Guest, trader or explorer: biographical perspectives on the experiences of cross-border mobility in Europe

ABSTRACT

Life stories of mobile individuals provide us with unique perspectives on the condition of modern societies. This article aims to establish the link between narrative accounts of mobility and the conceptual framework of migration studies. Drawing on autobiographical narrative interviews with 91 transnational individuals, this article presents three categories of mobility narratives, emphasizing the specific narrative form and socio-cultural discourse within which they are embedded. It is argued that the perception of power relations underpinning social experiences that can be observed in three distinct narrative archetypes: the story of the guest, trader and explorer. These empirically derived categories aim to systematize the conceptual framework for studies of individual agency and social relations in cross-border mobility contexts and contribute to the debate on methodological nationalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Autobiographical narrative interview
• Europe
• methodological nationalism
• migration
• transnationalism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof. Howard Davis for the support and valuable comments as well as the EuroIdentities team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. EuroIdentities “The Evolution of European Identity: Using biographical methods to study the development of European identity” is a Framework 7 Collaborative Project. The seven partner teams in clude: Queens University, Northern Ireland; Bangor University, Wales; Otto-von-Guericke Universität, Magdeburg, Germany; Lódz University, Poland; Tallinn Technological University, Estonia; Institute of Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Science; and “Federico II” University, Napoli, Italy; more information available on http://www.euroidentities.org/.

2. The sample involves 91 individuals representing a range of mobility experiences - from one-time long-term mobility to multiple, long- and short-lived destinations. The age of narrators varies between 20 and 70 years old. Gender distribution is 37 per cent male and 63 per cent female. All interviews have been masked, the names presented in the article are pseudonyms.

3. The sensitized groups involved in the sampling procedures in the EuroIdentities project were: educationally mobile, transnational workers, civil society organizations, cultural contacts, intimate relationships and farmers.

4. Sarah's biographical narrative, per her own request, was delivered in English rather than her native language. The vocabulary and syntax are original. By contrast, the other two interviews were conducted in native languages and translated into English. For further details on the translation of biographical narratives in research, see Domecka et al. (2011).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FP7 Collaborative Project “EuroIdentities ‘The Evolution of European Identity: Using Biographical Methods to Study the Development of European Identity’ Framework 7 Collaborative Project” [grant number 213998].