ORAL HISTORY: MIGRATION AND LOCAL IDENTITIES - Academia

Migration as a Catalyst for ValuesConnections to various physical and symbolic spaces are oftennarrated in terms of imagined life scenarios, which are representedthrough dreams. Like Salih (2002), who in her research on consumptionand transnational practices among Moroccan women in Italyfocuses her analytical lens on a dream told by an informant, I foundit significant that many of my informants referred to their dreams.Normunds told me that he had recently reread his diary, and while stillback in Latvia he used to record significant dreams and interpret themas signals and explanations of change in his life: The entry dates backto 2002; I did not have the slightest wish to go anywhere at that time. So,I reread what I wrote then, it is about an island. “…and everyone is talkingabout how to get there. I am followed and welcomed by kind looks.” I wassurprised to reread it; it means that already in 2002 my dreams told methat I should go.Normunds’ dream serves not only as a source justifying his individualdecision; it also has the social meaning that the decision to leaveis accompanied by “kind looks” saying goodbye and those who kindlywelcome. Normunds says his friends in Latvia support his decision towork abroad: My friend stayed, he owns a company and has a fixed salaryat another job. Barely existing, he says: I respect you, kid, that you left.Yet individual narratives of belonging in work and home that aredivided between two countries encourage us to look at possibly usefulconceptual categories from refugee studies, such as ambivalent andeven forced transnationalism (Al-Ali and Koser, 2001). It also echoesMcDowell’s (2005) study on Latvian women who worked in Great Britainafter the Second World War. The present issue is ambivalent fromthe perspective that not all Latvians in Guernsey were willing to live atransnational life. These forms of transnationalism can be interpretedin sedentary preferences and what is perceived as “a decent life”. Ithas strong generational variable and ideological roots in the socialismexperience, even if they are not consciously expressed. As part of adecent life, “one should work,” repeatedly stressed 45-year-old Jurisfrom Aluksne region, and he ironically yet very practically remindedthe listener that in Soviet times one could be imprisoned for not beingwilling to work. I had to have a job, he said. I had my company and thensome jobs on the side [halturas] now and then. I was able to live in a house28