Since at least the long summer of migration in 2015 representations of migrants and refugees as traumatized masses have been omnipresent in European media and politics. They raise narratives and discourses of migrants and refugees as victims in need of help and mobilized the compassion and solidarity of a revitalized civil society. This roundtable discussion aims to closely examine the multiple dimensions that the association of (forced) migration with trauma entails. Bringing together social and cultural anthropologists with academic and practice psychologists it opens up the question whether trauma as a notion and analytical concept is suitable in the field of global migration to include historical and social contexts, describe individual experiences and agency or capture collective memories.

Panelists:
Dr. Orkideh Behrouzan, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London
Dr. Maria Belz, Network for Traumatised Refugees in Lower Saxony, NTFN
Prof Shahram Khosravi, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University

Chair:
Prof. Dr. Margarete Boos, Department of Social and Communication Psychology, University of Göttingen

This working group aims to explore trauma and ruptured memories in the empirical contexts: Which subjectivities are produced and mobilized by trauma? How do people experience, share and deal with trauma and ruptured memories? How do they formulate and articulate their narratives of trauma and ruptured memories? What are the relations of trauma and rupture with subjectivity and agency?

Chair:
Prof Shahram Khosravi, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University

Participant Presentations:
Valentina Grillo, University of Vienna
Katarina Mitrović, University of Belgrade
Malte Behrendt, Ghent University
Yaroslav Zhuravlov, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Jelena Ćuković, University of Belgrade
Teodora Jovanović, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA)

This working group aims to open up space for reflections for researchers’ and activists’ own roles and positionings when being confronted with trauma and ruptured memories. What are appropriate roles? How to deal with one’s own emotions? How to appropriately write about narratives from the field? What other mediums are there to represent?

Chairs:
Dr Maria Belz & Daniela Finkelstein, NTFN

Participant Presentations:
Maiada Aboud, Director
Olga Zaitseva-Herz, University of Alberta Edmonton, Canada
Jie-Liang Lin, Berlin
Khorshid Khodabakhshreshad, University of Göttingen
Thomas Klein, Ulm University

This working group aims to question the concept of trauma and discuss alternatives for analysis. How has trauma developed, represented and established itself as a concept in the context of global migration? How does it mobilize subjects and build discourses? What shortcomings does the concept of trauma have as a theoretical, methodological and empirical framework? What other concepts are better suited in the field of global migration?

Chair:
Dr Orkideh Behrouzan, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London

Participant Presentations:
Mayssa Rekhis, EHESS-Paris and Linköping University
Ekatherina Zhukova, Lund University
Magdalena Skrodzka, University of Warsaw
Julia Manek, Goethe University Frankfurt
Reza Bayat, University of Göttingen

In our Wrap-up Session we want to bring together the basic results and findings of our workshop. For this purpose, we have won two experts who will accompany our entire conference and contribute a personal summary of the workshop as a discussion impulse.

Chairs: