Full Description
The centrality of narrative analysis in the investigation of social processes and practices has become an established fact in the human sciences. The focus on narrative and displacement in this volume provides a starting point for a reflection on current issues in narrative theory as well as a timely interrogation of the role of narrative in illuminating social phenomena that are central to modernity such as migration and displacement.
At the centre of the analyses presented in the book are stories that are ignored, silenced and othered by contemporary public discourses on displacement, migration and settlement. Drawing on insights from narrative theory, linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics and cultural studies, contributors to the volume examine both how migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and marginalized minorities position themselves through narrative practices and how they are positioned in institutional and official narratives.
Contents
Introduction; Dislocations/Relocations: Narratives of Displacement; Part I: Orientation in Social Worlds; Network and Agency in the Migration Stories of Moroccan Women; Contesting Social Place; Narratives of Language Conflict; West Germans Moving East; Place, Political Space, and Positioning in Conversational Narratives; Part II: Displacement and Spacialization Practices; Dreams of Blood; Zinacantecs in Oregon; In and Out of Class, Codes and Control; Globalization, Discourse and Mobility; Working with Webs; Narrative Constructions of Forced Removal and Relocation; Section III: Institutional Placement and Displacement; Displacement in Asylum Seekers' Narratives; The Registration Interview; Restricting Refugees' Narrative Performances; Stories from the Court of Appeal in Literature and Law; Afterword Story, Place and Encounter
