Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai<br />
Through this process, the refugees could be given a chance to share their<br />
experiences with a community gathered in a common space of socialization.<br />
Our work began with a definition of identity in processual and relational<br />
terms. In other words, identity was not considered a fixed entity, but a continuous<br />
process of construction and redefinition of the self from resources<br />
belonging to different and intersecting social and cultural contexts. In this<br />
never-ending construction, memory plays an essential creative role by<br />
reinterpreting the past through a dialectical procedure that examines identity<br />
and diversity in relation to the experiences and needs of the present.<br />
In these pages, our contribution to the Archives of the Memory project, we<br />
have interpreted the refugees’ experiences of antagonism, war and exile,<br />
collecting their memories in order to identify common discursive strategies<br />
used to shape and understand these experiences. In particular, we<br />
attempted to trace patterns in methodologies of interpreting and understanding<br />
the past in relation to present conditions, in order to acknowledge<br />
the “subjective transformation” (Passerini, 1988) engendered by that experience,<br />
rather than focusing on the event alone. This transformation cannot<br />
occur in a void, but tends to be effected a posteriori, in light of the new<br />
needs and difficulties of the present condition. It is in the face of these<br />
needs that new discourses emerge and are mobilized to reinterpret the past.<br />
With these dynamics in mind, it becomes important to observe exactly<br />
which cultural resources, historical events or figures, discursive formations,<br />
and social practices were “chosen” as tools and used to modify the<br />
identity of the individual in relation to a changing social and historical<br />
field. It is vital that these “choices” emerging in the narratives of belonging<br />
and antagonism are understood beyond the politicized, instrumental<br />
and reductive logic of ethnicization. Rather, they must be seen as devices<br />
enabling people to deal with new and unexpectedly changing personal and<br />
social needs. This further makes it necessary to acknowledge and analyse<br />
the process by which tradition is reinvented, even though in doing so, we<br />
run the risk of redefining cultural images, that have long existed in all<br />
coexisting local communities, as legitimate and active elements marking<br />
differences along “ethnic” lines.<br />
Following this idea, we tried to highlight the diversity and similarities of<br />
the different cultures that have coexisted and clashed in the Balkans, wherever<br />
these differences and likenesses emerged in the interviews gathered.<br />
In order to do this, we chose to collect materials with the help of those who<br />
have perhaps been the most marginalized and deliberately repressed social<br />
groups in every ethnic or cultural setting we came across: young people.<br />
The Archives of Memory project has sought to include these young people<br />
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