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behalf of Kosovo in Switzerland. It seeks to understand how they make sense of their past engagement and scrutinises particularly how they narrate their ethnic and national belonging with a specific interest on their transnational positioning. This research follows a social constructivist framework, an approach that analyses subjective meanings as historically and socially negotiated: they are the result of interactions with social actors in particular historical and sociocultural circumstances that include “shared understandings, practices, language, and so forth” (Schwandt 2007b: 197, Creswell 2013). The research thus aims to get as close as possible to the participants’ views (Creswell 2013). Methodologically, I decided to rely mainly on oral history in order to understand the participants’ constructions of the past. Oral history is one among many possible methods for studying memories. In this section, I will outline the main benefits of this methodological choice as well as some of the methodological and theoretical developments in the area of oral history. I will also examine in more detail some of the core aspects of oral history, particularly its subjective, narrative and inter-subjective character. Finally, I will describe some of the connections between the fields of memory studies and oral history.

In its early years, oral history was mainly used as a historical method for collecting evidences about the past following a positivist approach (Grele 2006, Bischoping and Gazso 2016, Bornat 2013). Over the years, however, oral history has evolved to become a gateway to an individual’s subjectivity, within a more interpretative view (Grele 2006). Thus, individuals started to be interviewed not just for evidence about the past but also for their views of themselves as actors

who construct their own stories and interpretations of the past (Grele 2006). Alessandro Portelli, in particular, inspired many generations of oral historians by bringing to the fore the meaning-making role of oral history (Bischoping and Gazso 2016). He famously declared (Portelli 1991:

52):

But what is really important is that memory is not a passive depository of facts, but an active process of creation of meanings. Thus, the specific utility of oral sources for the historian lies, not so much in their ability to preserve the past, as in the very changes wrought by memory. These changes reveal the narrators’ effort to make sense of the past and to give a form to their lives, and set the interview and the narrative in their historical context.

Since Portelli’s ground-breaking considerations, oral historians have started considering interviews as a chance to observe how the construction of the past regularly changes in evolving contexts (Bischoping and Gazso 2016). Several paths have been followed: underlying the multiple constructions of the past made by a single subject, exploring the oppositions and tensions among several narratives of the same past experiences, and scrutinising the relationships between official/public memories and personal ones (Bischoping and Gazso 2016).

Alessandro Portelli, his colleague Luisa Passerini and other pioneers of an oral history that distances itself from positivism also greatly contributed to the field by bringing to the fore two interwoven aspects: the narrative and the intersubjective nature of oral history interviews (Grele 2006). Even by the end of the 1970’s, Portelli (1991: 48) noted: “Oral sources are narrative sources. Therefore, the analysis of oral history materials must avail itself of some of the general categories developed by narrative theory in literature and folklore”. Since then, numerous oral historians have taken into consideration the narrative components of the interviews collected in their research. They have in particular adapted their interview practice, giving more room to the interviewees, in order to encourage them to construct their responses in terms of their narratives, which was not the case in the early years of oral history, when oral historians favoured the use of questionnaires that elicited short, factual answers (Abrams 2016).

As narrative research has expanded significantly across the academic fields and different forms of inquiry have developed, from biographical studies (Rosenthal 2007, Schütze 1983, Bornat

2008) to archival works (Felming, Riegle, and Fryer 2007), no agreement has been found with regard to what composes narratives and how to approach them (Abrams 2016, Chase 2003).

There is however a common understanding that narrators tell stories in order to make sense of experiences by constructing meaning (Chase 2003). Thus, narratives not only interpret but also construct experiences; they not only represent happenings but also constitute them (Somers 1994). Furthermore, narratives not only contribute towards making sense of experiences, but they are also sources of action for individuals. Margaret Somers (1994: 614) famously explained:

Their research scholarship in narrative studies is showing us that stories guide action; that people construct identities (however multiple and changing) by locating themselves or being located within a repertoire of emplotted stories; that

"experience" is constituted through narratives; that people make sense of what has happened and is happening to them by attempting to assemble or in some way to integrate these happenings within one or more narratives; and that people are guided to act in certain ways, and not others, on the basis of the projections, expectations, and memories derived from a multiplicity but ultimately limited repertoire of available social, public, and cultural narratives. 33

Oral history interviews are thus composed: narrators choose, for example, between different

“genres” and “modes” of narratives in order to tell their stories (Abrams 2016, Portelli 1991, Chamberlain 2006). The narrators commonly include reported speech and anecdotes in their stories (Abrams 2016), and might also decide to portray themselves as victim or hero in a tragedy or epic form of a story (Abrams 2016). Narrators also need to situate their narrative, or part of it, at the level of the home, town, national or international (and obviously also transnational) perspective, which results in stories that focus on the individual’s life, the experiences of the “community” or the official and political spheres (Portelli 1991). These decisions in terms of genre and mode of telling reveal the meanings attributed by the narrators to their stories (Abrams 2016).

The emphasis on the narrative component of the interviews within Portelli’s generation has also been accompanied by a focus on the intersubjective nature of oral history that rests on two components (Summerfield 1998, Grele 2006). On the one hand, as already mentioned, narrators integrate their personal recollection of events with multiple discourses and narrative genres that

“dialogic” (Grele 2006: 68), as it consists of a conversation between an interviewee and a researcher or even a broader public that might read the narrator’s testimony (Abrams 2016, Sarkar 2012). Portelli (1991: 56) further explains the role of the oral historian: “the historian remains important at least as a partner in dialogue, often as a “stage director” of the interview, or as an “organizer” of the testimony. Instead of discovering sources, oral historians partly create them”.

Reflecting on the relationship between the narrator and the researcher also leads to the questioning of the researcher’s self-reflexivity and power differences (Sarkar 2012). In particular, categorical differences such as status, class, gender and ethnicity are considered relevant in the relationship between the researcher and the interviewee (Bornat 2013). The seeming asymmetrical relationship of power however needs to be relativised, as this relationship often appears to be “complex and shifting” (Armitage and Gluck 2002: 79), as interviewees exercise their agency in numerous ways by, for example, focusing on certain aspects while hiding others (Sarkar 2012, Portelli 1991, Bornat 2013). Another way of viewing interviewees’ agency is to consider the notion of “composure” (Dawson 1994). It is generally admitted that narrators compose interviews by selecting from among various possible stories that often agree with the wider cultural context and that might also please the audience (Summerfield 2004, Abrams 2016). Thus, narrators can choose between “a range of possible identities, some of which will be dominant or hegemonic, ideal or desirable, others will be alternative or subversive” (Abrams 2016: 67).

Furthermore, while memory study scholars and oral historians traditionally pursued different perspectives and interests in the study of narratives of the past, their approaches have recently started to concur. For a long time, oral historians conventionally focused on personal or small group memories. They thus traditionally favoured an approach that centres on individual agency while also highlighting the importance of human relationships in the practice of remembering via the interview (Hamilton and Shopes 2008). By contrast, memory study scholars have, instead, focused on collective forms of remembering, involving for example the study of meta-narratives of the “nation”, large-scale rituals and monuments (Bornat 2013), neither have they tended to focus on how individuals create meaning about the past in acts of remembrance, which is one of oral historians’ main preoccupations (Hamilton and Shopes 2008). Rather, they concentrate on how a “collective memory”, often understood as “one generally shared

memory”, is produced, conveyed, mediated and accepted within a broader public (Strath 2008:

628, Hamilton and Shopes 2008).

There has emerged, however, a relatively recent trend in the field of oral history to consider personal memories in relationship with other types of shared remembering: “researchers are now able to say that an oral history source based on memory offers up insights into the interplay between the self and society, between past and present and between individual experience and the generalised account” (Abrams 2016: 81). Thus, the interplay between individual and social forms of remembering as well as between private and public forms now lies at the heart of a great number of oral history projects (Abrams 2016). Debates however continue about the real influence of public and shared memories on individual remembering, on the role of interviewees’ agency and on the importance of lived experiences within the field of oral history (Abrams 2016, Bornat 2013, Hamilton and Shopes 2008).

The research approaches followed by oral historians appear to fit well with the social constructive epistemology adopted in this study. Indeed, oral historians explore how individuals make sense of the past, but do not only concentrate on personal stories. They also broaden their analysis by scrutinising the influence of the shared forms of understanding and remembering available in the particular historical and social contexts of the research subjects, including for example the official, family and community memories or particular narrative genres and modes.

Furthermore, oral historians also understand the process of meaning-making of the past produced in the interview as a result of the immediate interaction with the researcher and the imagined public or readers/listeners.

In this work, I follow the practices of oral historians and memory study specialists by understanding “memory and “narratives” as double-faceted. “Memory” is not only constituted by the passive act of remembering past experiences but also as the active, intersubjective process of making meaning in a particular historical and social context (Portelli 1991).

Similarly, the concept of “narrative” also encompasses two main aspects. On the one hand, a narrative is “an ordered account created out of disordered material or experience” (Abrams 2016: 106). It can be conceived as a story with several units, a beginning and an end (Kohler Riessman 2008). At the same time, a narrative is an account that people create in a particular setting to make sense of experience, and construct and communicate meaning according to their social and historical environment (Chase 2003). Furthermore, I not only concentrate on

personal memories or narratives but also pay attention to the public narratives that are conveyed in the interviews. These are discourses about the past that are constructed and communicated in the public spheres, in contrast to other forms that remain in the private domain, although the boundary between public and private is not always clear-cut. These discourses are often spread via the media, such as the TV, internet, books and newspapers, in commemorations, celebrations or informal discussions.