in detail and discusses the potential and limitations of a comparison with a community sample. It outlines a set of challenges and solutions encountered in the process of a lifespan longitudinal study from early childhood into the cusp of old age with a potentially vulnerable sample and summarizes the lessons learned along the way.

Moroccan immigrant mothers’ experiences of Italian preschool institutions. A mixed-method study

ABSTRACT Being an immigrant mother demands both the redefinition of one’s identity as a woman and as a mother and a ‘double cultural mediation’ in children’s upbringing, between the culture of origin and that of the host country. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) are key settings to supporting the wellbeing and the integration of immigrants. This contribution presents research conducted in Italy within the international ISOTIS project (www.isotis.org). Drawing on 114 structured interviews and 12 narrative-biographical interviews, this paper analyses how Moroccan mothers described their relationship with the ECEC system, teachers, and other parents. While survey data indicated that mothers who perceived discrimination were likely to participate less, the qualitative interviews showed that the ECEC settings were generally supportive and non-discriminatory. The ECEC services’ support resulted to be a turning point in the educational and social path of children and mothers themselves. The relationship with the teacher was depicted mostly as positive and meaningful, though the Italian parents’ network seemed harder to join, unveiling a segmented experience of social inclusion and exclusion between in and out of the school context. The findings may contribute to identifying factors facilitating or hindering immigrant parents’ full inclusion and participation in the community life.

Spirituality AND Contingency in Narrative Biographical Interviews with Primary School Leaders of Catholic Schools in the Netherlands

Spirituality AND Contingency in Narrative Biographical Interviews with Primary School Leaders of Catholic Schools in the Netherlands

Masculinity and Help-Seeking Among Men With Depression: A Qualitative Study.

Background: Many studies indicate that men are more reluctant to seek help for mental health problems than women. Traditional ideas of masculinity are often seen as a cause of this phenomenon. However, little is known about the diversity of experiences during the processes of help-seeking and service use among men with depression who have already utilized mental health services. This study aims to explore men's experiences and attitudes toward depression, help-seeking, and service use in order to develop gender-sensitive services.Methods: Narrative-biographical interviews were conducted with men treated for depression (n = 12). Interview topics included individual experience with depression, help-seeking behavior, and mental health service use. Transcripts were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.Results: Before seeking treatment, men's help-seeking behavior was negatively affected by internalized masculine norms. However, findings indicate a change of attitudes toward depression after mental health service use. Men with depression emphasized a salutogenic perspective toward mental health problems and critically reflected on masculine norms. The positive function of men-only groups were described as key for successful service use.Conclusions: Men with depression reported experiences toward help-seeking and service use on four different levels: (i) attitudes toward depression, (ii) perception of societal views on depression, (iii) experiences within the family context and (iv) experiences with mental health services. Interventions to reduce the stigma of being “unmanly” and to improve men's capacity to cope with being unable to work should be developed. Peer-led men-only groups may increase participants' self-esteem and assist in disclosing weaknesses. In the context of GPs' mediating role, training for health professionals concerning the impact of masculine norms on mental health is recommended.

Transnational Social Capital in Migration: The example of Educational Migration between Bulgaria and Germany

Focusing on student migration from Bulgaria to Germany, this article examines what types of social capital are accumulated, transformed and implemented through migration, who profits from the investment, and how. The empirical work consists of 60 narrative biographical interviews with migrants and returnees to Bulgaria. The research reveals that the accumulation and investment of social capital takes place throughout the migratory trajectory—starting well before leaving—and is embedded in a transnational social space. Transnational networks exist as family, peer and professional networks, and all of them have a specific meaning for the migrants. Family networks are naturally present; they provide bonding social capital and thus have a stabilizing function for the individual’s identity. Professional networks have a strongly bridging function, helping the young migrants to manage status transitions. After return the transnational social capital acquired during the migratory stay helps returnees to re-integrate and find their way into the Bulgarian labour market. It also encourages them to pursue activities which are meaningful for civil society development, or for innovative (social) entrepreneurship. Thus, transnational social capital helps migrants to align their biographical development to the future, considering the post-transformative environment of Bulgaria, thereby helping to manage transformative changes and supporting societal modernization processes.

Forced Labor in Nazi Germany: Online Archive of Interviews and Related Educational Online Platform

Introduction.The article deals with the problem of forced labor in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Despite the existence of profound scientific publications devoted to this problem in Russia and abroad, it still needs to be developed. The article emphasizes the urgency of its research in historical, anthropological and humanities perspective, because personal experience of those who survived after forced labor in Nazi Germany, must be stored in collective memory and comprehended by subsequent generations. Methods and materials. Digital Humanities based on the method of oral history allows to solve this problem. The article presents two options of practical implementation of the issue: the online archive of the interview Forced Labor in 1939-1945. Memories and history and related online platform Learning based on interviews. Forced labor in 1939-1945. The archive includes about 600 narrative biographical interviews with victims of Nazi forced labor in 26 countries. The site accompanying the archive is now available in English, German, Russian and Czech. The second project is based on six specially selected interviews from the archive. Broad source base and nationally-oriented concept of forced labor in Nazi Germany, presented on the platform, create the historical context necessary for using this resource primarily in the secondary educational system of the Russian Federation. Analysis and results. The article shows the possibility of using archive-interviews in science and education, and emphasizes that traditional and new methods of historical research can complement each other. The article emphasizes that biographical films created on the basis of interviews can make the memory of forced labor in Nazi Germany, first of all, of “eastern workers” and Soviet prisoners of war more visible in Russian cultural memory. Contribution of authors to writing an article. Characteristics of peculiarity of oral historical sources, online collections of interviews, compensation payments are given by D. Thousendfreund. Analytics of the project “Forced Labor 1939-1945. Memoirs and History “and online platform” Learning based on interviews. Forced labor 1939-1945”, as well as conclusions are prepared by N.P. Timofeev. Introduction, problem historiography and general editing of the article belong to T.V. Evdokimova.

Intra-European mobility and the formation of a European society? German mobile graduates’ early careers in trans-/national professional fields

Despite current economic and political crises, the intra-European mobility of students and young, highly qualified professionals is still widely regarded as a central mechanism contributing to the formation of an emerging European society. Approaching this issue, the article draws on recent conceptual attempts, inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, Neil Fligstein and others, that conceive of a European society as a set of interwoven transnational fields, and asks how such “free movers” might actually contribute to the formation of such fields. Based on narrative-biographical interviews with Germans, who graduated abroad, this article examines three different types of trajectories experienced by these “free movers” as they move across country borders and pursue their careers in professional fields, some of which turn out as rather transnational, while others still appear to be fairly national in their setup. Contrary to general theoretical expectations, it is therefore argued that this kind of intra-European mobility only furthers the formation of transnational fields under certain conditions.

From pioneer migration to family reunification: Polish women’s narratives of lifestyle preferences in Bologna, Italy

In the article I analyse the emergence of lifestyle considerations among former labour migrants and the importance of these new preferences for their choice to settle in the new location. The paper critically engages with the theoretical framework of ‘lifestyle migration’ and discusses its applicability to labour migrants from Central-Eastern Europe settling in Mediterranean countries. I present the interplay between economic and lifestyle reasoning based on two narrative biographical interviews with migrants in Bologna, drawing on my comparative qualitative research in Italy and the UK. The pioneer female migrants went to Italy as care workers in order to fulfill their households’ immediate economic needs. During the years of circular migration the women developed ties to Italy, but found prolonged periods of separation from their families no longer acceptable. The female migrants opted to transfer their whole households to Bologna. Based on the women’s experience and preferences, the families’ consumption preferences and leisure activities transformed in the course of settlement in the Italian city. I claim that lifestyle is a fruitful concept in researching migrants’ changing aspirations, way of life in the new location and the reasons for staying. This approach allows to go beyond the typologies based on the initial motivations for migration.

Społeczne i edukacyjne uwarunkowania biograficznych doświadczeń w narracjach pokolenia 1947

W artykule zaprezentowano wyniki analizy transkrypcji wywiadów narracyjno-biograficznych przeprowadzonych z emerytowanymi nauczycielami akademickimi Instytutu Socjologii Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, którzy rozpoczęli studia w roku 1965. Byli oni zatem przedstawicielami pokolenia, które urodziło się tuż po II wojnie światowej. Rozmowy dotyczyły ich wspomnień związanych z dwoma okresami składającymi się na pamięć komunikacyjną tej grupy pokoleniowej: studiami w latach 1965–1970 oraz późniejszą pracą akademicką. Pierwsza część artykułu poświęcona została krótkiemu opisowi zależności między ideologiczną doktryną a statusem socjologii jako nauki. Druga część zawiera analizę transkrypcji dokonaną w dwóch zasadniczych obszarach problemowych: doświadczeń formacyjnych związanych z wydarzeniami marcowymi 1968 roku oraz relacji wybitnych naukowców z ich uczniami przyjmujących formę mistrz–uczeń, opisanej za pomocą retorycznej figury „mistrza”.

Foreign Burglars: Primary Results of an Interview Study with Arrested Offenders in Germany

Given that the domestic burglary rate in Germany has been on the rise for years, there is currently a huge debate in political arenas and in the media concerning the offenders—especially foreign offenders. However, there is little specific research on burglars, particularly foreign burglars. This paper reports on the main results of a qualitative interview study with convicted foreign offenders in Germany. We conducted 30 narrative-biographical interviews with offenders from 15 different countries. The findings suggest the stereotype of foreign burglars in high-crime gangs is too one-dimensional. Moreover, there is a large range of different motives, biographical backgrounds, and modi operandi. Further, results show that specific circumstances in Germany support the behavior of foreign criminal, such as accommodation possibilities from contacts already living in Germany, or the availability of local fences (i.e. receivers of stolen goods).

‘It really is about telling people who asylum seekers really are, because we are human like anybody else’: Negotiating victimhood in refugee advocacy work

This article explores how refugee advocates, and refugees themselves, manage social hostility towards refugees and migrants through their talk, specifically how this hostility is managed through orientation to the category ‘victim’. Case studies from the publicity materials of four advocacy organisations, as well as the ‘internal’ talk of their staff, volunteers and beneficiaries collected via Narrative Biographical Interviews, are analysed using discourse analytic methods, specifically Membership Categorisation Analysis. This allows insight into the differing aspects of the organisation’s talk and allows analysis of how orientation to the victim category is distributed and managed across the ‘dialogical network’. This discourse analytic approach, sensitive to how members of the ‘dialogical network’ make hostile and sympathetic voices relevant features of their local talk and manage categorisations of refugees in often tacit ways, highlights a pattern of category change, where a reworking of the dominant modes of refugee representation performed by the organisations in their publicity materials is achieved by their members and beneficiaries. The category work negotiated by advocate and refugee informants rearranges the components of the helping relationship, centring the experience, voice and strength of asylum seekers/refugees, and de-centres the objectives of the helping organisations – offering insights into new ways forward for refugee advocacy as a practice of solidarity beyond charity.