Migration, Place, and Memory: Stories Told by Our Grandmothers

In this thesis, I aim to critically examine the relationship between memory, place, and migration through stories told by grandmothers. Using narrative analysis and storytelling, I think across various experiences of migration to construct an understanding of memory and place through my participants’ storied ways and experiences. Building on recent scholarship on migration and memory, I explore the ways in which mobility creates memory; how one could live in multiple places at once, in recollection and in the now: a collage of experience fabricated through movement across a conglomeration of places. Engaging with innovative methods, I use storytelling and sensory ethnography in the form of a ‘walking interview’ where grandmothers tell stories while walking at a ‘site of significance’. My research contributes to a better understanding of the link between memory, migration, and place which is, to date, a significantly under researched area. It also fosters critical thinking into what personal biography is, what a life in motion looks like, and what ‘loss’ and/or a ‘desire for belonging’ feels like. Further, it contributes to the methodological discussions around creative ethnography and provokes conversations about challenges, obstacles, and ethics of doing narrative anthropology.