Angela Adami
This chapter aims to explore the different trajectories taken by migrants towards becoming politically engaged. It does so by analysing the biographical narratives collected and by conceptualizing them as political biographies. Political biographies are specific types of life narratives that trace trajectories that lead to present forms of activism, by selecting and organizing certain past occurrences and signifying them as political. The analysis sheds light on how respondents act upon time to build their stories and motivations to mobilize. This chapter engages primarily with the literature on political socialization and narrative analysis. On the one hand, political socialization literature has focused on cases of adult socialization, of which both migration and participation represent key examples. However, these two instances have not been observed together: this chapter aims to observe how these two ground-breaking experiences intertwine in the life course of migrants participating in collective action. The narrative analysis, on the other hand, reconstructs the meanings associated to political engagement, stressing the role of perception and interpretation in understanding it. One key finding relates to how, despite the fact that participants mobilize as migrants, the experience of migration itself is hardly ever referred to as a ‘trigger’ for mobilization. Rather, past experiences of mobilization and the search for familiarity with their past histories play a prominent role in favouring participation. Moreover, what is regarded as ‘political’ goes beyond the sphere of activism and is grounded to a multiplicity of spheres of life from which resources, values and motivations for participation are drawn.