"Migration out of poverty or flight from collective and individual violence? Biographic self-presentations of migrants andrefugees from and in Africa"

For more details please contact esser(at)mmg.mpg.de.

In my presentation I will discuss different collective and individual constellations (not least familial and family history constellations) that cause people from sub-Saharan countries to leave their homes. I will present their experiences along their migration route (especially experiences at state and political borders), and how they speak about their migration today in their situation as asylum seekers in a European or African country. My aim is to show how divergent these courses are, how little they correspond to the dominant image in western Europe of migration due to poverty, and how the individual self-presentations are nevertheless often influenced by this image or discourse. On the basis of selected examples, I will show which migrants, in which individual and collective constellations, are at first careful to avoid speaking about the true reasons for their departure, and which migrants in which constellations have no problem speaking openly about why they left their country.