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The Self in Movement: Being Identified and Identifying Oneself in the Process of Migration and Asylum Seeking

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Abstract

How migration influences the processes of identity development has been under longstanding scrutiny in the social sciences. Usually, stage models have been suggested, and different strategies for acculturation (e.g., integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization) have been considered as ways to make sense of the psychological transformations of migrants as a group. On an individual level, however, identity development is a more complex endeavor: Identity does not just develop by itself, but is constructed as an ongoing process. To capture these processes, we will look at different aspects of migration and asylum seeking; for example, the cultural-specific values and expectations of the hosting (European) countries (e.g., as identifier), but also of the arriving individuals/groups (e.g., identified as refugees). Since the two may contradict each other, negotiations between identities claims and identity assignments become necessary. Ways to solve these contradictions are discussed, with a special focus on the experienced (and often missing) agency in different settings upon arrival in a new country. In addition, it will be shown how sudden events (e.g., 9/11, the Charlie Hebdo attack) may challenge identity processes in different ways.

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Notes

  1. This definition originated in a post-World War II context: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) already included the “right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution;” the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) had been founded in 1943, followed by the International Refugee Organization (1946) and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (1950).

  2. Groups of late repatriates from Russia that have lived peacefully in various German communities for quite some time have also protested against refugees (cp., for example, Soldt 2016).

  3. Comparing the different states in Germany, Saxony is the one with the highest number of assaults against refugees (159 in 2015; Statista.de 2015). Lower Saxony, by comparison, registered only 16 of such incidents in 2015, while there are more refugees living in Lower Saxony than in Saxony (refugees/1000 inhabitants; cp. Leitlein et al. 2015). The protests are, therefore, enacted most vehemently in regions where there are fewer refugees and a lower number of actual experiences with people from foreign countries.

  4. Credibility is also assessed according to certain epistemological implicit assumptions (Bohmer and Shuman 2007) about psychological processes such as memory (see also Cameron 2010). As Herlihy et al. (2010) point out, asylum officers tend to conceive a true story as something that should remain internally consistent throughout time, instead of a socially situated act (Brescó 2016).

  5. As Mehilli (2015) highlights when discussing the Vlora episode of 1991, despite the initial sympathy for those fleeing from Albania’s Communist regime, “the Italian public debate then quickly shifted to obsession over who was a ‘real’ refugee and who was a ‘fake’ — the ‘clandestini,’ in other words, seeking refuge in Italy for economic reasons rather than out of safety concerns” (14th paragraph). However, as the author reminds us, “there was, after all, no war in Albania in the summer of 1991” (14th paragraph).

  6. On December 19, 2016, a man drove a truck into the crowd gathered for one of Berlin’s Christmas markets. Twelve people died in the attack. The main suspect, a Tunisian citizen named Anis Amri, had lived in Italy for years and had come to Germany in 2015, applying unsuccessfully for asylum. Amri was later shot dead in Italy. He had been under surveillance before, as he was believed to be connected to an Islamic fundamentalist network (cp. online article in the Hamburger Morgenpost from December 21, 2016). He himself did not live in the refugee camp at Berlin-Tempelhof.

  7. This term can often be found in German publications (original: mit Migrationshintergrund).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sigmund Freud PrivatUniversität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Meike Watzlawik

  2. Niels Bohr Center for Cultural Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Ignacio Brescó de Luna

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  1. Meike Watzlawik
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Correspondence to Meike Watzlawik.

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Watzlawik, M., Brescó de Luna, I. The Self in Movement: Being Identified and Identifying Oneself in the Process of Migration and Asylum Seeking. Integr. psych. behav. 51, 244–260 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-017-9386-6

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