A Year with Mothers and Daughters Intimate dialogues and multiple belongings across generations, faiths, and desires

The project is part of the SNF-funded research project “Inherited Futures? Objects, Time, Knowledge” led by PD Dr. Lorena Rizzo and Prof. Dr. George-Paul Meiu. It foregrounds intimacy and affect in the relationships of mothers and daughters with mobile biographies in Europe, whose voices are seldom heard in the public sphere of countries that have witnessed important immigration flows since the 1960s. The investigation of their shared memories and experiences across faith and non-faith backgrounds, generations, and sexual orientations aims to counter this erasure. By centring mobile biographies and their affective landscapes, the research looks for uncharted paths in (diasporic) future-making against persisting and intersecting xenophobia, homophobia, and anti-Muslim hatred in late-capitalist societies. The encounter with dyads of mothers and daughters, broadly interpreted beyond the boundaries of biological filiation, will result from multi-sited fieldwork in ‘postmigrant’ settings, such as cities in Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. By exploring partial connections and overlaps, the ethnographic study aims to show the rich texture of lives lived between diaspora communities and new forms of kinship. The research design and methodology emphasise sensory and embodied relations to data as well as an engaged, gentle, and participatory approach.