ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on an interview with Hatice, an Austrian-Turkish woman whose family migrated from Turkey to Austria almost 40 years ago. I use Hatice’s story as a case study for constituting and negotiating narrative positions in the context of migration. Thematically, Hatice talks about her family history, about former dwellings and encounters with Austrian authorities, Muslim marriage practices and gender roles, as well as the significance of work ethics in migrant lives. In relating those memories and experiences, she unexpectedly focuses on acknowledging female agency and resourceful victimhood in the Turkish diaspora community, and thus, on breaking with gender and ethnic stereotypes. Analysing linguistic devices like small stories vs. big stories, embedded stories, emplotment and marking of tellability as well as considering the communicative interaction, we gain insights into the theory and workings of narrative positioning. Hence, Hatice’s story is read as a counter narrative with an agentive migrant heroine as protagonist, accounting for plurality through narrative and challenging the hegemonial discourse on migration in Austrian society.
