Social Exclusion and Family Memory: Intergenerational Effects of Tabooed Family Histories

The focus of this session is on families affected by institutional persecution, poverty, criminalization, displacement or violence. These are experiences which are often hard to talk about in public or within families. We are thinking, for example, of family histories of people who have been affected by poverty or homelessness, who have been classified as deviant, criminal or mentally disturbed and placed (against their will) in a home or psychiatric instititution, or who have been socially stigmatized because of their social situation or origin. Such processes of social exclusion and symbolic degradation seldom end with the historical experience itself, but also affect later generations. In this session we are concerned with the intergenerational effects of social shaming and class-specific exclusion and how such experiences are remembered within the family.

We therefore invite papers that present the empirical findings of qualitative or interpretative biographical studies of families with a past that has been tabooed or marginalized. The research can refer to any region of the world or any historical context. The aim of the session is to discuss the different ways in which experiences of social exclusion, stigmatization and inequality are remembered, silenced, transformed or challenged in succeeding generations. We are interested, for example, in the social conditions under which family histories cannot be (openly) remembered and processed and in how social and political change makes it possible to question established narratives, to reinterpret them or to taboo them again.

Keywords: family memory, social exclusion, stigma, intergenerational transmission