ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on biographical-narrative interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Tamil-speaking refugee women from Sri Lanka in Germany and examines their statements through the lens of memory in the diaspora context. Moreover, the context of forced migration affects the diasporic memories due to many factors, such as the geographical distance between the homeland and the present location, the proximity to those who hail from the same homeland irrespective of their social differences, and the changes in the political environment. The multilingual habitus does not imply that the members of the local or even the imagined community in a nation-state, or in this case the diaspora community, are necessarily proficient in all the relevant languages. In the speeches, both the first as well as the second generation Tamils were called on to participate in the upcoming transnational elections in January 2010.
