Memories on the Move Experiencing Mobility, Rethinking the Past

‘Through a series of excellent essays this volume uses concrete ethnographic analyses of memory practices in different parts of the globe to offer theoretical reflections on how memory shapes and is shaped by mobility in time and space.’ - Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University, USA
‘Memories on the Move is a brilliant edited volume that fills an important gap in the field of memory studies as it weaves together issues of mobility and remembering. Drawing on fine-grained ethnographical cases, it offers a rich and complex portrait of mnemonic constructions in the context of forced migration, exile and transnationalism. It is clearly a must-read for anthropologists, sociologists, historians and political scientists as well as for all scholars interested in the contemporary dynamics of memory, identity and mobility.’ – David Berliner, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
‘This thought-provoking volume disentangles, ethnographically, the complexity of meaning-making practices of memory/forgetting in various contexts of (im)mobility.’ - Noel B. Salazar, University of Leuven, Belgium
Bringing together vivid ethnographic material, this book opens up a timely conversation between memory and mobility/migration studies. It goes beyond the idea of the nation state as the primary unit of analysis to explore how people on the move use different forms and media of remembering to make sense of their lives and act as political subjects. Investigating when and by what means people on the move remember and communicate memories in the context of various forms of (im)mobility, the authors examine photographs, films, the reinhabiting of pre-exilic homes, pseudo-historical performances, transgenerational mnemonic gatherings and transnational political activism. This edited collection will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology, political science, human geography, history and oral history.