Migration narrative analysis: Construct immigrant identities on the website of the International Organisation of Migrattion
The goal of this postgraduate thesis is to examine the immigrant identities constructed within the narratives that have been posted by the IOM on its official website. We analyzed the narratives we collected with the models of Labov (1972) and Bamberg (2004) and we divided them into four categories. The first three emerged on the basis of the movements of immigrants and the fourth category emerged on the basis of immigrants’ age, namely because the immigrant narrators are underage. The categories are as follows: those who choose to move to Europe, those who choose to return to their countries of origin, those who choose to stay in Greece and those who arrived at Greece underage. The analysis revealed some migratory identities, related to the images of the family guy, the good and ambitious businessman, the studious student and the child, who integrates in the host society through the educational system. Finally, the analysis showed that immigrants focus on the education of their children and on family safety.