ABSTRACT
In general, migration is considered to be an experience of discontinuity which, on a biographical level, is expected to have a relatively deep impact on the subject’s sense of life-continuity. In any event, it appears to represent a challenge to the continuation of ‘life as usual’ on the basis that things can be taken for granted and that they will work in the way one is used to (Schütz, 1972). From a postmodern perspective, this characteristic of the experience of migration and its biographical impact is unexceptional (Bauman, 1996). According to this line of thinking, every member of a postmodern society is experiencing radical changes all their life, particularly nowadays following the historical upheavals of the last fifteen years. Migration is no longer considered to represent an outstanding experience of discontinuity in life. Rather, it seems to have become part of the normality of (post)modem biographies (Fischer-Rosenthal, 1995, 2000) such that there is no longer a relevant distinction to be made between biographies with a migration background and those without. Hardly anybody, so the argument goes, is ‘fixed’ any longer in one milieu, social
stratum or culture all their life. All of us undergo, during the course of our lives, more or less dramatic changes vis-à-vis our positions within changing family and work systems, the professional sphere, social strata, generational systems and, in the case of major societal upheavals, the whole institutional system and organisation of a society. In other words, the experience of biographical change has, even in its radical forms, become common. On the other hand - and this will be the main assumption of this chapter1 - different experiences of biographical discontinuity are shaped differently, and retain their specific characteristics and impact on the processes of constructing biographical continuity. In this respect, migration can still be regarded and described as a particular experience occurring on a biographical level, even though migrants share, in a very general sense, the experience of radical change, and the effort to construct continuity, with all those undergoing different forms of biographical discontinuity.
