Transgenerational Diasporic Memories and Mnemonic Solidarity: The Case of the Afghan and Somali Diasporas in the USA and Italy
Afghanistan and Somalia, both known for political violence, ethnicization of conflict, and state collapse, have seen significant migration to Europe and the US over the past three decades. Currently, Afghanistan faces a theocratic regime and instability, while Somalia shows signs of stabilization. How do these new situations influence their diasporas’ memory practices concerning conflict, exile, and return? And how do different generations experience it?
The project is inspired by new trends in post-national, global memories, such as “cosmopolitan”, “multidirectional”, “travelling”, “prosthetic”, and “transnational” forms of memory. It emphasizes practices that build a shared communicative space to articulate the effects of the past in the present, aiming to create something valuable for the future (Inglis, 2016; Lim and Rosenhaft, 2021).
Drawing on biographical interviews and creative workshops conducted in the US and Italy, this paper explores how generational differences and interactions in the transnational and diasporic spaces of each community affect the possibility or impossibility of inter-diasporic forms of solidarity through memory.
Specific attention will be paid to:
- the reception context’s role in shaping memory and transgenerational and inter-diasporic forms of knowledge sharing;
- how different sociability regimes affect interactions within and among diasporas;
- how social, economic, and legal constraints of the receiving context help the ones who arrived as children/youth, with blurred memories of the civil wars, understand their parents’ struggles;
- how nostalgia intertwines with their sense of responsibility due to their new status as adults in the reception country;
- how return and ties with those left behind are shaped by different generational expectations.