Life Narratives, common language and diverse ways of belonging

Abstract

The article discusses my experiences of gradual immersion into the community of Polish migrants to Australia, which I joined while researching life writing of Polish post-war women migrants to Australia. I focus on how my assumptions concerning commonality of culture and language transformed during the preliminary stages of my research. I initially assumed that speaking the same language as the writers whose works I study, and their ethnic community, would position me as a person sharing the same cultural knowledge, and allow me immediate access to research participants. Yet, the language I considered to be the major marker of ethnic identity exhibited multiplicity instead of unity of experiences, positions and conceptual worlds. Instead, gender, which I had considered a fluid and unstable category highly context-dependent especially in the migration framework, proved to be an important element of interaction and communication between myself and my research participants. I have learnt that it is critical for research on diaspora, including diaspora's literary cultures, to account for other identity markers that include me as a researcher into some Polish community groups while excluding from others. I base my contribution on various kinds of materials, including field notes, fieldwork diaries and interviews with Polish writers as well as secondary literature on Poles and Australians of Polish extraction in Australia. Show more