Encounters, Resonance and Structural Stories: Conceptualizing Temporalities of Privileged Migrant Trajectories

Publikation: KonferencebidragKonferenceabstrakt til konferenceForskning

Abstract

Recent explicit examinations of temporalities of migrant’s journeys have profoundly questioned once firmly imagined temporal linearity of migrant movement. Especially research with irregular and precarious migrants has highlighted different rhythms and cadences of often ‘staggered’ mobility and migrants’ complex negotiations of waiting and stuck-ness. Researchers of privileged migration have also been asked to pay attention to the temporal openness and eventfulness of migration. This paper offers a conceptual framework through which to make sense of this eventfulness, especially in relation to such migrants’ decisions and trajectories. I draw here on (post)migration urban studies, broader social theory and urban mobilities studies respectively to bring together the concepts of encounter, resonance and structural stories, highlighting in particular the temporal aspects of this framework. If encounters – with people, experiences or objects - seem temporally singular, as well as subject-centered, the amplification of encounters, or resonance, is much more temporally complex. At the same time both unfold in environments saturated with structural stories that people draw on to make sense of resonant encounters. Empirically, I analyze ethnographic research and interviews conducted with migrants who have moved, some several times, within the eventually more firmly established and thickly textured transnational field between Denmark and Israel; some four decades while others ten years ago. I highlight how over time the types of resonant encounters have diversified and how they work to effectuate people’s mobility, or lack of it. Likewise, the paper traces a shift in the kinds of structural stories people draw on in their narratives about transnational mobility, highlighting a growing importance of stories focused on subject-relevant quality of life relative to those focused on collective aspirations.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Publikationsdato2022
StatusUdgivet - 2022
Begivenhed19th IMISCOE Annual Conference: Migration and Time: Temporalities of Mobility, Governance, and Resistance - Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo , Norge
Varighed: 29 jun. 20221 jul. 2022
Konferencens nummer: 19
https://www.imiscoe.org/events/imiscoe-events/1380-19th-imiscoe-annual-conference

Konference

Konference19th IMISCOE Annual Conference
Nummer19
LokationOslo Metropolitan University
Land/OmrådeNorge
ByOslo
Periode29/06/202201/07/2022
AndetMigration is intertwined with time in myriad ways and at multiple scales. In individual lives, migration propels change over time and entails engagement with personal pasts and futures. Time and temporalities are structuring migration experiences, when refugees are granted temporary protection, labour migrants are offered temporary employment and rights of residency, and undocumented migrants are living with uncertainties for the future. The governance of migration is also the governance of migrants’ relations to and experiences of time. Governance of migration happens in time – sometimes in the form of rapid changes in times of “crisis”, but perhaps also through postponement when the urgency has passed.<br/><br/>Attention to time and temporalities illuminates processes of othering and patterns of inequalities, as well as forms of resistance and adaptations to policies and institutions. The rapid changes in laws, regulations, policies and practices of migration also have repercussions on the topics, theoretical approaches, and methodologies of migration scholars. These and other perspectives on time and migration have flourished as part of the emerging ‘temporal turn’ in migration studies. The theme ‘migration and time’ brings out disciplinary, methodological and theoretical diversity of migration research with a shared focus.
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