Forced Migrants’ Agency in a Life Course Approach—A Conceptual Proposal and Empirical Illustration

Abstract

Forced migrants live and act under extremely restricted conditions, nevertheless they make their own living. To understand and explain their agency, there are inductive, usually qualitative, approaches like symbolic interactionism or biographical case reconstruction and deductive, often quantitative, methodologies like rational choice and (cap)abilities-aspirations concepts. Integrating elements of biographical and life course research, critical realism, relational constructivist and social practice approaches and based on mixed-methods data gathering and analysis we propose a model of six interrelated areas of forced migrants’ muddling through their everyday life and making choices: social entanglements/vernacularization, experiences, socialization, preferences, expectations and resources (VESPER). We first shed light on the state of related literature and discuss some concepts for understanding and explaining migrants’ agency, then explain our conceptual frame of the VESPER model and the methodology of gathering and analyzing data via biographical narrations. We illustrate how the six areas of the VESPER model interrelate in the life course of a Syrian refugee in Turkey and draw some conclusions.