| Sumario: | Using data generated through collaborative collage workshops in Sweden, this study explores how belonging is constructed and negotiated in a postmigrant society – one in which migration is an irreversible reality, yet continues to be politically framed as an existential crisis. Focusing on nine individuals with diverse migratory experiences, the study combines a primarily thematic text analysis with a poetic reading of the collages, adding an affective layer to the empirical material. The findings illustrate that belonging is a fragile and ongoing process of negotiation, shaped by – and resistant to – broader power structures and the political obsession with migration that fosters us-versus-them narratives. Through everyday acts of resistance and counter-storytelling, participants challenge the essentialist categorizations imposed by a racializing context. They actively forge belonging in spaces beyond – and sometimes in tension with – ethnic and national boundaries, highlighting the interplay of memory, emotion, and relational ties. These insights offer a counter-narrative to dominant discourses, while also uncovering often-overlooked spaces of belonging that emerge beyond these themes. I conclude by situating these insights within a postmigration framework, ultimately questioning who constitutes the "we" in a society that is postmigrant in fact, but not yet in its political imagination.
|
|---|