The Tradition of Oral History with Refugees, and How It’s Radically Changing

Le résumé fourni par la source

This chapter traces the evolution of oral history as a tool for working with refugee issues, from traditional to more recent approaches. It reviews the oral histories with long-settled refugees that were already part of the tradition across the twentieth century. But it also provides a kaleidoscopic survey – unique within the literature – of the new and futuristic trends that are translating refugee oral testimonies into the arts and technology. We see how personal technologies worn on the body are enabling first-, second- and third-person oral testimonies to be videoed and broadcast from extreme, life-threatening situations in a sort of amateur reportage that is supplementing the work of mainstream news companies. Readers also learn about the growing importance of child refugees as political actors and producers of their own oral history narratives. Examining the Four Golden Pillars of the oral history methodology, we see why the technique is in such demand at the present time. A clear framework shows the Ten Variables that can characterize and identify any given oral history interview (such as time-frames, narrative voice, the size of the project and the purpose for which it was done). Overviewing the stages of the refugee experience, readers see that, in fact, refugees are constantly being interviewed – by journalists, doctors, lawyers, police, immigration authorities – but we learn the important methodological differences between oral histories and other types of interviews, in terms of motivations, practices, ethics, ownerships and outcomes.

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