Abstract
Reviewed by: Francesca Morra, Oxford Brookes University
Anne Sigfrid Grønseth’s edited book contributes to the study of migration and transnationalism by bringing together ethnographic methodology and the phenomenological approach. All of the contributors share a main question: what does migration tell us about the human condition? Indeed, migration is understood as the prototypical experience of being human, for it highlights the inherent human disposition for movement. With the aim of exploring the common characteristics of everyday lives in migration, this collection of essays outlines an ethnography of lifeworlds and, more specifically, of the experience of living “in-between” different lifeworlds. By tackling the tensions and ambivalences involved in the moving across places, times, and relations, the contributors reflect on the emergence of self from the experience of borders.
The book is composed of six case studies, which could be defined as ethnographies of particularities, of single events, revealing their connection with other stories and other worlds. The core issues of well-being, agency, and creativity emerge from a dialectic between the essays. In the first chapter, Barbara Pinelli considers the role of fantasy and desire in imagining a new life in migration. Between memories of the past and hopes for the future, the experience of Rolanda, a Togolese woman seeking asylum in Italy, sheds light on the spaces for agency and inventiveness in marginality. Creativity and hopes are also explored in Anne Sigfrid Grønseth’s chapter describing Malar’s experience of “living in a tunnel,” in between Tamil and Norwegian lifeworlds. Exploring Malar’s interactions with others, Grønseth pays attention to the ways in which a sense of agency and mutuality can develop from intersubjective experiences.
In the third chapter, Maruška Svašek looks into Anna’s autobiographical storytelling about her experience of migration and remigration to Northern Ireland and the Netherlands. In her account, interviews offer a space to reengage with the past and to observe the role of emotions in shaping subjectivity. Naoko Maehara’s chapter analyzes Naomi’s narrative about her migration from Japan to Ireland, with a focus on the role played by the relationship between anthropologist and informant in the construction of the ethnographic account. With the help of a photo-diary, Naomi’s gradual process of appropriation of a life space is followed throughout the work of memory, that shapes, and is shaped by, her present perceptions and acts of imagination. With the aim of challenging the common representation of “refugee” as a distinct category, the fifth case study focuses on the experience of Zhia and Ismat, two young Afghan men claiming asylum in Athens, Greece. In this chapter, Christina Georgiadou considers the two men’s efforts to negotiate exclusion and rebuild a life in exile, looking at the everyday as a zone of transformation, where creativity can be generated from loss.
The last chapter represents one of the most original contributions of the book. Drawing on the notion of “otherizing,” Maša Mikola analyzes the process of relocation of the Ljubljana Asylum Home (Slovenia), emphasizing the paradox of the containment of migrants’ movement in a static structure. The author addresses the question of who, or what, acts of self-harm respond to, looking at the bodies of asylum seekers as a border-zone where the political and the individual intersect. The book closes with an epilogue written by Nigel Rapport, who recalls the main argument of migration as intrinsic to human experience, suggesting that fixed categories should be abandoned in favor of a “circuitous sensibility.” As argued by the author, the study of individual particularity offers a more comprehensive view of the complex, contradictory nature of a human in movement.
Taken together, the essays outline an anthropology of the multiple borderlands existing in migrants’ trajectories, between ethnographer and informants, and, more broadly, between self and other. Being Human, Being Migrant has the (possibly overly) ambitious intent to shed light on the human condition through the study of migration, and thus inspire “a cosmopolitan ethics of solidarity and peaceful co-existence.” Aiming to explore the everyday from an intersubjective perspective, the contributors focus on the performative nature of interviews, thus making for an interesting use of narratives. The ethnographic case studies and the presence of the informants’ voices in the text make the writing vivid and compelling. The volume could be valuable reading for researchers, students, professionals, and policy makers interested in looking at the contribution that an investigation of lifeworlds can make toward understanding the tensions in the experience of migration.