Conference Agenda

Migrating to another country represents a major challenge for individuals and groups. According to Zittoun (2004, 2008), migrants go through a transition process that involves, among other aspects, identity changes and new positionings within the host society.

Throughout this process, migrants face a number of difficulties and obstacles in becoming full members of the new society, in terms of both rights and obligations. To cope with these difficulties, migrant individuals and groups employ a range of strategies and resources, both personal and social. Among social resources, family support stands out as particularly important.

Our study focuses on how a four-generation Venezuelan family living in Seville, southern Spain, has faced the obstacles of migration and reconstructed their selves in the new context.

A semi-structured group interview was conducted. The interview was transcribed and analyzed along three axes: (1) the difficulties and obstacles found in the migration experience; (2) the resources used to face these obstacles; and (3) I and We positions and voices in the narrative.

The results show that participants elaborated an integrated and coherent family narrative (Fivush & Merrill, 2016), in which a strong sense of we-ness was observed. We-positions such as We as a family that holds together, we as Venezuelans, and We as hard workers were identified as the core positions within the narrative. The sense of We-ness enabled the participants to face the main obstacles posed by migration, such as economic difficulties, xenophobia and racism and provided them with a sense of continuity and agency across the difficulties encountered in their migration experience.

How do migrants provide and receive care from the families they leave behind? How do they construct a sense of connection amid the disconnection created by physical separation? This paper explores the complex dynamics of family care in the context of migration, using concepts form dialogical self theory and semiotic cultural psychology. I combine Baldassar’s (Baldassar, 2007; Baldassar & Merla, 2013) notion of circulation of care with the semiotic cultural psychology’s focus on imaginaries of migration (Glăveanu, 2020) and DST concepts of I-positions and we-positions (Español, de la Mata & Cornejo, 2021) to explore how family members negotiate the need for dependence and connection with the need for independence and separation across borders. Through a case study of Tania, a young adult who migrated from Estonia to the UK, I examine these dynamics in the context of changing parent-child roles and relationships in the family. The paper contributes to the body of research on the non-economic dimensions of educational migration by focusing on how family relationships shape international students’ psychosocial adaptation and well-being. In addition to considering the complex dynamics of providing and receiving care across borders I argue for the importance of support systems that address these complex emotional dynamics, ensuring that international students and their families are equipped to handle the evolving nature of care across borders.

Dialogical Self Theory (DST) conceptualizes the self as a dynamic multiplicity of I-positions undergoing continuous reorganization. Proculturation theory extends this premise by proposing that sustained intercultural engagement catalyzes qualitative transformation of personal and cultural meaning systems. Intercultural experience, in this view, is expected to reorganize the dialogical field of the self. Yet what follows theoretically when such a transformation appears minimal or absent? This study examines the cultural and personal developmental trajectory of a 28-year-old woman with a history of internal migration within Georgia and multiple periods of residence in Italy. A person-centered ethnographic interview elicited in-depth retrospective narratives and emotional reflections concerning migration and identity positioning. Despite transnational mobility, her intercultural engagement remained structurally limited due to financial precarity and constrained social participation. The analysis reveals a relative continuity of core I-positions across pre- and post-migration phases. She neither shifted toward intensified nationalism nor toward cosmopolitan identification. Instead, her dialogical configuration remained comparatively stable, while her motivational horizon was primarily oriented toward socioeconomic advancement and professional consolidation in Italy. From a classical proculturational perspective, intercultural exposure should stimulate qualitative reorganization of the dialogical self. However, this case complicates that assumption. If proculturation presupposes transformation, does limited observable change imply limited or absent proculturation? Or might the consolidation and stabilization of an ongoing dialogical self-structure under intercultural conditions constitute a specific form of proculturation? This case invites a theoretical reconsideration within DST: development may not only manifest as expansion, differentiation, or innovation of I-positions, but also as the strengthening, integration, or strategic consolidation of an existing dialogical configuration. The question, therefore, is not simply whether change occurred, but how stability itself might function as a developmental achievement within intercultural contexts.