London Postmigrant!?
I flew to London at the end of February 2023; it was my very first visit to the city. In November of the previous year, I had applied for a place on the new Fellowship exchange programme at the School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London. This collaboration between the University of London and the University of Innsbruck enables academics to spend a research period in London or Innsbruck. The Academic Network Britain-Innsbruck, or BritInn for short, and SAS announce this opportunity every autumn. The timing of such a stay abroad, shortly after my doctorate, was perfect for me. So, I decided to send off my application. The application papers included a concept for the planned project and a supportive letter from the cooperation partner at the host university. Godela Weiss-Sussex, Professor of Modern German Literature at the School of Advanced Study, came on board as my cooperation partner. The common ground of our research lies in the concept of the postmigrant. While Godela Weiss-Sussex uses/examines the postmigrant idea as a possible category of analysis of literary texts, I use postmigrant perspectives to explore social phenomena, such as migration. Particularly inspiring for me were the conversations and discussions about postmigration. The colleagues from London and I use this approach (partly) differently. The strength of the concept for me is that it contains a migration-affirming, diversity-friendly, racism-critical/antiracist and overall critical view. I was very pleased to see that this common postmigrant perspective that we take, can enrich different academic disciplines.
Postmigrant perspectives in educational science and migration research
The term “postmigrantisch” in German, translated here as “postmigration” or “postmigrant perspective”, was recently developed in German-speaking countries and has also been employed in an international context. The concept of postmigration is a flexible way of thinking about migration and society. The prefix “post” in postmigration does not mean that migration is a completed process or that migration is over. It is about the experiences that people make after their migration in the country of arrival. In the postmigrant perspective and in the postmigrant society (“postmigrantische Gesellschaft”, Foroutan 2019), migration is no longer a special case and multiple affiliations are no longer declared a problem or an exception. Postmigration is about negotiation processes or social transformations that take place after migration. It's about no longer thinking in categories. The goal is to finally overcome thinking in terms of “us” and “them”.
My use of the postmigrant idea can be summarised as follows:
1. Migration is understood as normality and an everyday phenomenon. (Cf. Rotter 2023, p. 59)
2. Migration research is understood as social research and not as "special research”. In this sense, migration affects us all. (Cf. Römhild 2014, p. 39; Yıldız 2018)
3. Migration experiences are told in a new and different way by making marginalized and untold stories the starting point of thinking. (Cf. Rotter 2023, p. 109)
These ideas on postmigration that I have just sketched are fundamental to the lecture I gave at the School of Advanced Study, presenting my doctoral work and my postdoctoral project, and the new study which I was able to kick off there.
My lecture, which was presented as part of the ‘brown bag’ lunchtime seminars at ILCS, was entitled “Postmigrant Generation: Family Memory and Postmigrant Perspectives on Solidarity”. It gave an account of the research I had undertaken for my PhD dissertation, which focused on intergenerational family memory as an educational process among young adults of the postmigrant generation. Moving on from this, my postdoctoral project (or ‘Habilitation’), which I have recently started, now deepens the idea of the postmigrant generation and focuses on the forms and possibilities of political subjectivation within alliances of people pursuing common political agendas and interests, expressing resistance to hegemonic attitudes and practices and designing new ideas of social coexistence and political participation.
Study “London postmigrant!?”
One of my main goals during the two-week stay in London was to prepare the ground for conducting a study on the topic “London postmigrant!?”. The basic idea was to find out if postmigrant perspectives, which have gained relevance within German-language scientific research in recent years, are also relevant for the London context. The experience of migration is an everyday one but is often underestimated. I wanted to correct this by designing a study on the postmigrant generation, in which I conducted biographical interviews with students who currently live in London and who have personal and/or family connections to migration. Inter alia, my study will examine what postmigrant positions the students articulate. In addition, I wished to analyse how the young adults interpret and name their locations and affiliations in a city that has a migration share of some 37%. Put simply and applied to urban society: Is London postmigrant?
To answer this question, I conducted six narrative interviews with students from the School of Advanced Study. The young adults are currently living in London, however they were not born in the UK, but in the USA, Italy, Brazil or Germany, etc. They currently study, work and live in the British metropolis. In the search for the interview partners, I was supported in advance by Professor Weiss-Sussex and her team. My written interview request was sent out via the university's internal email distribution list and interested people responded to my request. After I had informed the interview partners on site about my research and explained to them about anonymisation, the actual interview began, which in places took on the character of a conversation. At the beginning, the young adults told me about their lives, for example their family, their childhood, growing up, adolescence and young adulthood. In biographical interviews, the narrators play a decisive role in deciding which biographical points they want to pay special attention to and which experiences they do not want to address or only marginally. While most of the interviewees recounted their own and their family's life story in detail, some individuals focused more on their own educational biography at university. The reasons for migrating to London are very different. Among the reasons mentioned in the interviews were a love of the English language and a thirst for adventure. One interviewee, on the other hand, had been “in love” with London since her first visit. Studying in the UK is occasionally presented as a future-oriented opportunity and a career option. What the interviewees have in common is that university is a specific space of experience and possibility that has its own logic. The university is a common point of reference between the interviewees and me. Therefore, during and after the interview, we exchanged ideas about the opportunities, possibilities, and challenges of university life.
In addition to (family) biographical experiences, I am interested in the extent to which common discourses on migration affect the narrators. Parts of German-language migration research are still oriented towards outdated theories about migrants and operate with cultural difference hypotheses. This nationally oriented migration research has contributed to creating artificial differences between migrants and non-migrants. What is particularly problematic is that this kind of research and thinking has an impact on the reality of the lives of those affected. I am interested, therefore, in ascertaining who - in London - is seen as a migrant, to whom is a migration background attributed and to whom not? Is one's own self-perception congruent with the perception of others from the outside? The answers to these complex questions of perception, self- and other- designation and belonging vary considerably.
However, one view that is shared is that the flawless, accent-free speaking of the English language is an “integration characteristic” or characteristic of belonging. The point in time when the person came to England - whether before or after Brexit - also (partly) determines whether they are recognised as part of society. Furthermore, based on the circle of friends, the observation was shared that anti-Muslim racism and racism against people who are read as Asian had increased in recent years. Racism and discrimination would mainly affect people and minorities who are not read as European or white. Initial results of the study show that access to the society of arrival can be facilitated by a more “privileged” form of migration. In this context, one can speak of a kind of educational mobility (Bildungsmobilität), which protects to a certain extent against negative experiences that would possibly be made in other settings. The fact that English functions as a world language and that the narrators have a high level of academic literacy helps them to cope well in the different contexts of study and everyday life. Involvement in a diversity-rich circle of friends and long-term romantic relationships also contribute to a strong sense of belonging. Each individual interviewee’s view of the city of London is unique. Many positive aspects are named that make up “one's own London”, such as particular neighbourhoods or special places. Likewise, it is relationships to friends and life partners that bind people to London, which is why individual narrators can imagine wanting to stay there in the long term. The fact that there is too little affordable housing is highlighted negatively. The high cost of studying is also a problem.
The data material from the study “London postmigrant!?” is very dense. I will shortly begin a detailed analysis of the interviews. However, it can already be said that the interviewees describe life stories that fit perfectly into the concept of the postmigrant. Their life plans show that their migration experiences are perceived by them as socio-historical and contemporary normality. The interviewees' view of London is mostly positive. Here it is important to distinguish between nation-state and urban logic. City societies have been able to respond more inclusively to the influx of people since their inception, they have thus always benefited from welcoming and including people with diverse migration histories. In this sense, migration is social reality and normality here. The question of whether London is post-migrant can - already now - be answered with an unequivocal yes.
I would like to thank my colleagues and the students for a wonderful, valuable, and instructive time, which I look back on with pleasure.
Anita Rotter, University of Innsbruck