Abstract
My life has been marked by the experience of migration; I have lived most of my life removed from my country of birth. As I wrote several years ago,
I possess the vague certainty that I could have been another person were it not for the particular circumstances that migration brought into my life. I do not know and will never know the person I could have been had I not left my country. The only me I know is the one that incorporates the consequences of migration. Even though my life has been very rich in experiences, and I have never felt particularly deprived, I know that whatever I have succeeded in creating and living has been developed at the expense of some significant losses. Of these losses I am only vaguely aware. Far more clear are the undeniable opportunities, achievements, successes, and fulfillments brought about by migration. For the person who has migrated, identity issues are further complicated by their polyvalent circumstances. One is aware that both life’s losses and failures and life’s possibilities and triumphs are magnified and distorted by the lens of the migration experience. Migration for me, as for most immigrants, has given a dual and contradictory legacy. It provided safety and success, yet it also brought losses and silence about them. Mention of them is easily confused with self-pity or even ungratefulness to the new country. (Espín, 1999, p. 1)
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© 2015 Oliva M. Espín
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Espín, O.M. (2015). A Geography of Memory: A Psychology of Place. In: Espín, O.M., Dottolo, A.L. (eds) Gendered Journeys: Women, Migration and Feminist Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137521477_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137521477_2
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