Returning Refugees' Life Stories

My doctoral study looks at refugee returns applying Rosenthal’s biographic-narrative interview as the method of inquiry. Focusing on reentry, a concept coined from the field of intercultural communication denoting the immediate experiences of people returning, the applicability of the method is being elaborated on in reference to different types of interview participants, returning from Finland to the region of origin, e.g. the case of three voluntary returns to Iraqi Kurdistan from Finland. All three interview participants held a legal status of a refugee in Finland, stayed there for at least 2 years, and returned under the auspices of an IOM programme of assisted voluntary returns in the beginning of 2013. In order to examine the return processes as a whole, with special emphasis on social relations and networks, and the impact of the time spent in Finland in the participants’ lives, the biographic-narrative interview was chosen as the most applicable method to elucidate the genesis of return, key turning points characterizing the participants’ lives, the various salient social and cultural dynamics  concerning the return decision, and what the future looks like from the participants’ present perspective. It is a matter of looking at “the experiences preceding and following the phenomenon in question” (Rosenthal, 2004: 53). For the analysis, the procedure of biographical case reconstructions is followed step-by-step: biographical data, text and thematic field analysis, reconstruction of the life history, microanalysis of certain segments, comparison of life history and life story, and the development of types and comparison of cases. Challenges are apparent regarding other types of biographical data. That said, both the levels of narrated and experienced life history fall within the scope of my study.