IMMIGRANT NARRATIVES AND HYBRID IDENTITIES: ANALYZING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES WRITTEN BY IMMIGRANT STUDENTS IN GREECE¹

NARRATIVAS E IDENTIDADES HÍBRIDAS DE IMIGRANTES: ANÁLISE DE NARRATIVAS AUTOBIOGRÁFICAS ESCRITAS POR ESTUDANTES IMIGRANTES NA GRÉCIA

ABSTRACT

As one of the primary means for identity construction (see DE FINA, 2015), narrative has recently been examined in relation to immigrant and refugee movements. Having at our disposal elicited, written autobiographical narratives of immigrant students living in Greece, we investigate the identities they construct therein. Our sample consists of 118 essays collected from 8 different lyceums situated in different parts of the Peloponnese, Greece. The students who wrote the essays were bilingual immigrants of various origins (mostly from Albania).

The broader theoretical framework of our study is that of Critical Discourse Analysis. One of the most important research issues within Critical Discourse Analysis concerns the investigation of the relationship between the macro-level of dominant discourses and the micro-level of the individual (in the present case, narrative) positionings towards dominant discourses (see VAN DIJK, 2008). For the analysis of the narrative positionings of the immigrant students we employ the model of three dilemmas proposed by Bamberg (2011) in combination with the concept of face threat (BROWN and LEVINSON, 1987).

The analysis shows that the decision of some immigrant students to reveal their victimization, due to racist behaviors by majority people, constitutes a threat against the collective face of majority people. We support the claim that these immigrant students position themselves in a complex manner towards the national, xenophobic and homogenizing discourse by projecting themselves as victims and victimizers simultaneously, and thus constructing hybrid resistance identities.

Keywords:
autobiographical narratives; hybrid identities; immigrant students in Greece