Life Stories Embedded in Figurations and Discourses
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Contents
Preface 7
Introduction 9
Gabriele Rosenthal and Artur Bogner
Biographies-Discourses-Figurations: Methodological considerations from the perspectives of social constructivism and figurational sociology 15
Artur Bogner and Gabriele Rosenthal
Familial and life (hi)stories of former child soldiers of the LRA in northern Uganda 50
Artur Bogner, Gabriele Rosenthal and Josephine Schmiereck
Illegalized migration courses from the perspective of biographical research and figurational sociology: The land border between Spain
and Morocco 103
Gabriele Rosenthal, Eva Bahl and Arne Worm
Civil war and the figurations of illegalized migration: Biographies of Syrian migrants coming to the European Union 160
Arne Worm
Precarious transnational biographies: Moroccan juveniles in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla 185
Eva Bahl
A mixed family of long-time residents and internal migrants in East Jerusalem: The established-outsider figuration of 'Hebronites' and 'Jerusalemite families' in the context of the Israeli occupation 209
Johannes Becker
Toward a renewed marginalization of the Palestinian refugees? Transformations of we-images, patterns of interpretation and established-outsider relations in the Palestinian society of the West Bank since the 1970s 236
Hendrik Hinrichsen
Palestinian women in Haifa-Resistance as empowerment 258
Nicole Witte
Transcription symbols 281
Works cited 282
About the authors 306
Index 309
Contents
Preface 7
Introduction 9
Gabriele Rosenthal and Artur Bogner
Biographies-Discourses-Figurations: Methodological considerations from the perspectives of social constructivism and figurational sociology 15
Artur Bogner and Gabriele Rosenthal
Familial and life (hi)stories of former child soldiers of the LRA in northern Uganda 50
Artur Bogner, Gabriele Rosenthal and Josephine Schmiereck
Illegalized migration courses from the perspective of biographical research and figurational sociology: The land border between Spain
and Morocco 103
Gabriele Rosenthal, Eva Bahl and Arne Worm
Civil war and the figurations of illegalized migration: Biographies of Syrian migrants coming to the European Union 160
Arne Worm
Precarious transnational biographies: Moroccan juveniles in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla 185
Eva Bahl
A mixed family of long-time residents and internal migrants in East Jerusalem: The established-outsider figuration of 'Hebronites' and 'Jerusalemite families' in the context of the Israeli occupation 209
Johannes Becker
Toward a renewed marginalization of the Palestinian refugees? Transformations of we-images, patterns of interpretation and established-outsider relations in the Palestinian society of the West Bank since the 1970s 236
Hendrik Hinrichsen
Palestinian women in Haifa-Resistance as empowerment 258
Nicole Witte
Transcription symbols 281
Works cited 282
About the authors 306
Index 309
Introduction
Gabriele Rosenthal and Artur Bogner
The main purpose of the authors and editors of this book was not only to study and write about people from the "Global South", their life stories and how they are interrelated with other people, but also to give a voice to these people themselves. All the articles are in the tradition of social-constructivist biographical research, the aim of which is to reconstruct the "subjective" perspectives of the people concerned in their lived past, and in the present when speaking or writing about their experiences (see Rosenthal 2005). It is important, firstly, to show how the people themselves are the actors and authors of their history and their stories, how they carried out activities and made decisions which affected their later life, how they interpret and comprehend their past and present life, and how they present themselves and their conduct to "Western" social scientists. The idea of "construction" in the term "social constructivism" refers to the fact that people always, from the very beginning of their history, live in a 'world' that is actively interpreted by them. This process of construction is "social" or collective because this world is constantly, without interruption, being produced and reproduced, both by the joint (through not always conflict-free) practical actions of many people, and by their joint or collective interpretations of it. This is an essential basic assumption of our understanding of social human reality and of the methodology needed to study it.
Secondly, the authors and editors believe it is important to understand the social constellations of circumstances which influence and very often constrain the people concerned, which can force them into relatively powerless, and sometimes extremely powerless, positions, and which can make their voices silent, or hard to hear, in the public discourse. It is also important to understand the way they are influenced or determined-or, to borrow a term from Michel Foucault, "permeated"-by predominant discourses, or by prevailing patterns of interpretation in collective discourses. The authors combine this approach with that of "figurational sociology", a research tradition based on the work of Norbert Elias. This means that they do not restrict themselves to the life courses of individuals, but show how these are intricately entwined with bigger social or collective processes and actualities. These bigger actualities include the public pictures and images of the individuals concerned and their we-groups-whether these are local or supralocal we-groups, or even transnational (like a lot of Christian churches, but also many other associations, organizations or movements). The importance of such we-groups for the individuals concerned differs in many cases, and is often very different at different times. Not least, they include families or kin groups, as well as socio-historical generations, which are created and shaped by the shared or simultaneous experience of a collective process (usually a so-called "historical event").
There is a strong tendency among social scientists from the "G7" countries to focus on their own lifeworlds, and one of the aims of this book is to counteract this by concentrating on the biographies and circumstances of people living in the "Global South". The studies presented here were all carried out in the contexts of our own research, under the supervision of one of the two editors. They represent a form of biographical research which we call the figurational biographical approach. This approach, and the reasons why we have chosen to adopt it, are presented and discussed in detail in the first chapter of this volume.
The articles in this book are devoted to the life stories and life courses of individuals as components of bigger groupings or we-groups (such as religious or political organizations or movements), or parts of the dynamic figurations formed by these individuals and groupings. The authors look closely at the interdependencies between individuals and collective processes, and the entwinement between collective discourses and the stories told by individuals about their experiences and their life trajectories. As indicated above, it is important here to consider the historically changing collective concepts and patterns of interpretation (including the we-images and they-images of groups and their members), which people use in order to give structure and meaning to what they experience.
Some of the studies in this volume are from the field of sociological research on violent conflicts (including very long-lasting conflicts), and on "peace processes", or post-violence processes, with a geographical focus on northern Uganda and Palestine/Israel. Others are devoted to refugee, migration and border research, with a focus on people in the Spanish enclaves in North Africa (including migrants from Syria and from sub-Saharan countries). Attention is paid in particular to members of outsider groupings and their unequal power chances in relation to the established in their local setting or region. We think in the first place of the established-outsider configurations in their countries of origin, but migrants without a legal right to stay are of course a very obvious example of "outsiders" in the sense discussed by Elias and Scotson (1965; 2008)-and the web of relationships and interdependencies between them and long-time residents with full citizenship rights is a typical kind of established-outsider figuration.
Focusing on outsiders in their social contexts means looking in particular at power relations in their social figurations and in the collective discourses. The first chapter is programmatic: it discusses the importance of adopting the perspectives of figurational sociology and discourse analysis when analyzing individual biographies. We believe that these two perspectives are indispensable complements to social-constructivist biographical research. In this context we suggest that the term 'discourse' should be understood as an intermediary concept between 'biography' and 'figuration'. This chapter presents these three concepts, and discusses the theoretical and methodological advantages of combining them in order to be able to comprehend empirically "the mutual constitution of societies and individuals". This combination requires that the process of remembering during a biographical narration should always be considered in the context of social figurations and discourses, and attention should always be paid to the power inequalities and power balances between individuals, and between groups or groupings of people, that are inherent in figurations and discourses. The consequences of this theoretical and methodological approach are shown in this book by analyzing biographical self-presentations of individuals in Uganda, in Palestine/Israel, and in the Spanish enclaves in North Africa. Some may even argue that considering the dynamic webs of asymmetrical interdependencies and the associated collective practices of (re-)producing patterns of interpretation or collective "knowledge" was part and parcel of, or implicit in, the practice of social constructivism and social-constructivist biographical research from the beginning. In a sense we could not agree more, but we believe that a more explicit and open recognition and discussion of these indispensable components is needed in order to avoid misinterpretations and misunderstandings of established practice and the current state of the art in biographical research.
The article by the editors and Josephine Schmiereck shows which conditions hinder, and which conditions are favorable to, the return to civilian life of former child soldiers and rebel fighters of the "Lord's Resistance Army" in the former war zone of northern Uganda. The study reveals, among other things, the very important role of the family of origin and kin group, or local community, for life courses and personal living conditions in sub-Saharan Africa (as in most other parts of the Global South). To borrow Elias's expression, their lifeworlds and subjective perspectives are generally characterized by a we-I balance that is clearly different from that which prevails in many wealthy or relatively well-off families and local social settings in the G7 countries (and frequently also in the upper educational and income groups in the other G20 countries).
The next three articles are based on a study of the "social construction of border zones" conducted within the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta, with a focus on reconstructing the experiences of migrants. These articles analyze how notions of belonging are generated and used as instruments and effects of power in social settings, and how changes of belonging are linked to different (and very often unplanned) migration experiences. The article by Gabriele Rosenthal, Eva Bahl and Arne Worm is based on a contrastive comparison of three migrants from different regions and social contexts (Syria, Mauritania and Cameroon) who have had profoundly different migration experiences. The article discusses the processual structures of illegalized migration, the way life courses and migration courses are interrelated, and how they are intertwined with changing social (and socio-political) settings during different phases of the migration and at different places along the way. In his article, Arne Worm reconstructs the biographical courses and present perspectives of Syrians who have emigrated from the conflict figuration in Syria since spring 2011 and who entered the European Union via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. These cases of migration courses, which begin in an (extremely) violent and unstable context, show how the positions of the migrants in webs of interdependencies (before and during their migration) and the associated self-, we- and they-images are mutually interdependent, and how much they are determined by their particular familial and collective histories. These examples also show the different conditions in which uncertain perspectives are formed of both the present and the future, and how looking back at the past tends to be avoided (meaning in this case the past before emigration or before the war). In her article, Eva Bahl discusses they-images and self-images of Moroccan youngsters who came to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta or Melilla as unaccompanied minors. While the they-images applied to these children and adolescents by the long-time residents are frequently shaped by racist, xenophobic or peniaphobic patterns of interpretation (and are often used to support a general denigration of Moroccans in the border zone), the self-presentations of the young people testify to a resilience and agency (or in other words autonomy of action, within their limited possibilities) that is surprising in view of the suffering they have experienced.
A remark with political intent: It is common in public discourses in the Global North to argue that refugees and migrants from regions of the world where peaceful changes of power (especially from government to political opposition) and the observance of human rights, at least in 'political life', are rare exceptions, are 'only' economic migrants. The latent economism of many social scientists tends to back up such a one-sided interpretation. If this were meant seriously, it would testify to a dubious underestimation of the advantages of the rule of law and democracy, and would be a projection of our own short-sighted views onto other people who have good reasons to see and experience these things differently. It would be an important achievement if the articles in this volume could help to correct this over-simplified and distorted picture of the problems of people living in the Global South.
The articles by Johannes Becker, Hendrik Hinrichsen and Nicole Witte examine figurations of different groupings of Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank. With his analysis of a 'mixed' multi-generation family, Johannes Becker reconstructs an inner-Palestinian established-outsider figuration in East Jerusalem, where 'old-established' Jerusalem families are in the minority, and the majority is formed by people who arrived in the course of the twentieth century. This 'classic' established-outsider figuration is linked to social disparagement of the newcomers and their descendants-which exists even within families-and the fact that, at least initially, the latter had less social, economic and cultural capital. The Middle East conflict may contribute to prolonging the existence of this figuration, since, in view of the prevailing pejorative discourses, not only in Israel, on 'the Palestinians', the established try to maintain their social distance from the newcomers, whom they regard as less educated and more bound by tradition.
Hendrik Hinrichsen's article presents the family and life histories of descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and who live today in the West Bank. The author shows from the inside the many different effects of overlapping and intertwined forms of belonging and collective identification, in other words what happens when different we-images are combined. On the one hand, there is the belonging to a Palestinian family that fled to the West Bank in 1948, and, on the other hand, the belonging to very different socio-historical generational units, linked to participation in one of the two Intifadas.
The last article by Nicole Witte is devoted to female Palestinians who possess Israeli citizenship, and shows that there are considerable differences between their we- and self-presentations and those of Palestinians who live outside the borders of Israel. However, she finds that common to the members of this grouping is the way they implicitly or explicitly make reference to a Palestinian national collectivity. The author considers how belongings are (re)constructed and (re)produced in the course of biographical-narrative interviews, and why the explicit expression of a Palestinian belonging is so important for these interviewees. She reconstructs a type of Palestinian women in Israel, characterized by structural similarities in the way they locate themselves in the Palestinian collectivity, despite obvious differences in their life courses and in the way they speak about their biographies and belongings.
Biographies-Discourses-Figurations: Methodological considerations from the perspectives of social constructivism and figurational sociology
Artur Bogner and Gabriele Rosenthal
Introduction
Social-constructivist biographical research, the sociology-of-knowledge approach to discourse analysis, and figurational sociology are fields of inquiry which have recently become established in different academic communities, mostly independently of each other, although they are relatively close in terms of various characteristics, and, at least partly, share important historical roots. In this article we want to show the possible benefits of bringing their key concepts together in one integrated theoretical and methodological approach, and of combining them in research practice. It seems to us, as proponents of biographical research and figurational sociology, that the concept of discourse, as used for example by Michel Foucault or by the sociology-of-knowledge approach to discourse analysis (see Keller 2004; 2005; 2006), may serve as an intermediary concept that can be used to elucidate and explain some of the most fundamental links between figurations of human beings and the biographies of the individuals who form these figurations. This idea is discussed in detail below. By 'intermediary' we mean that this concept can help us to recognize, describe, understand and explain the mutual constitution of societies and individuals. In biographical research, a synthesis of these three theoretical and research perspectives can open up possibilities for more rigorous investigations of the diverse ways human beings interrelate with other human beings, amongst others in the context of we-groups or organized groups, other social groupings, organizations or "institutions". Such a synthesis also makes it possible to study, for example, the role of "cultural" images, patterns, concepts and practices in the interrelations between human beings. In figurational sociology, linking these three research and theoretical perspectives could assist a more thorough understanding of the activities, lived experiences and sentiments of individuals in their particular historical, biographical and situational contexts, and help to take into account their "subjective" perspectives. By this we do not mean that social-constructivist biographical research, with its focus on case reconstructions, fails to show how individuals form social figurations. Rather, this has been the declared aim from the beginning of biographical research in sociology, which is bound up with the large-scale study by William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki of peasants who emigrated from Poland to the US. With their analysis of the "experiences and attitudes of an individual", Thomas and Znaniecki claimed to be able to identify the "laws of social becoming" (1958 [1918-1922], 1831-1832). Figurational sociology also looks at the 'actors' and their personal histories and individual developmental processes. This can be seen, for instance, in the study of Mozart by Norbert Elias, in which he makes clear that the life course of this musician becomes more understandable, "if it is seen as a micro-process within the central transformation period of (the) macro-process" that Elias describes, in both the world of artists and wider society (Elias 2010b, 91; our amendment, A.B./G.R.). In both research traditions, societies and organizations cannot be conceived without individuals. Both are based on a conception of societies, or the social world, as a dynamic reality that is constantly generated and created anew, constantly reproduced and altered through the interplay of individuals, in other words on a processual (and strictly relational) conception of the existence of this field of "objects". But why do we want to bring these two traditions of research, and even a version of discourse analysis, together? It is our belief that if biographical research, which concentrates on individual and familial (hi)stories, were to be combined with figurational sociology, which has a stronger focus on collective and long-term processes, this would make it much easier to overcome the fruitless segregation of micro-, meso- and macro-perspectives which dominates theory and methodology in the social and cultural sciences (section 2). Furthermore we have found that research into collective discourses can assume a significant role in this context, and that a social-science analysis of discourses (as proposed for example by Keller 2005; 2006) can help biographical research to more clearly see the effect, or lack of effect, for example of conflicting or dominant discourses on individual or collective self-presentations and self-interpretations. Such an analysis also helps to investigate the interrelations between dominant discourses and power inequalities within and between social groupings and figurations -not least figurations of 'established' and 'outsiders' in the sense proposed by Elias and John Scotson (section 3). We also believe that discourse analysis and the concepts used in it can benefit, and the meanings of these concepts can be made more transparent (and precise), when articulated using sociological terminology. In order to make these ideas clearer, and to show their empirical grounding, we will briefly present two empirical studies (section 4), followed by a résumé of our methodological conclusions (section 5).
Commonalities and differences between biographical research and figurational sociology
Biographical research
Despite various differences between authors, the biographical research that has been practiced in sociology in Germany since the 1970s is generally based on social constructivism as formulated by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966). From a methodological and practical point of view, it involves reconstructing the genesis of the "subjective" perspectives and experiences and everyday knowledge of one or various individuals, which are usually considered the requisite starting point of empirical enquiry and analysis. Revealing, and taking account of, the mutual constitution or interplay of individuals and society has always been a central concern of social-constructivist biographical research. Contrary to prevalent stereotypes, biographical research in sociology has never been concerned with the individual conceived in isolation, but has always been devoted to the empirical study of individual and collective processes in their entwinedness, their inescapable interconnectedness. Thus, "biography" is understood not as something purely individual or "subjective", but as a social construct that refers to collective discourses and collective processes. A biography, both in its lived course and as it is remembered and (re-)interpreted, is always an individual and collective product. As Bettina Dausien (2010, 113) puts it, biographies are both "a medium for the construction of identity and subjectivity, and […] the result of social construction processes" (our translation, A.B./G.R.). Besides attempting to do justice to these "interrelationships" (in the sense proposed by Georg Simmel and George H. Mead) by taking the biographies and life courses of individuals as a starting point, two other methodological requirements are bound up with a biographical approach in this research tradition. It is important, on the one hand, to understand and explain the meaning of experiences not in isolation, but in the overall context of the life history, and, on the other hand, to carry out a processual analysis, a reconstruction of the emergence, persistence and modification of social phenomena in the context of studying life courses, taking into account the permanent intertwining of life courses and biographical (self-)interpretations. And the reconstruction of biographical processes, in their indissoluble interconnection with collective processes, is not simply a matter of answering 'why' questions, like "Why did this person behave or act this way and not another way?" Questions of this type are generally avoided. Using a processual and transgenerational perspective-as proposed and discussed in particular by Elias (e.g. 2009b, 108: n.1, passim; 2007, 90-103)-means asking: What was the long or protracted individual and collective history that led to this biographical constellation of a person, to his or her current situation in relation to others, to this particular activity, decision, view, sentiment, experience or perception? For example, it is not adequate to simply ask why someone made a decision to join a particular political party. Instead, one needs to enquire into the collective and individual situation in which the person joined the party-including the long collective and individual courses of events that formed the "background" to, or were part of, the "set of circumstances" for this conduct. In stringent social-constructivist biographical research, an individual life course and self-interpretation are always reconstructed in their interconnectedness with the life courses and self-interpretations of other individuals, organized groups, we-groups, or "institutions", and in their entwinement with the discourses that prevailed during different phases of an individual and collective history. This also applies to the interconnectedness of generations that communicate with each other, or are linked in other ways-and this does not just apply to the interdependencies and interactions between different "generations" (both in the genealogical and in the socio-historical sense) within a certain family or household. In order to analyze a life course in which someone joins a party and becomes politically active, it is necessary to ask about the webs of interdependencies in which the biographer was, and still is, involved, the institutional, organizational and informal networks of relationships in which she/he was socialized, and the historical constellations, including the discourses, she/he was influenced by.
In order to analyze life courses and life stories in this way, and to get away from static or mechanical 'why' accounts which point to only one direction of influence, and from explanations that are reduced to motives or intentions, Fritz Schütze (1977; 1983) introduced the method known as the biographical-narrative interview. Asking people to tell their whole life story provides opportunities to gain insights into their present perspectives and sets of circumstances, into the way they orientate themselves towards, or are influenced by, current discourses, and into the various ways their life courses have been shaped by discourses, relationships and biographical constellations in the past. In contrast to other interview methods, it is thus possible to uncover not only the interpretations of the interviewees in the present of the interview or the text production, but also the genesis of these interpretations and the sequential gestalt of the lived life history, and to reconstruct courses of action and conduct in the past and how they were experienced at the time. In order to avoid drawing hasty conclusions from the biographical self-presentation of interviewees when talking about their past, we try to reconstruct both their present and their past perspectives in the light of their "four-dimensional" contexts, or of the relevant "historical" (individual and collective) processes, and to trace the processes of their production, entwinement, interplay and change. This is done in several distinct steps, in accordance with the analytical method developed by Gabriele Rosenthal-initially in the context of her research into the life courses of former members of the Hitler Youth movement (Rosenthal 1987, 143-244; see also 1995; 1993).
In biographical-narrative interviews, the interviewees may argue and describe, but most importantly they narrate and remember their own experiences, or at least this is what they are invited to do by the interviewer. Here, it is important to take into account that memory practices-to borrow from Maurice Halbwachs-are framed by the collective memories of different social groupings. The relevant frames that are pertinent here, usually because they are connected with these groupings and their collective self-interpretation may, depending on the interview's setting or context, be selected and understood or "defined" in various ways-and in ways which may change more than once during the course of a single conversation or interview (Rosenthal 2016a). Memory practices are always interrelated with the experienced past that people remember and talk about, and the stocks of collective knowledge that have been established and internalized over various generations (ibid.). Depending on the historical and cultural context, memory practices are subject to collective rules which become consolidated and change over time. They will thus show traces of rules which were valid in the past or in other social or situational contexts, and at the same time traces of social rules which apply in current interactive memory practices or collective discourses.
The memory process cannot be considered independently of the present situation, nor independently of past experiences or the handed-down past. It is interrelated with the collective memory-or collective memories, to put it more correctly-of different societal groupings, organized groups or organizations. These memories are part of the cultural practices which (amongst others) determine which memories and constructions of the past are excluded or marginalized, and which become dominant in the discourse of each grouping or we-group (such as the family, the historical generation, or political, religious or ethnic we-groups), and in public and mass media discourses. We argue that the question whether this leads to conflicts between different worldviews (Mannheim 1980, 307-308) and the corresponding collective memories, or rather to the parallel co-existence of divergent and maybe incompatible collective memories that are mutually tolerated or ignored by various groupings, or to a kind of creolization of collective memories, is an empirical question. It is important in every case to make a precise and detailed empirical reconstruction, showing which form of memory has dominated in which historical and social context and in which phases of the lengthier or shorter processes under investigation.
Introduction Gabriele Rosenthal and Artur Bogner The main purpose of the authors and editors of this book was not only to study and write about people from the 'Global South', their life stories and how they are interrelated with other people, but also to give a voice to these people themselves. All the articles are in the tradition of social-constructivist biographical research, the aim of which is to reconstruct the 'subjective' perspectives of the people concerned in their lived past, and in the present when speaking or writing about their experiences (see Rosenthal 2005). It is important, firstly, to show how the people themselves are the actors and authors of their history and their stories, how they carried out activities and made decisions which affected their later life, how they interpret and comprehend their past and present life, and how they present themselves and their conduct to 'Western' social scientists. The idea of 'construction' in the term 'social constructivism' refers to the fact that people always, from the very beginning of their history, live in a 'world' that is actively interpreted by them. This process of construction is 'social' or collective because this world is constantly, without interruption, being produced and reproduced, both by the joint (through not always conflict-free) practical actions of many people, and by their joint or collective interpretations of it. This is an essential basic assumption of our understanding of social human reality and of the methodology needed to study it. Secondly, the authors and editors believe it is important to understand the social constellations of circumstances which influence and very often constrain the people concerned, which can force them into relatively powerless, and sometimes extremely powerless, positions, and which can make their voices silent, or hard to hear, in the public discourse. It is also important to understand the way they are influenced or determined-or, to borrow a term from Michel Foucault, 'permeated'-by predominant discourses, or by prevailing patterns of interpretation in collective discourses. The authors combine this approach with that of 'figurational sociology', a research tradition based on the work of Norbert Elias. This means that they do not restrict themselves to the life courses of individuals, but show how these are intricately entwined with bigger social or collective processes and actualities. These bigger actualities include the public pictures and images of the individuals concerned and their we-groups-whether these are local or supralocal we-groups, or even transnational (like a lot of Christian churches, but also many other associations, organizations or movements). The importance of such we-groups for the individuals concerned differs in many cases, and is often very different at different times. Not least, they include families or kin groups, as well as socio-historical generations, which are created and shaped by the shared or simultaneous experience of a collective process (usually a so-called 'historical event'). There is a strong tendency among social scientists from the 'G7' countries to focus on their own lifeworlds, and one of the aims of this book is to counteract this by concentrating on the biographies and circumstances of people living in the 'Global South'. The studies presented here were all carried out in the contexts of our own research, under the supervision of one of the two editors. They represent a form of biographical research which we call the figurational biographical approach. This approach, and the reasons why we have chosen to adopt it, are presented and discussed in detail in the first chapter of this volume. The articles in this book are devoted to the life stories and life courses of individuals as components of bigger groupings or we-groups (such as religious or political organizations or movements), or parts of the dynamic figurations formed by these individuals and groupings. The authors look closely at the interdependencies between individuals and collective processes, and the entwinement between collective discourses and the stories told by individuals about their experiences and their life trajectories. As indicated above, it is important here to consider the historically changing collective concepts and patterns of interpretation (including the we-images and they-images of groups and their members), which people use in order to give structure and meaning to what they experience. Some of the studies in this volume are from the field of sociological research on violent conflicts (including very long-lasting conflicts), and on 'peace processes', or post-violence processes, with a geographical focus on northern Uganda and Palestine/Israel. Others are devoted to refugee, migration and border research, with a focus on people in the Spanish enclaves in North Africa (including migrants from Syria and from sub-Saharan countries). Attention is paid in particular to members of outsider groupings and their unequal power chances in relation to the established in their local setting or region. We think in the first place of the established-outsider configurations in their countries of origin, but migrants without a legal right to stay are of course a very obvious example of 'outsiders' in the sense discussed by Elias and Scotson (1965; 2008)-and the web of relationships and interdependencies between them and long-time residents with full citizenship rights is a typical kind of established-outsider figuration. Focusing on outsiders in their social contexts means looking in particular at power relations in their social figurations and in the collective discourses. The first chapter is programmatic: it discusses the importance of adopting the perspectives of figurational sociology and discourse analysis when analyzing individual biographies. We believe that these two perspectives are indispensable complements to social-constructivist biographical research. In this context we suggest that the term 'discourse' should be understood as an intermediary concept between 'biography' and 'figuration'. This chapter presents these three concepts, and discusses the theoretical and methodological advantages of combining them in order to be able to comprehend empirically 'the mutual constitution of societies and individuals'. This combination requires that the process of remembering during a biographical narration should always be considered in the context of social figurations and discourses, and attention should always be paid to the power inequalities and power balances between individuals, and between groups or groupings of people, that are inherent in figurations and discourses. The consequences of this theoretical and methodological approach are shown in this book by analyzing biographical self-presentations of individuals in Uganda, in Palestine/Israel, and in the Spanish enclaves in North Africa. Some may even argue that considering the dynamic webs of asymmetrical interdependencies and the associated collective practices of (re-)producing patterns of interpretation or collective 'knowledge' was part and parcel of, or implicit in, the practice of social constructivism and social-constructivist biographical research from the beginning. In a sense we could not agree more, but we believe that a more explicit and open recognition and discussion of these indispensable components is needed in order to avoid misinterpretations and misunderstandings of established practice and the current state of the art in biographical research. The article by the editors and Josephine Schmiereck shows which conditions hinder, and which conditions are favorable to, the return to civilian life of former child soldiers and rebel fighters of the 'Lord's Resistance Army' in the former war zone of northern Uganda. The study reveals, among other things, the very important role of the family of origin and kin group, or local community, for life courses and personal living conditions in sub-Saharan Africa (as in most other parts of the Global South). To borrow Elias's expression, their lifeworlds and subjective perspectives are generally characterized by a we-I balance that is clearly different from that which prevails in many wealthy or relatively well-off families and local social settings in the G7 countries (and frequently also in the upper educational and income groups in the other G20 countries). The next three articles are based on a study of the 'social construction of border zones' conducted within the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta, with a focus on reconstructing the experiences of migrants. These articles analyze how notions of belonging are generated and used as instruments and effects of power in social settings, and how changes of belonging are linked to different (and very often unplanned) migration experiences. The article by Gabriele Rosenthal, Eva Bahl and Arne Worm is based on a contrastive comparison of three migrants from different regions and social contexts (Syria, Mauritania and Cameroon) who have had profoundly different migration experiences. The article discusses the processual structures of illegalized migration, the way life courses and migration courses are interrelated, and how they are intertwined with changing social (and socio-political) settings during different phases of the migration and at different places along the way. In his article, Arne Worm reconstructs the biographical courses and present perspectives of Syrians who have emigrated from the conflict figuration in Syria since spring 2011 and who entered the European Union via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. These cases of migration courses, which begin in an (extremely) violent and unstable context, show how the positions of the migrants in webs of interdependencies (before and during their migration) and the associated self-, we- and they-images are mutually interdependent, and how much they are determined by their particular familial and collective histories. These examples also show the different conditions in which uncertain perspectives are formed of both the present and the future, and how looking back at the past tends to be avoided (meaning in this case the past before emigration or before the war). In her article, Eva Bahl discusses they-images and self-images of Moroccan youngsters who came to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta or Melilla as unaccompanied minors. While the they-images applied to these children and adolescents by the long-time residents are frequently shaped by racist, xenophobic or peniaphobic patterns of interpretation (and are often used to support a general denigration of Moroccans in the border zone), the self-presentations of the young people testify to a resilience and agency (or in other words autonomy of action, within their limited possibilities) that is surprising in view of the suffering they have experienced. A remark with political intent: It is common in public discourses in the Global North to argue that refugees and migrants from regions of the world where peaceful changes of power (especially from government to political opposition) and the observance of human rights, at least in 'political life', are rare exceptions, are 'only' economic migrants. The latent economism of many social scientists tends to back up such a one-sided interpretation. If this were meant seriously, it would testify to a dubious underestimation of the advantages of the rule of law and democracy, and would be a projection of our own short-sighted views onto other people who have good reasons to see and experience these things differently. It would be an important achievement if the articles in this volume could help to correct this over-simplified and distorted picture of the problems of people living in the Global South. The articles by Johannes Becker, Hendrik Hinrichsen and Nicole Witte examine figurations of different groupings of Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank. With his analysis of a 'mixed' multi-generation family, Johannes Becker reconstructs an inner-Palestinian established-outsider figuration in East Jerusalem, where 'old-established' Jerusalem families are in the minority, and the majority is formed by people who arrived in the course of the twentieth century. This 'classic' established-outsider figuration is linked to social disparagement of the newcomers and their descendants-which exists even within families-and the fact that, at least initially, the latter had less social, economic and cultural capital. The Middle East conflict may contribute to prolonging the existence of this figuration, since, in view of the prevailing pejorative discourses, not only in Israel, on 'the Palestinians', the established try to maintain their social distance from the newcomers, whom they regard as less educated and more bound by tradition. Hendrik Hinrichsen's article presents the family and life histories of descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and who live today in the West Bank. The author shows from the inside the many different effects of overlapping and intertwined forms of belonging and collective identification, in other words what happens when different we-images are combined. On the one hand, there is the belonging to a Palestinian family that fled to the West Bank in 1948, and, on the other hand, the belonging to very different socio-historical generational units, linked to participation in one of the two Intifadas. The last article by Nicole Witte is devoted to female Palestinians who possess Israeli citizenship, and shows that there are considerable differences between their we- and self-presentations and those of Palestinians who live outside the borders of Israel. However, she finds that common to the members of this grouping is the way they implicitly or explicitly make reference to a Palestinian national collectivity. The author considers how belongings are (re)constructed and (re)produced in the course of biographical-narrative interviews, and why the explicit expression of a Palestinian belonging is so important for these interviewees. She reconstructs a type of Palestinian women in Israel, characterized by structural similarities in the way they locate themselves in the Palestinian collectivity, despite obvious differences in their life courses and in the way they speak about their biographies and belongings. Biographies-Discourses-Figurations: Methodological considerations from the perspectives of social constructivism and figurational sociology Artur Bogner and Gabriele Rosenthal Introduction Social-constructivist biographical research, the sociology-of-knowledge approach to discourse analysis, and figurational sociology are fields of inquiry which have recently become established in different academic communities, mostly independently of each other, although they are relatively close in terms of various characteristics, and, at least partly, share important historical roots. In this article we want to show the possible benefits of bringing their key concepts together in one integrated theoretical and methodological approach, and of combining them in research practice. It seems to us, as proponents of biographical research and figurational sociology, that the concept of discourse, as used for example by Michel Foucault or by the sociology-of-knowledge approach to discourse analysis (see Keller 2004; 2005; 2006), may serve as an intermediary concept that can be used to elucidate and explain some of the most fundamental links between figurations of human beings and the biographies of the individuals who form these figurations. This idea is discussed in detail below. By 'intermediary' we mean that this concept can help us to recognize, describe, understand and explain the mutual constitution of societies and individuals. In biographical research, a synthesis of these three theoretical and research perspectives can open up possibilities for more rigorous investigations of the diverse ways human beings interrelate with other human beings, amongst others in the context of we-groups or organized groups, other social groupings, organizations or 'institutions'. Such a synthesis also makes it possible to study, for example, the role of 'cultural' images, patterns, concepts and practices in the interrelations between human beings. In figurational sociology, linking these three research and theoretical perspectives could assist a more thorough understanding of the activities, lived experiences and sentiments of individuals in their particular historical, biographical and situational contexts, and help to take into account their 'subjective' perspectives. By this we do not mean that social-constructivist biographical research, with its focus on case reconstructions, fails to show how individuals form social figurations. Rather, this has been the declared aim from the beginning of biographical research in sociology, which is bound up with the large-scale study by William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki of peasants who emigrated from Poland to the US. With their analysis of the 'experiences and attitudes of an individual', Thomas and Znaniecki claimed to be able to identify the 'laws of social becoming' (1958 [1918-1922], 1831-1832). Figurational sociology also looks at the 'actors' and their personal histories and individual developmental processes. This can be seen, for instance, in the study of Mozart by Norbert Elias, in which he makes clear that the life course of this musician becomes more understandable, 'if it is seen as a micro-process within the central transformation period of (the) macro-process' that Elias describes, in both the world of artists and wider society (Elias 2010b, 91; our amendment, A.B./G.R.). In both research traditions, societies and organizations cannot be conceived without individuals. Both are based on a conception of societies, or the social world, as a dynamic reality that is constantly generated and created anew, constantly reproduced and altered through the interplay of individuals, in other words on a processual (and strictly relational) conception of the existence of this field of 'objects'. But why do we want to bring these two traditions of research, and even a version of discourse analysis, together? It is our belief that if biographical research, which concentrates on individual and familial (hi)stories, were to be combined with figurational sociology, which has a stronger focus on collective and long-term processes, this would make it much easier to overcome the fruitless segregation of micro-, meso- and macro-perspectives which dominates theory and methodology in the social and cultural sciences (section 2). Furthermore we have found that research into collective discourses can assume a significant role in this context, and that a social-science analysis of discourses (as proposed for example by Keller 2005; 2006) can help biographical research to more clearly see the effect, or lack of effect, for example of conflicting or dominant discourses on individual or collective self-presentations and self-interpretations. Such an analysis also helps to investigate the interrelations between dominant discourses and power inequalities within and between social groupings and figurations -not least figurations of 'established' and 'outsiders' in the sense proposed by Elias and John Scotson (section 3). We also believe that discourse analysis and the concepts used in it can benefit, and the meanings of these concepts can be made more transparent (and precise), when articulated using sociological terminology. In order to make these ideas clearer, and to show their empirical grounding, we will briefly present two empirical studies (section 4), followed by a résumé of our methodological conclusions (section 5). Commonalities and differences between biographical research and figurational sociology Biographical research Despite various differences between authors, the biographical research that has been practiced in sociology in Germany since the 1970s is generally based on social constructivism as formulated by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966). From a methodological and practical point of view, it involves reconstructing the genesis of the 'subjective' perspectives and experiences and everyday knowledge of one or various individuals, which are usually considered the requisite starting point of empirical enquiry and analysis. Revealing, and taking account of, the mutual constitution or interplay of individuals and society has always been a central concern of social-constructivist biographical research. Contrary to prevalent stereotypes, biographical research in sociology has never been concerned with the individual conceived in isolation, but has always been devoted to the empirical study of individual and collective processes in their entwinedness, their inescapable interconnectedness. Thus, 'biography' is understood not as something purely individual or 'subjective', but as a social construct that refers to collective discourses and collective processes. A biography, both in its lived course and as it is remembered and (re-)interpreted, is always an individual and collective product. As Bettina Dausien (2010, 113) puts it, biographies are both 'a medium for the construction of identity and subjectivity, and [...] the result of social construction processes' (our translation, A.B./G.R.). Besides attempting to do justice to these 'interrelationships' (in the sense proposed by Georg Simmel and George H. Mead) by taking the biographies and life courses of individuals as a starting point, two other methodological requirements are bound up with a biographical approach in this research tradition. It is important, on the one hand, to understand and explain the meaning of experiences not in isolation, but in the overall context of the life history, and, on the other hand, to carry out a processual analysis, a reconstruction of the emergence, persistence and modification of social phenomena in the context of studying life courses, taking into account the permanent intertwining of life courses and biographical (self-)interpretations. And the reconstruction of biographical processes, in their indissoluble interconnection with collective processes, is not simply a matter of answering 'why' questions, like 'Why did this person behave or act this way and not another way?' Questions of this type are generally avoided. Using a processual and transgenerational perspective-as proposed and discussed in particular by Elias (e.g. 2009b, 108: n.1, passim; 2007, 90-103)-means asking: What was the long or protracted individual and collective history that led to this biographical constellation of a person, to his or her current situation in relation to others, to this particular activity, decision, view, sentiment, experience or perception? For example, it is not adequate to simply ask why someone made a decision to join a particular political party. Instead, one needs to enquire into the collective and individual situation in which the person joined the party-including the long collective and individual courses of events that formed the 'background' to, or were part of, the 'set of circumstances' for this conduct. In stringent social-constructivist biographical research, an individual life course and self-interpretation are always reconstructed in their interconnectedness with the life courses and self-interpretations of other individuals, organized groups, we-groups, or 'institutions', and in their entwinement with the discourses that prevailed during different phases of an individual and collective history. This also applies to the interconnectedness of generations that communicate with each other, or are linked in other ways-and this does not just apply to the interdependencies and interactions between different 'generations' (both in the genealogical and in the socio-historical sense) within a certain family or household. In order to analyze a life course in which someone joins a party and becomes politically active, it is necessary to ask about the webs of interdependencies in which the biographer was, and still is, involved, the institutional, organizational and informal networks of relationships in which she/he was socialized, and the historical constellations, including the discourses, she/he was influenced by. In order to analyze life courses and life stories in this way, and to get away from static or mechanical 'why' accounts which point to only one direction of influence, and from explanations that are reduced to motives or intentions, Fritz Schütze (1977; 1983) introduced the method known as the biographical-narrative interview. Asking people to tell their whole life story provides opportunities to gain insights into their present perspectives and sets of circumstances, into the way they orientate themselves towards, or are influenced by, current discourses, and into the various ways their life courses have been shaped by discourses, relationships and biographical constellations in the past. In contrast to other interview methods, it is thus possible to uncover not only the interpretations of the interviewees in the present of the interview or the text production, but also the genesis of these interpretations and the sequential gestalt of the lived life history, and to reconstruct courses of action and conduct in the past and how they were experienced at the time. In order to avoid drawing hasty conclusions from the biographical self-presentation of interviewees when talking about their past, we try to reconstruct both their present and their past perspectives in the light of their 'four-dimensional' contexts, or of the relevant 'historical' (individual and collective) processes, and to trace the processes of their production, entwinement, interplay and change. This is done in several distinct steps, in accordance with the analytical method developed by Gabriele Rosenthal-initially in the context of her research into the life courses of former members of the Hitler Youth movement (Rosenthal 1987, 143-244; see also 1995; 1993). In biographical-narrative interviews, the interviewees may argue and describe, but most importantly they narrate and remember their own experiences, or at least this is what they are invited to do by the interviewer. Here, it is important to take into account that memory practices-to borrow from Maurice Halbwachs-are framed by the collective memories of different social groupings. The relevant frames that are pertinent here, usually because they are connected with these groupings and their collective self-interpretation may, depending on the interview's setting or context, be selected and understood or 'defined' in various ways-and in ways which may change more than once during the course of a single conversation or interview (Rosenthal 2016a). Memory practices are always interrelated with the experienced past that people remember and talk about, and the stocks of collective knowledge that have been established and internalized over various generations (ibid.). Depending on the historical and cultural context, memory practices are subject to collective rules which become consolidated and change over time. They will thus show traces of rules which were valid in the past or in other social or situational contexts, and at the same time traces of social rules which apply in current interactive memory practices or collective discourses. The memory process cannot be considered independently of the present situation, nor independently of past experiences or the handed-down past. It is interrelated with the collective memory-or collective memories, to put it more correctly-of different societal groupings, organized groups or organizations. These memories are part of the cultural practices which (amongst others) determine which memories and constructions of the past are excluded or marginalized, and which become dominant in the discourse of each grouping or we-group (such as the family, the historical generation, or political, religious or ethnic we-groups), and in public and mass media discourses. We argue that the question whether this leads to conflicts between different worldviews (Mannheim 1980, 307-308) and the corresponding collective memories, or rather to the parallel co-existence of divergent and maybe incompatible collective memories that are mutually tolerated or ignored by various groupings, or to a kind of creolization of collective memories, is an empirical question. It is important in every case to make a precise and detailed empirical reconstruction, showing which form of memory has dominated in which historical and social context and in which phases of the lengthier or shorter processes under investigation.
