10.13125/CH/3436
This paper addresses the ethical challenge of hosting the stranger that is implicit in the work of biographical research with migrant populations. It analyses the tasks faced by this dialogical and narrative research that is put forward both in social sciences and the Humanities. Drawing from ethnographic work conducted among different groups, the paper presents the method of biographical workshops, in which voluntary participants bring or produce testimonies about their experiences as migrants. Another goal of the paper is to analyse the radical alterity at play in the narratives of migrants and refugees. Hospitality is here understood as an ethical and civic skill that human beings can develop as a response to the hostility characterizing the general tendency of migration policies for exclusion and surveillance. The Ricoeurian concept of narrative identity is used to examine the plasticity of alterity in the methodological context of biographical research among migrants and refugees.
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Letícia Renault
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Critical Hermeneutics
Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities: Viewing Alterity from Biographical Research
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
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Articles
2018-08-10
2018-08-10
2018-08-10
2018-08-10
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Letícia Renault
2018/08/10
10.13125/CH/3436
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2533-1825
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urn:nbn:it:unica-24292
Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities: Viewing Alterity from Biographical Research
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/3436/3010
2
Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)                       submitted: 9/8/2018
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy          accepted: 9/8/2018
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index              published: 10/8/2018
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/3436


Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities: View-
            ing Alterity from Biographical Research


                                     Elsa Lechner
                                    Letícia Renault


Abstract
This paper addresses the ethical challenge of hosting the stranger that
is implicit in the work of biographical research with migrant popula-
tions. It analyses the tasks faced by this dialogical and narrative re-
search that is put forward both in social sciences and the Humanities.
Drawing from ethnographic work conducted among different groups,
the paper presents the method of biographical workshops, in which
voluntary participants bring or produce testimonies about their experi-
ences as migrants. Another goal of the paper is to analyse the radical
alterity at play in the narratives of migrants and refugees. Hospitality
is here understood as an ethical and civic skill that human beings can
develop as a response to the hostility characterizing the general ten-
dency of migration policies for exclusion and surveillance. The Ric-
oeurian concept of narrative identity is used to examine the plasticity
of alterity in the methodological context of biographical research
among migrants and refugees.
Keywords: biographical workshops, biographical research, migration
experiences, narrative identity


1. Introduction
This paper aims at addressing the ethical challenge of hosting the
stranger that is implicit in the very work of biographical research with
migrant populations. It analyses the specific tasks faced by this dialog-
ical and narrative kind of research that is put forward both in social
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




sciences and in the Humanities. Drawing from ethnographic work con-
ducted among different groups1, the paper presents the method of ‘bi-
ographical workshops’, in which voluntary participants bring or produce
testimonies about their experiences as migrants while applying, at the
same time, a (re)distribution of the sensible (Rancière, 2004), and a
socialization of power (Ferrarotti, 2014).
      By creating times and spaces of interaction and dialogue about
experiences of migration, this work enables an encounter with alterity
understood as a process of destabilizing monolithic conceptions of iden-
tity. Amid heterogeneous and vulnerable groups, this process high-
lights the intrinsic link between ethics, politics, and aesthetics in the
production of knowledge about hospitality. Following the critical frame-
work suggested by Norman Denzin, this type of qualitative research
‘speaks for and with those who are on the margins’ (Denzin, 2018: x).
In fact, it listens to their versions of history and regimes of truth in
contrast with the everyday exclusion, discrimination and silencing with
which most migrants and refugees are confronted.
      The theoretical premises that we adopt here articulate new devel-
opments of critical hermeneutics, namely the works of Richard Kearney
and Johann Michel, with the critical qualitative inquiry that assumes a
social justice agenda and sees science as being a moral discourse (like
any other). Indeed, scientific knowledge is pervaded by power dynam-
ics that are not neutral and that influence representations about it,


1
 Some small sections of this paper have been partially published before in Lechner,
E. (2017). Narratives In | With and Beyond Borders: Constraints and Potentialities of
Biographical Research with Refugees. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 32(3): 637–643
DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2017.1338023 and Lechner, E. (2018). Migrants’ Lives Mat-
ter: biographical research, recognition, and social participation. Contemporary Social
Science Journal, doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2018.1463449. We wish to thank both
journals for the permission to reprint these passages here in altered form. We also
wish to acknowledge the support we received for this research from the following
projects   and     agencies:   PTDC/CS-ANT/111721/2009-FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-
014442; Fulbright 2014/2015, Brown Rutgers-Newark University; IF/00107/2013;
Project “On the Tip of the Tongue: Stories, Memories, and Innovation in Emigration”,
CES-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2017-2018.



2
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




which are always situated and determined by contextual politics of rep-
resentations. Our choices are driven by the empirical work we have
developed throughout the years and the general lack of political effec-
tiveness to deal with the so called ‘migration crisis’: humanitarian cri-
sis, inability to cherish diversity, racism and fear of the other.
    The present context of international migrations is marked by the
presentification in the global north of the abyssal lines (Santos, 2007)
that throughout history have separated colonizers and colonized peo-
ples in the global south. Technological developments, late capitalism
and its impacts on climate, on work, transportations, as well as the
industries of war and weapons, have been creating new push and pull
factors for human mobility reaching millions of displaced people in the
world today (IOM Report).
    Global studies and Critical Theory highlight a state of exception
(Agamben, 2005) and the inadequacy of the application of human
rights to address such scenario. Also, in the present era of Posthuman-
ism (Herbrechter, 2013), the definition of the human faces the conse-
quences of late capitalism (highly sophisticated technology, and accen-
tuated inequalities amongst citizens of the world). Together, these fac-
tors reflect an impasse in what concerns the respect of human dignity
of most migrants, including at the political level of government of pop-
ulations. Securitization and vigilance are the dominant features of mi-
gration policies, criminalizing the movement of vulnerable and under-
privileged migrants while, at the same time, fostering surveillance
businesses and their commercial and industrial derivatives. Millions of
forced displaced persons are living in borders, camps, improvised com-
munities, in a suspended time of existence that faces legal gridlocks
with social consequences. Importantly, such state of exception implies
the discretionary use and interpretation of international laws by gov-
ernments, promoting a real necropolitics of migrations (Mbembe,
2003), and the proliferation of human disposability (‘the management



                                                                              3
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




of the undesirables’, Agier, 2010). This happens especially in develop-
ing countries that border on mass migration zones of the globe. For the
EU this represents a paradox and a contradiction between its founda-
tional values as a political community (EU Charted Values), and the
current politics of externalization of non-European citizens and crimi-
nalization of migrations. Alongside the rescues in the Mediterranean
Sea by coast guards, or the humanitarian government of refugees, mi-
gration policies in the EU (like those of the USA or Australia), are mili-
tarizing territorial and symbolic borders with no positive outcome for
the respect of migrants’ rights and dignity. These processes, which lead
to confusing global citizenship with cultural belonging, are fueled by
media and commonsensical discourses that associate cultural and eth-
nic difference with conflict and aggression, as well as with terrorism.
Racism, fear, and xenophobia are direct causes and consequences of
this.
        In such a scenario, the study of migrations within the social sci-
ences and the Humanities is due to recognize the ethical challenges
implicit in the analysis of these political tests and choices. Such
acknowledgement entails the observation in the present of a historical
repetition or déjà vu of the general tendency for othering the Other,
that is, of relegating the other to exteriority without assuming a self-
reflexive attitude capable of recognizing the reciprocity between the
other and the self, and, to borrow Ricoeur’s words, of considering one-
self as another (contrary to identity taken as an essence). And it also
implies the critical revisiting of the goals and instruments of analysis
of the social sciences as sources and processes for knowledge produc-
tion.
        This paper addresses these challenges in two moments and one
complementary note: first, there is a description of biographical work-
shops conducted with immigrants in Portugal to illustrate the embodied
nature of identity and alterity, something we could grasp while stories



4
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




of migration were exchanged between voluntary research participants.
This is complemented by a short analysis of an autobiographical book-
let published by an Iraqi refugee, to highlight the radical hospitality at
play in the present context of human mobilities and migrations; after-
wards, we put forward an analysis of the concept of narrative identities
in our research settings to demonstrate the plasticity of identities and
communication, which is here seen as a condition of possibility for so-
cial cohesion and hospitability.


2. Biographical research: migration, narratives and alterity
Adopting a collaborative format based on the idea of mutuality of skills
(Leray & Hamey Warou, 2014), an interdisciplinary research team from
the Center for Social Studies, Coimbra University, conducted biograph-
ical workshops with groups of volunteers from many different origins
who agreed to share their personal experiences and views about mi-
grations. The biographical work groups were designed to attain a col-
lective goal of mutual learning with participants who have a concrete
experience of migration. In total, we conducted 5 biographical work-
shops: one with a mixed group of participants composed of men and
women of different ages, professions, education levels, languages and
religions from 12 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cape Verde,
China, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Russia, São Tomé,
Ukraine and Uzbekistan); another group with women only (from Brazil,
Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Ukraine and Russia); a third with univer-
sity students (from Argentina, Brazil, Cape Verde, China, Ivory Coast,
São Tomé e Principe and Ukraine); a group with previous participants
willing to talk about their different religions (Roman Catholic, Ortho-
dox, Messianic (Johrei), Evangelical, Baptist, Mormon, Muslim, Spirit-
ism and Candomblé); a group of foreign students living in dormitories
(to talk about university housing).




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Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




      Each working group of volunteers had previously learned about
the project, its aims, processes, and milestones in presentation meet-
ings and public sessions (Coimbra Community Library). They met the
team members and formally authorized the use of the material that
was to be produced. Here, all participants agreed to voice their stories
and personal accounts out loud in the group setting, where narratives
were spontaneously produced in Portuguese about their lives as mi-
grants in Coimbra. Through guided conversations and autobiographical
written texts following the motto ‘I came to Portugal’, each participant
narrated his/her decision to leave their homes, their voyage to Portu-
gal, route of migration and daily lives in Portugal. At first, participants
did not know each other and only some of them were acquainted with
the team researchers. Together with our team composed of research-
ers from the social sciences and the Humanities, migrants from a num-
ber of different origins living in Coimbra (12 different nationalities) de-
bated topics like racism, discrimination, gender, work, housing, etc.
drawing from their biographical experiences and testimonies.
      Each workshop lasted three full days (from 10 am to 6 pm) in
which all participants spoke and listened to each other’s experiences of
migration in a circle. Following a clearly established protocol for the
three days (Lechner, 2012), after reaching an agreement on its guiding
rules, groups started in the morning with a listening exercise in which
all participants closed their eyes for 5 minutes and were invited to listen
carefully to what happened during that time. Each person then spoke
about their inner experiences during the listening exercise, sharing
them with the group. This starting exercise is used in order to enable
a type of listening that is less judgmental and more anchored in the
body – respectful of differences, producing a feeling of equality, despite
different social statuses and the diversity of shared experiences and
values. Even if situational, this corresponds to a relevant experience
for participants who are usually discriminated or left aside and



6
                                                  Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




marginalized in society. Also, by sharing the thoughts, feelings and
emotions experienced during the listening, the group starts to create
its own identity, participants start to know each other in a deeper level,
and the practice of dialogue is fueled. This corresponds in practical
terms to a ‘redirection of attention’ (Depraz, Varela, and Vermersch,
2003), that enables an extra-everyday life awareness about the imma-
nent ability of perception that is absent most of the time from mundane
interactions.
     Having been trained in this kind of work, the team coordinator
facilitated the group exchanges and ‘orchestrated’ the communica-
tions. The fact that participants told their stories for the first time in a
group of attentive listeners produced three effects relevant to under-
stand alterity at work through biographical research: raising aware-
ness, building recognition and pushing towards social transformation
(at a local or situational level, at least). In very concrete ways, this
group work allowed the deployment of new meanings related to the
lived experiences of narrators, the exercise of a new skill of self-
presentation and the articulation in words of what was once silenced.
Most migrants actually experience migration as a biographical disrup-
tion, a source of solitude and sorrow. By producing audible narratives
about those experiences, participants learn about themselves and be-
come aware of the collective dimension of their situation (their rights,
vulnerability, possibilities for civic participation). Biographical accounts
foster reflexivity, self-observation and self-distancing, producing self-
acknowledgement and validation, a kind of empowerment that is ex-
tremely relevant among migrant populations. Moreover, when the ac-
counts are produced in groups, they enact a socialization of power (Fer-
rarotti, 2014), and intercultural dialogue that are formative of new con-
viviality and social interactions.
     These effects resonate with the analysis proposed by Richard
Kearney concerning the carnal hermeneutics of alterity. Affirming that



                                                                               7
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




acknowledgement is the combination of knowledge and affect, the Irish
philosopher defends a bodily anchored interpretation of the world, of
oneself and the others. Being is interpreting, no interpretation is neu-
tral or universal, and touch itself is already protolinguistic, a kind of
basic hermeneutic tact comprised of alterity (Marcelo, 2017: 5). In
this sense, narratives and narrative exchange are needed to meet the
other and to be hospitable. Narrative productions are a sine qua non
for social transformation in what concerns hospitality (a first ingredient
for its effectiveness), and, at the same time, they enact the intrinsically
shared humanity of knowledge and affect.
      Furthermore, given that participants share their experiences in a
group, they learn with one another, about other cultures, other ways
of experiencing migration, of being in the host country and different
forms of expressing those experiences. Such sharing is a lesson of re-
spect, and the knowledge originating from the group work is not with-
out relevant consequences for the whole group: it has strong impacts
on the participants’ lives, transforming their ways of seeing and under-
standing migration itself. Indeed, the formative dimension of this work
is then also already transformative given the awareness that it brings
to participants who are usually socially associated with isolated groups
and cultures in host societies. In this sense, biographical workshops
function like laboratories of intercultural dialogue where different cul-
tures, languages, religions and values have the opportunity to be in
confrontation in a positive-constructive way. It is in the political weight
of these stories, experiences and exchanges that we find the potential
for social change of biographical research, and the biopolitics of migra-
tion at work at the level of human interactions. There is a ‘formative
art of existence’ (Pineau, 1996) in the work with life stories and bio-
graphical accounts which is personal and collective at the same time,
as the personal is always political somehow.




8
                                                      Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




     In this sense, biographical research necessarily implies a multi-
scaled type of analysis that focuses on private accounts to address
meso and macro questions relevant to the issue of migration in society
and for public policies. The workshops deepen the microanalysis of the
biographical data produced without overlooking the larger historical
and political structures. The latter are implicit in the personal accounts,
conditioning the trajectory of migrants’ lives, as well as the way the
stories are told by them. Also for that reason the impact of narrative
exchange goes beyond mere psychological effects on the self, and
reaches relevant aspects of life within communities and in society in
general. Based on that, biographical research might apply different
techniques of life storytelling, and narrative production, building social
cohesion and new identities/identifications out of self-reflection, inter-
cultural dialogue and mutual learning. Both during those processes and
at their end, this research process contributes to a concrete practice of
mutual hospitality (not in geographical terms but rather in ethical and
social ones, as the welcoming of alterity), peace building (or at the very
least it fosters intercultural dialogue), mutual recognition and, in the
case of our projects, to migrants’ participation in the production of
knowledge.
     Another source of embodied knowledge relevant for understand-
ing and learning hospitality not in abstract terms but as a practice is
the work on autobiographical texts written by those who endured an
experience of migration or refuge. A short autobiography published by
Daud, a young Iraqi refugee relocated in Portugal2 is a good example
of this kind of testimonies, which can be analysed and understood as a
symbolic life where a radical experience can be transmitted and signi-
fied to others. The incommensurability of experiences observed



2
 Daud Al Anazy, From Mosul to Alfeizerão in 6000 words. Self-published book, 2016,
Portugal.



                                                                                   9
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




between a refugee who almost died in a shipwreck, and a European
citizen who knows little about the war from afar by the news, draws
the line of separation and contact between two very different experi-
ences of the world and the historical present. Even if one can imagine
the desperation and suffering caused by a wreckage, one cannot grasp
it – as a lived experience –from an abstract perspective.
      The testimony written by Daud with the help of his Portuguese
teacher was published to leave a trace of his hard journey, and to in-
form public opinion, in detail, about what is being done as well as what
remains to be done in the welcoming of refugees in Portugal. The small
volume has nine chapters describing his reasons for leaving Mosul and
the circumstances in which he left, the tortures and prison inflicted by
Daesh, his journey to Syria, his brief stay in Turkey, the shipwreck and
survival in the Aegean Sea, the refugee camp in Idomeni, the arrival
at Lisbon, and first days in Alfeizerão (located an hour north of Lisbon).
In simple and clear writing, this self-published booklet contains resili-
ent accounts of the terrible experiences Daud underwent. All through
the short chapters, readers can learn about his stimulus to write down
such experiences, his editorial choices (why he opted for a version that
is not the full story, not covering his more recent days). Also, it includes
reflections that bring a collective dimension to his narrative. He calls
his own story a testimonial and includes in his account some questions
and comments that highlight the radical dimension of the reported ex-
periences: feelings of hope and despair, episodes of violence and inhu-
manity, states of alienation – all of them bringing significance to his
new life.
      This autobiographical narrative shows how Daud is a survivor, in
the sense suggested by Giorgio Agamben for his definition of testimo-
nial and the witness. According to Agamben (1999), the witness per-
sonifies a surviving history that he or she can tell from the particular
position of the one who almost died. The young Iraqi’s text offers a



10
                                                  Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




poignant description of the wreckage he survived in the Aegean Sea,
‘the longest, most difficult and simultaneously most fortunate hours of
my life’ (Al Anazy & Franco: 47). Other refugees in the water around
him were drowning. A boat float kept him bobbing on the surface wait-
ing during long hard hours for rescue or death – together with two
young children separated from their parents who grabbed another flo-
tation device nearby. Eventually the coast guard arrived in time and
saved them from hypothermia, hunger and exhaustion. Those were
‘hours, minutes without end, along which all my life was questioned
and totally emptied’ (Id.: 49). Daud was the last one to be saved.
     When he found himself on land, he saw everyone who had escaped
that nightmare ‘crying, laughing, as if not believing that they were
there, alive, and saved’ (51). He describes his feelings in Portuguese:
‘There was nothing left. There was nothing left […] only life had stayed.
Life to conquer again, from scratch, from nothing’ (52).
     The very work of autobiographical writing, describing and reflect-
ing about a radical experience, amounts to a work of mourning that
resignifies the previous threatening situation, which very likely caused
trauma and an inability to speak due to this psychological injury. It is
important to stress here that such a narrative brings to the fore, and
to the realm of human communication, a truth that is apparently im-
possible to share with the host (incommensurability of experiences).
But as much as the weaving of a biographical narrative reinvigorates
the life of the survivor after trauma, it also enables the listener to learn
how to acknowledge that other truth, that other perspective on the
world and History. This is a crucial aspect that provides a material,
substantive content to radical recognition since the request for a self-
narrative from a refugee creates the possibility to build bridges be-
tween two opposite worlds: that of the newcomer, the asylum seeker,
and that of the host, the one who sees the strangers coming with fear
or anxiety. Furthermore, the impact of weaving a self-narrative that



                                                                              11
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




gives visibility to a personal, radical experience of survival, is not the
same for its author and the community of listeners or readers. The one
who weaves a story of survival is the author of an account testifying a
radical experience out of an existential threat, while the person who
listens or reads such testimony is responsible for the recognition of the
singularity of that experience, but also for the ethical/civic action
needed to restore a common humanity between the two. The work of
(re)creation after destruction (even if only symbolic) has personal and
collective impacts that might make a difference in the way host coun-
tries welcome newcomers.


3. Dialogues on migration and narrative identities
In biographical workshops participants have the occasion to produce
first-person accounts about their migration experience, telling their
stories in a group where, through a respectful listening, they can learn
about their own self and about others. As narratives are appropriated
during the research process, stereotypes, representations and fixed
identities are replaced by mutual curiosity and dialogue. This happens
as alterity is experienced at the very moment of a dialogue in which
narrative production takes place in a space of mutual exchange of nar-
rative identities.
      In order to make sense of what truly happens in these workshops,
it is helpful to draw some philosophical insights, namely those that
stem from hermeneutics. Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy (1990) is here a
source of methodological and theoretical inspiration, particularly to
shed some light on the notions of identity and alterity at play during
the workshops. His reflexion about the hermeneutics of the self, and
particularly the concept of ‘narrative identity’, has a practical impact
on the understanding and definition of biographical research. In fact,
this concept presents an alternative to the essentialization of identities,
without succumbing to the extreme opposite that would deny personal



12
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




identity. Narrative identity, in this sense, is simultaneously a useful
concept for theorizing migration experience and a methodological tool
for knowing the stranger that is looking to be hosted. Other social sci-
entists, like Michel (2012), who is also a philosopher, have already
shown that using the hermeneutic concept of narrative identity as a
methodological tool can be useful – in his case, by exploring the sig-
nificance of a given event, the Algerian war, in the construction of the
narrative identities of the descendants of people who witnessed it.
    Both Michel (2012) and Kearney (Marcelo, 2017) concur in show-
ing that there is a certain plasticity in this sort of identity, insofar as
this kind of identity is somehow open, with imagination playing a fun-
damental role. On the one hand, as Kearney suggests, hosting the
other is a wager and an ethical decision, that of turning hostility into
hospitality. On the other hand, as Michel points out, this sort of identity
is partially co-created by the hermeneutical act of exchange and dia-
logue itself. This is to say that sometimes it is the very sharing of the
testimonies that helps to make sense of one’s own identity. This pro-
cess can thus be fostered by the researcher him or herself, which
grants him or her an added level of responsibility. But to understand
how this is possible, one needs to see what type of identity we are
talking about here.
    In broad terms, the hermeneutics of the self establishes a funda-
mental distinction between two identity forms: identity as sameness
(idem-identity) and identity as selfhood (ipse-identity). The difference
resides in their respective temporalities or permanence in time: while
idem-identity presents itself most of the time as having relatively sta-
ble traits recognized by others, like psychological and physical quali-
ties, ipse-identity depends on the action or, more precisely, on an
agent who makes and keeps a promise over time. That is, in ipse-
identity, recognizing is less due to certain characteristics than to an
(ethical) action that takes place in response to a summoning coming



                                                                             13
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




from the other. Idem-identity is a way to answer the question ‘what
am I?, while ipse-identity is a way to answer the question ‘who am I?’
(Étienne, 1997).
      Asserting ipse-identity is fundamental to the Ricoeurian herme-
neutics of selfhood as it counters any abstract attempt to pinpoint in a
purely reified way the objective attributes that would provide someone
a stable identity. According to Ricoeur, identity in the sense of ipseity
is also defined by a subject who actively keeps his or her word even
when circumstances change. To keep one’s word means necessarily to
keep it to someone else; a promise is always made to others. As such,
it is necessarily relational. Here, the constancy of the self means being
faithful to the word that has been given to others – even if this ‘other’
is a future ‘I’ (or the open possibility for identity change).
      By telling one’s story or biographical account a conciliation be-
tween these two dimensions of identity takes place (Atkins, 2004).
Narrative identity combines idem and ipse, that is, the stable traits
recognized by others and the active and ongoing process implicit in any
narrative production. Transformations may be revealed, resignifica-
tions happen, showing how identity is permeable to its own redefini-
tion. As such, the notion of narrative identity overcomes at the same
time an essentialised image of the self, and an idea of complete dis-
persion and depersonalization.
      Identity and narrative are inseparable. Narrative strikes a balance
between the constancy and change that constitute the self. We need
to tell stories in order to construct ourselves, through narratives that
bring significance to life experiences and to the world. Accordingly, it
is accurate to say both that we have stories and that we are stories, at
the same time. Narratives are both content and form, they are per-
formative, creating selves and social landscapes at their own image.
Narratives are language and discourse thus producing the world and
worldviews that either create exclusion and incapacity to recognize



14
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




alterity (that is, alterity in oneself or in others), or openness and per-
meability to difference.
    The production of narratives about migration experiences is a con-
crete model of the dialectic between the permanent and impermanent
aspects of identity. The experience of migration is an opportunity (both
for migrants and hosts) for self-redefinition and for alterity to be un-
derstood as openness to difference, as hospitality. Migration challenges
both migrants and hosts to revise cultural identifications, showing what
is fundamental to them and what can be negotiated and appropriated.
The ways one can tell these stories of migration can highlight what
matters in terms of a sense of belonging and the capacity to embrace
the stranger in oneself and the other.
    Listening and understanding migrants’ narratives through the con-
cept of narrative identity unveils the ipse dimension of their identity,
which is so frequently unnoticed in the accounts of migrants’ lives. Un-
derstood under a homogeneous category and often described by fixed
characteristics, such as vulnerability and difficulties in adapting, mi-
grants hardly ever are the authors of the stories and narratives about
themselves. However, ipse-identity reminds us that there is always a
process behind a certain feature or, in other words, that there is always
a story to be told that recontextualises what is seen. If one is able to
listen to these stories more carefully, one can see that there is agency
and skills where only passivity was socially or politically perceived.
    Narrative identity, and particularly its ipse-dimension, shows that
the other is intrinsic to any identity and that there is a fundamental
reciprocity that could be acknowledged in every description. According
to Buber (2012), at an ontological level, every relation with another is
reciprocal. Thus, to have an opportunity to tell one’s own story can
transform the ways humans see themselves and others.
    Furthermore, telling stories and listening to them implies a re-
sponsibility (Lechner, 2018) that is both individual and social.



                                                                             15
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




According to the hermeneutics of the self this responsibility means be-
ing capable to respond to the other and the necessity to be held ac-
countable and hold others accountable (Haker, 2018). In the work of
social sciences and the Humanities, such responsibility lies also in the
interpretations and descriptions provided by researchers. An alleged
neutral discourse (which is impossible anyway) about the research par-
ticipants, not truly interested in listening to them, actually reproduces
and reinforces misjudgements and exclusions, not only in its discursive
repertoires but also in its conceptions of migration as a social phenom-
enon experienced by real people. Consequently, such ‘neutrality’ cre-
ates a self-representation discourse (even if implicit and undeliberated)
about the social sciences as ‘scientific’, i.e., representing reality in an
a-political way, deprived of moral responsibility, and of historical sedi-
mentation. This is obviously a morally charged position that contributes
to support and legitimate the present context of international migra-
tions and policies, because it does not question it. Paying attention to
narrative identities, on the contrary, implies a critical reflexivity of the
very research process at several levels: personal (participants and
team), epistemological (research methods and tools), and conceptual.
No positioning is neutral and when it comes down to working with and
about life narratives or experiential knowledge, researchers have to
recognise their ways of listening and reproducing: i.e., this entails as-
suming a politics of cognition that is always also, at the same time, a
politics of recognition.
      Assuming that there necessarily is a politics of cognition and
recognition in the very work of biographical research emphasises the
ethical dimension of knowledge production and alterity along the bio-
graphical research process. This process actively integrates the partic-
ipants as subjects of knowledge, as citizens of the world that are able
to produce narratives about themselves and                            about migration.
Knowledge is embodied. As such, first-person perspectives are



16
                                                  Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




necessary to understand the ‘scientific’ topic under consideration if we
really want to know how social actors live their migratory experiences.
     By (re)discovering their agency and their creative capacities, par-
ticipants can contribute in a more active way to elaborate discourses
about migration, and fight an injunction for passivity and non-partici-
pation, for subalternisation. That is not only a major contribution to the
production of knowledge; it is also a redistribution of the ‘author’s
rights’, a socialization of power, with ethical, personal, and political ef-
fects. If migrants are often described by the media (and also by aca-
demia) from an abstract and dehumanized perspective, the narrative
identities that emerge in the biographical workshops are a tool to resist
the denial of personal and irreplaceable experiences. On the other
hand, an analogous experience can happen for those who listen to the
stories told: their identities can also be reviewed in light of their re-
sponse to others. Are they welcoming and respectful or suspicious and
self-defensive?
     As Ricoeur (1990) points out in his reflection on ethics, our rela-
tionship with others is, at same time, reversible and marked by irre-
placeability. It is reversible because the speech roles alternate: the
pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’ designate different people each time depending
on who utters them. Such reversibility is the starting point for recog-
nizing, in equal terms, the value of the experiences of the other. A
dialogue implies the ability to admit that the other is as capable as we
are to say ‘I’. However, the reversibility of roles paradoxically points to
the fact that people are irreplaceable. The ‘I’ who speaks has a corpo-
real inscription and cannot be replaced without a profound and irrepa-
rable loss in discourse.
     Accordingly, biographical narratives are here essential to the pro-
duction of knowledge about migrations since there is a dimension of
the migratory phenomenon that can only be apprehended from the
point of view of an ‘I’, which cannot be replaced by any other



                                                                              17
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




perspective. But biographical narratives are essential to ethics, too.
Recognizing the reversibility of roles and irreducibility of personal per-
spectives is at the core of an ethical attitude, since the ‘other’ can be
understood as an ‘I’ (to evoke once again the formula that gives title
to the work by Ricoeur: oneself as another).
      Accordingly, biographical workshops can overcome the apparent
distance between ‘my experiences’ and those of others. Despite the
fact that experiences narrated by others are not identical to mine, they
can be understood as having the same value. Taking into account the
interlocutors' narrative identities allows everyone in the group to rec-
ognize a fundamental community in these narratives, although they
may be different or not even comparable. This basic community does
not compromise the singularity of experiences, nor belonging to other
communities.
      Therefore, biographical workshops trace a common ground of re-
spect and interest and, at the same time, highlight the singularities, in
an apparently paradoxical effect. Thanks to the same gesture, partici-
pants can create a sense of collective belonging, simultaneously valu-
ing personal experiences and differences between them. The emer-
gence of mutual recognition does not hinge on an identification with
uniform categories or some other homogeneity criteria, but rather on
reciprocal respect.
      Through gathering people from different countries, with distinct
cultures and unique personal histories, biographical workshops can cre-
ate a common interest in migratory experience which for authors like
Bruno Latour (2004) is an epistemological criterion to distinguish ‘good’
from ‘bad’ science. Individual narratives become ‘versions’ of the same
experience, all of them legitimate even if extremely different from each
other.
      The idea of ‘version’ points here to the work of Stengers, Despret
et al (2014). These authors describe this notion by recalling its original



18
                                                       Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




meaning, i.e., as an exercise of translation. A version is a translation
from a foreign language to a mother tongue. In order to produce a
version, translators will produce and sustain entirely different texts de-
pending on their origins, but also on the choices each one will make
during their work. During the process, they will realise that there are
multiple ways to accurately accomplish the task. In other words, there
is not only one standard model for responding to the problem. None-
theless, all translators have a common problem, despite the diversity
of possible responses. The original text is, for all of them, a foreign
one. Their versions depend less on fidelity to a norm than on creativity
and invention in the face of a common problem, that each one can
respond to in very different ways (Ricoeur, 2003). Differences in ver-
sions are a fruit of personal responses to a common challenge.
     Versions are the effects of this (co)respondence (or collective re-
sponse) to a problem that presents itself as a point of departure to
common work. In this case, singularities and differences are not ob-
stacles to work, but a desirable result. In biographical workshops, there
is an analogous production of versions, in which a group can work to-
gether thanks exactly to their differences and individualities. As the
concept of narrative identity itself suggests, ‘personal’ and ‘collective’
are not opposed terms here. The emergence of narrative identities in
biographical workshops enables the fabrication of the group as such3.
One important effect among migrant populations is that ‘a common
ground’ is created, with the contribution of all, making the problems
and questions brought by the workshops ingredients of that collective
work.



3
  In a research-intervention work in the mental health field (Renault, 2015; Melo,
Schaeppi, Soares & Passos, 2013), we designate this emergence of a really collective
dimension in a group as a “contraction of a group”, indicating that groups are con-
structed and not an immediate consequence of reunited people or a mere result of
assembling different individuals. It demands the sharing of a common interest.



                                                                                   19
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




      As suggested by Stengers, Despret et al (2014) in another context
(namely feminine presence in Academia), narratives about extremely
personal stories can attain collective significance, and display a political
dimension in what was previously lived as an individual problem. Thus,
problems as isolation or difficulties in adaptation lose their exclusively
private nature. They are no longer attributed to an essentialized iden-
tity of the ‘migrant’ (in this case), or seen only as a psychological char-
acteristic of an individual, but an expression of a social problem. In his
book The Struggle for Recognition (1995), Axel Honneth suggests that
the passage from the individual experiences of suffering to a collective
experience of resistance in the context of a social group formation,
depends on the way individual experiences are recognised as being
typical to a whole group. This recognition, in turn, depends on the ca-
pacity to communicate in order to identify such commonly shared ex-
periences, and even political resistance to oppression, for Honneth,
hinges on the creation of bonds of reciprocal esteem among the mem-
bers of the group (Honneth, 1995: 128). In biographical workshops,
these problems can be understood in their relational aspects, question-
ing not only the migrant him/herself, but also the host society and, in
a larger perspective, collectively produced identities (stereotypes, pre-
conceptions) under scripts/storylines, in which not all subjects have
the same opportunity to become narrators.
      The emergence of the political dimension of the migratory ques-
tion in biographical workshops follows the creation of a sense of com-
munity in the group. Personal experiences, seen so far as uninteresting
to some interlocutors (or the participants themselves), become rele-
vant narratives. The concept of narrative identity enables us to under-
stand this phenomenon insofar as it describes a non-essentialized iden-
tity, in an ongoing process that, at the same time, is radically personal.
As authors of their own narratives, workshops’ participants can redis-
cover their capacity to act and to be recognized in their singularities



20
                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 2 (2018)




and communalities. Furthermore, their stories question pre-established
plots, bringing up pertinent political, cultural and existential discursive
provocations. When put in political terms, these problems can also find
political and collective solutions, calling for awareness and co-respon-
sibility.


4. Conclusion
In the contemporary scenario of international migrations, hosting the
stranger is a practical and theoretical challenge with moral and social
consequences. In face of the general attitudes towards migrants (po-
litical and discursive), which are based on fear and exclusion, it is evi-
dent that times and spaces to a hospitable encounter with alterity are
needed if one does not want to be complicit with the humanitarian crisis
we are witnessing. In this context, biographical research represents at
the same time an occasion to produce accurate knowledge about mi-
grations – considering the irreplaceable point of view of migrants them-
selves –, and an ethical exercise of dialogue and respect.
     Biographical workshops highlight narrative identities that under-
line migration experiences. This Ricoeurian notion acts a reminder that
alterity is intrinsic to any identity; that agency and responsibility are
direct consequences of understanding identity through the analysis of
personal narratives. Because of the inseparability between narratives
and ethics, telling stories is a way to (re)consider the self and others
in more equitable ways. Biographical workshops are based on a partic-
ipative approach that is also an ethical and epistemological position. It
contributes to a critical reflexion about identity and responsibility that
includes not only the research participants, but also researchers and a
potentially larger audience, through the work of publicising the re-
search. The creation of narratives about migration is a common chal-
lenge that invites collective responses.




                                                                             21
Elsa Lechner - Letícia Renault, Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities




      On the other hand, the autobiographical narratives that migrants
and refugees might produce about their experiences, in private (infor-
mal conversations, biographical interviews), or public spaces (media,
social networks, editorial publications like a self-published book), can
provide the intellectual and emotional contact between the two differ-
ent world experiences of narrators and their readers/listeners. In this
encounter it is possible to build a bridge between the incommensura-
bility of such experiences, fostering a mutual knowledge between their
respective regimes of truth and encouraging an understanding of the
larger contexts behind the causes of migrations.
      Precisely because these encounters (or their symbolic impossibili-
ties) put together radically different worldviews and experiences, it is
necessary to engage in a philosophical debate about identities and al-
terity. This paper considers an endeavour such as the carnal herme-
neutics of Richard Kearney – a project that inscribes itself along a
whole hermeneutical tradition within the social sciences and the Hu-
manities –, helps to define the contours and contents of the meaning
associated today to the idea of hospitality. And it concludes that the
possibility for radical hospitality implies the recognition of the blind
spots that are part of any identity: identities (including cultural identi-
ties) are not solid and pure substances that must be preserved from
contamination, they are always already complex and hybrid composi-
tions of narratives, discourses, practices, and representations built
over time – a constant response to the presence of others, to alterity.




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