Images & memory: the contemporary trajectory of migrants

Abstract

The relation image/migrants/memory allows to elaborate a form of representation of everyday life where the smartphone, as a technological device, becomes the receptacle of a new memory. For a lot of migrants, images and technological medium help to produce a structure of life stories. Our reflection is built on a theoretical-methodological dynamic focusing the importance of images as a constructive act where memory is inseparable from our environment. In a perspective of sociological exploration including the memory participation of images in the migrant's trajectory, our paper gives an account of an empirical research on the current migration issue between Brazil and France. Migrants express themselves in daily life through visual traces that make up the trajectory between past, present and experiences. Through the visualization of digital images, smartphones crystallize the living memory.