Stories as Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research
Department of Social Anthropology, School of Global Studies, University of Göteborg, PO Box 700, SE 405 30 Göteborg and Nordic School of Public Health, Goteborg, Sweden
Marita.eastmond{at}globalstudies.gu.se
Stories are part of everyday life and constitute means for actors to express and negotiate experience. For researchers, they provide a site to examine the meanings people, individually or collectively, ascribe to lived experience. Narratives are not transparent renditions of ‘truth’ but reflect a dynamic interplay between life, experience and story. Placed in their wider socio-political and cultural contexts, stories can provide insights into how forced migrants seek to make sense of displacement and violence, re-establish identity in ruptured life courses and communities, or bear witness to violence and repression. The researcher must pay particular attention to his/her own role in the production of narrative data and the representation of lived experience as text.
Key Words: narratives • lived experience • methods • forced migration
MS received September 1, 2006
; revised MS received February 1, 2007
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