Memory and identity in migration: crisis or consolidation?

Abstract

This panel interrogates how migration affects collective memory and political identity. International migration is usually a major life event and may therefore be experienced as an identity crisis, changing one’s professional, social or cultural roles, questioning one’s status in society and leading to reflection on previously held convictions. If existing political identities clash with those in the new society or migrants are excluded from discursive constructions of the national community, struggles over belonging and feelings of exclusion may arise. However, migration need not necessarily be experienced in this way, especially if the receiving society makes it relatively easy for individuals to retain or improve their status. Even if individuals renegotiate their identities in the new context, they may come out finding their original identities consolidated rather than changed. With Brexit and Covid-19, two recent crises have led to situations where migration projects which may have originally seemed relatively unproblematic have retroactively been cast into potential crisis situations. Brexit has led to EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU who may not have previously seen themselves as migrants being defined as such, and they have had additional hurdles imposed for remaining in their adopted country. Covid-19 has led to governments around the world imposing travel restrictions, often forcing people who were used to frequently crossing borders to remain in one country, throwing fluid and circular migration projects into jeopardy. This panel therefore asks, under what circumstances is migration experienced as a crisis of identity, and how are memories, national and political identities re-evaluated in migration? Whereas collective memory is often used to explain political phenomena, such as the turn to nationalist and authoritarian politics in post-socialist Europe, the migration experience can be expected to complicate any connection between the two. In turn, what is the role of the receiving society’s migration policy and national memories in this process? The confrontation with different memories and political culture may lead migrants to question attitudes previously taken for granted, and nationalist narratives in particular are likely to be disrupted by the experience of being an ‘outsider’. At the same time, collective memories used to build national identities in receiving societies may exclude migrants, and migrants’ collective memories may not be given room in the new environment.

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