Conference Agenda

The symposium is dedicated to the research project “Transgenerational effects on families after forced migration“ (Borcsa, 2023).

The aim of Part 1 of the project is to reconstruct family patterns of processing and transgenerational transmission of forced migration experiences in German and Polish families who were resetteled as an effect of the Second World War (WW II). Narrative individual interviews were conducted with the representatives of the oldest generation, a couple interview with the middle generation and a family interview across the generations.

Part 2 of the project, is dedicated to resilience-promoting narratives. The aim is to identify family coping strategies in dealing with experiences of loss and trauma in family (sub-)systems fleeing from Mariupol to Germany and Poland as a result of the war in Ukraine. Mothers were interviewed in narrative individual interviews. Subsequently, a subsystem interview was conducted together with the eldest child.

In this presentation, we focus on the relation between memory and intergenerational narratives of family mobility including resettlement after WW II. Intergenerational narratives are originally told by parents and received by children, and over retellings children dynamically participate in the conversations having a sense of “ownership” over the stories (McLean, 2016). We are interested in transgenerational scripts of survival and suffering that are linked to family mobility and the existence of this mobility in family memory (Borcsa & Wetzel 2023). To meet this objective, the representatives of three generations of the family were interviewed.

Multimodal conversation analysis was used to investigate how individual memory and family memory are performed in the conversation. We follow Kitzinger (2006), who states that cognitions can be revealed in interaction. We treat the memory as the “capacity that underpins the interaction and is made manifest through it” (Kitzinger, 2006, p.79). Our research findings show that: (1) individual memory and family memory are performed in a distinctive way in the interaction. (2) Individual experience of family mobility is not only performed in a different way but also remains not fully integrated into family memory. (3) The family memory constitutes the family script or dominant family narratives.

As a consequence of the Second World War, forty million people in Europe including children and their families were forced to migrate because of their nationality or religion (Schwartz, 2013). At the end of 1944, East German civilian population had to flee e.g., from areas such as Upper Silesia (today Poland) or were later resettled in an "organised" manner (Czerniakiewicz & Czerniakiewicz, 2005). Challenges consisted in processing the traumatic experiences and sorting out one's identity at the same time (Peters, 2018; Kossert, 2020). In family narratives, narrative identity develops interactively and communicatively through engaging in positioning activities (Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann, 2004; Bamberg, 1997, 2004, 2005, 2011).

The aim of the explorative study is to capture how narrative identity construction takes place transgenerationally in families after forced migration. Within the framework of a positioning analysis, two family systems are contrasted. From the results, it can be deduced that positioning analysis is useful for the analysis of family structures, self-concepts, hidden emotions as well as family values. The presentation illustrates the potential of positioning analysis for empirical research as well as for narrative therapy.

Reflexivity in qualitative research involves the recognition that the researchers are part of the social world that they study (Ackerly&True, 2010). Reflexivity, despite being a major trend in current qualitative research, is still underexplored. In this paper we present analysis of researchers’ reflexivity at the initial phase of the “Transgenerational effects on families after forced migration” project, which is the second part of “Narratives and resilience” project (Borcsa, 2023). Purpose: The study aims at showing the researchers’ multiple points of entry into the research process. By ‘points of entry’ we understand investigators’ self-awareness of their initial positions based on class, sex, ethnicity, race, social and professional roles as well as their experiences and attitudes towards the war in Ukraine. Method: We use semi-structured interviews involving questions about researchers’ experiences and attitudes towards the war in Ukraine, Ukrainian refugees, motherhood and protection of the child. We also analyze the discussion among the team during the first research meetings. Conclusions: The concluding part of the paper shows in what way the researchers’ initial positionings are performed at the beginning of the project. Thereby the role of subjectivity and a contextualized insight into human experience in qualitative research process is highlighted.