(B)ordering, Identity and Agency: Toward Rehumanisation in Mobility
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2025-07-06
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en
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This thesis investigates the concept of agency through narrations, by examining the question of how the participants express their agency throughout their mobilities and cross border-experiences. The study’s epistemological and theoretical underpinnings are post-structural, with several influences from thinkers in Sociology, Social Psychology, and Human Geography. It adopts a case study approach focused on individuals from Syria, irrespective of visa status residing in the Netherlands and Germany. Utilising the Biographical Narrative Method, unstructured interviews offer flexibility and enable a balanced dynamic between interviewer and interviewee. By considering people as the experts of their own experience, this study examines the perspectives of everyday people while exploring broader concepts. Inductive thematic analysis generates two subthemes grounded in participants’ narratives: “Identity”, capturing self-presentation and strategies of belonging, and “Crossroads” explores decision-making processes of navigating danger, precarity, and bureaucratic hurdles.
This study demonstrates that agency is dynamic and context-dependent, demonstrating the ongoing negotiation of perceptions of oneself in with their surroundings. By incorporating a more humane lens, social policy can recognise the fluidity and intersectionality of identities, creating opportunities to enhance integration and belonging. Such lens may also challenge reductive public perceptions, fostering a deeper understanding of the complexities of human migratory mobility.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen