Yetu’ – Nanik – Satajtoj Retrospective and Anticipatory Memory and Storytelling among Young People in the Guatemalan Diaspora in Southern Mexico

My thesis is concerned with young people in the Guatemalan diaspora in Southern Mexico and the ways in which they actively participate in the social making of their hometown in past, present, and future. My young interlocutors find themselves in an interesting position between two layers and temporalities of migration; their parents and grandparents who came to Chiapas as refugees in the 1980’s as well as older siblings and peers who frequently migrate to the US. The young people are key actors in the process of negotiating narratives from the past as well as notions of futurity for themselves and their community. During my fieldwork I engaged with young people and the wider community of La Gloria as a teacher, educator, and youth / community worker. A youth group resulted from the process and the topics of space, memory and storytelling are explored through different creative projects that the group and I worked on (oral history, photography, theatre). This thesis contributes to the study of memory specifically by showing how postmemory (as defined by Hirsch 2008) interlinks with futurity. I hope to show that young people are active in the making of space and memory in La Gloria, two aspects which profoundly impact their aspirations for the future

The social front door:the role of social infrastructures for migrant arrival

Much research on migrant arrival and settlement has looked at these processes through the lens of ‘integration’, investigating how migrants access societal realms such as the labour market, education, civil society and social networks, and mostly focusing on individual migrants’ processes of incorporation. A complementary body of work has looked at how socio-economic contexts can shape integration and social mobility. This article expands on this work by highlighting the importance of place in migrant arrival and settlement. It builds on an emerging body of literature that has emphasised that where migrants arrive plays a crucial role in their ability to access resources. Drawing on two sets of ethnographic fieldwork in East London, the article presents a micro-analysis of how migrants make their way into the city with the help of publicly accessible social infrastructures (shops, libraries, barbers, parks, etc.) and individuals working within these. The article demonstrates that social infrastructures are a crucial element amongst a range of arrival infrastructures that can be found in urban areas of long-standing immigration and highlights the role of the built environment regarding opportunities for accessing information about settlement