S5 Petal 1 , Maison de la paix, Geneva | Online
This is part of the Anthropology and Sociology Department's Seminar Series.
By drawing on interviews with the adult children of refugees living in Europe, this paper explores narratives, perceptions and experiences of racialization both in Switzerland and in the ancestral homeland. The paper shows that in Switzerland only forms of racialization that may have an impact on the socio-economic situation are denounced whilst the interpersonal forms of racialization are in general denied or relativized. In the ancestral homeland, racialization takes the form of a self-racialization that could be explained in terms of reproduction or as a self-ascription by the distancing from people in the ancestral homeland.
The paper argues that experiences of racialization explain why some adult children of refugees do not feel they ‘fit in’ despite their upwards socio-economic mobility.
Milena Chimienti is professor in migration studies at the University of Applied Sciences, School of Social Work Geneva, HETS HES-SO. She was previously professor at the HETS in Fribourg and before that at City University London. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal Ethnic and Racial Studies since 2009, Identities. Global Studies in Culture and Power, and Social Inclusion. She is the co-coordinator of the committee of research migration and minorities of the Swiss Association of Sociology (with D. Rüdin). Her area of research include sociology of migration, of sex work, agency and collective action, vulnerability. Her on-going projects include the transition to adulthood of second generation migrants based on the LIVES Cohort (with C. Bolzman and J. - M. Le Goff).
Her latest publications include: