postmigrant perspectives on the unspoken and the unspeakable

Using a videographic participatory approach that emphasizes epistemic listening, this project explores the matter of unspeakability among adult children of parents who emigrated or fled from the former Yugoslavia at the time of the wars (1991-2001).

To better understand and reflect the perspectives of my research participants I am working with my own concept of epistemic listening (Fersztand 2023) which derives from psychoanalysis’ practice of “equal attention” (Freud 1912). Based on the assumption that the loss of the parents' home and thus the familiarity of the parents' everyday life, profession, and language (Arendt 1943) also affects the following generation, the aim of this research is to listen attentively to the offspring of forced migrants as they employ video-making in their search for traces.

Based on two interrelated methodological approaches – epistemic listening and videovoice (cf. Wang/Burris 1997) – the development of a videographic apparatus aims to create an appropriate space for data collection and implementation of the listening method in this research project.

The concept of the "postmigrant” in contemporary research offers a new dimension that establishes migration not as a research subject but as a research perspective, whose endeavor is to break with the hegemonic way of thinking about migration. The subjectivity of the second generation is crucial for understanding the social and political negotiations of "post-migrant" Swiss society (Espahangizi 2018). Consequently, this project breaks with common understandings of "migration and integration" (ibid.) and sheds new light on Swiss society in a visual, participatory, biographical and ethnographic way. This work’s novel methodology should be able to find its way into the tools of cultural studies, and the various ways of presenting the scientific findings obtained should contribute to a new understanding of migration’s trajectories, effects across generations and contributes to the field of postmigration studies.

My research is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.