“I don’t make fantastic plans”: Hopes and dreams among residents with migratory experience in Czechia

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 8. Migration and Assimilation

Abstract

How do people with a migration background hope and dream (or not)? What do they envision as their present and their future in the state of mobility and/or settlement? Research has examined mobility as a function of “aspirations” and “capabilities” within certain perceived geographical opportunity structures. This model reveals a great deal about how macro-structural changes shape migration patterns. What’s lacking as a complement to this approach, is the view from the bottom up, an in-depth cultural sociological exploration of meaning. In other words, how do individuals make sense of and understand their hopes and dreams? To explore this question, we call upon the tools of cultural sociology, including narratives, and symbolic boundaries. We base our analysis on data collected from 29 in-depth, semi-structured interviews among Roma with a migration background, settled Ukrainian immigrants, and Ukrainian refugees, living in the city of Brno in Czechia. Our study is part of a larger project in which the overarching goal is to carry out interdisciplinary research on the opportunities and risks related to individualization. In our work package, we focus on how individual “hopes” and “dreams” are formed, looking for the underlying mechanisms of fragmentation and polarization in the context of individualization. Our choice of research participants reflects the Czech context of fragmentation within groups (the Romani and Ukrainian communities) and polarization (between groups and at a societal level). Our preliminary findings reveal different forms of hopes and dreams both within-group and between groups. In some cases, we can recognize the typical “immigrant dream,” namely, the hope for a better life economically and in terms of safety and security. However, in many cases, there is considerable ambivalence and hesitation to hope, and even thwarted and unrealized dreams.

Authors

• Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Masaryk University

• Roman Baláž

• Mariia Kortokova