This article offers an interdisciplinary approach to the intersection of memory, narration, and migration as a fruitful theoretical framework to analyse Refugee Tales. These are the publications of the Refugee Tales Project, fostered by the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group with the goal of abolishing indefinite detention in the UK. The tales give voice to the refugees’ experience of forced displacement, asylum claim, and detention, and most of them are collaboratively narrated by the refugee and an established writer. My contention is that the exercise of (re)telling inherent in Refugee Tales can be examined in the light of the concept of communicative remembering, considering how the refugee and the writer engage in a dialogic co-construction of the refugee’s autobiographical memories. In this context, the article aims at exploring how (re)telling and remembering go hand in hand in a selection of narratives from the latest volumes of the series: Refugee Tales IV (2021) and Refugee Tales V (2024). Both include the experience of COVID-19 as a context or as content of remembering, and so the pandemic becomes one more factor in the process of giving voice and listening to the refugees’ testimonies of indefinite and arbitrary detention in the UK.

An examination of the relationship between constructs of individual and collective memory and the realities of exile cannot be fully possible without an exploration of the exile media coverage of the various groups of refugees in the different countries where they pursued integration into the majority society. This paper explores the migratory experiences of refugees from Czechoslovakia in the second half of the twentieth century. It reflects on the issue of migration and memory by means of research into media coverage of the large-scale migration wave of refugees from the communist dictatorship between 1948 and 1989. The text develops the theory of an alternative or surrogate public sphere, in a wider conceptualisation, which was created by refugees in the West. The paper works with the concept of ‘will to memory’, in the narrower theoretical framework, which is applied to the exile situation and which reveals the more general principles and narratives shaping the exile collective memory.

Italian media often use stereotypical images and metaphors to report narratives on migration. This shadows the complexity and the single stories of refugees who arrive in the country. This article analyses how an Italian current affairs TV programme, titled Il cavallo e la torre (The Knight and the Rook), reported the tense negotiations between the newly elected Italian government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and three NGO ships saving refugees at sea. In the arc of 7 days between October and November 2022, the programme narrated the installation of Meloni’s right-wing government. At the same time, the show exposed the government’s refusal to allow three NGO ships with numerous shipwrecked refugees on board to dock safely in one of Italy’s harbours. Drawing on memory studies and narrative theory, I analyse two episodes of the programme, and I show how the TV programme defies the migration tropes that both the media and the newly elected Italian government employ. It does so by using multiperspectivity and the externalization of individual memories of migration, as theorized by Aleida Assmann. Moreover, it makes use of the ability of narrative journalism to communicate information and create immersion for the audience, which Marie Vanoost calls the informative and immersive dimensions of narrative journalism. In this way, the programme offers a different and more nuanced perspective on Italy that can positively affect cultural memory on migration.

This reflective essay interrogates the complex interplay between identity, memory and migration through personal narrative, historical analysis and cultural representation. It draws on the intersections of my own personal experiences with the academic research I have conducted, interrogating anew the concepts of memory, identity and collective ideas of belonging as manifested by the documents we are entitled to carry. Using the Netflix series Transatlantic as an entry point, it explores how identity documents – passports, permits and bureaucratic records – shape individual experiences and collective histories, particularly in contexts of displacement and state surveillance. I connect these depictions to my own migratory background, highlighting the privileges of dual citizenship and the inequalities embedded in what Schahar termed the ‘birthright lottery’. Drawing on archival research into Irish and British travel permit systems during the Second World War, the piece situates historical identity regimes within contemporary debates on datafication, statelessness and the governance of migration. It further reflects on the development of the History of Identity Documentation in European Nations (HIDDEN) research network (funded by Cooperation in Science and Technology [COST], CA21120), which examines the past, present and future of identity documentation. Ultimately, the essay argues for critical engagement with how identity is constructed, contested and experienced across time.

This article tackles the construction of cultural memory in visual media through Jasmila Žbanić’s globally-awarded film Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020). Similar to previous attempts at memorialisation transcending to social media – such as the #ŠtoTeNema movement on X (Jaugaitė 2024, Memory, Mind & Media 3, 1–22) – Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) evinces the moral complexities faced by Aida, an English teacher credited as a translator for the United Nations (UN) Blue Helmets, as she grapples with her desire to save her family and neighbours, and her duty as an interpreter. Focusing on the daily trials of Srebrenica citizens before and after the 12 July massacre, Žbanić’s production succeeds as an alternative commemorative practice exhibiting the complexities encountered by Bosniak civilians (Mulaj, 2017, Crime, Law and Social Change 68, 123–143). Žbanić centres the victims’ perspective by casting Bosnian actors and placing a Bosniak female witness as the main character (Milišić, 2021, Društvene i humanističke studije 4, 207–224). Employing social justice frameworks (Misztal, 2003, Theories of Social Remembering, Open University Press), the film demands responsibility and acknowledgement of the international community’s failures in protecting civilians. Žbanić’s portrayal of the UN Blue Helmets, through Aida’s eyes, highlights how unrecognised accountability impedes victims’ identity reconstruction and shared cultural memory (Assmann, 2011, Communicative and Cultural Memory. In Knowledge and Space, Springer Netherlands, pp. 15–27). Through visual and contextual analysis, the film challenges the silencing and denial of Bosniak suffering, countering dominant discourses promoted by Serbian authorities. The article concludes by allegorising Aida’s narrative as a shared global experience for survivors of ethnic cleansing, raising awareness of the moral implications of war and displacement.

Podcasting as a mnemonic practice is a recent development, especially among historically disadvantaged groups such as refugees. This study argues that podcasting creates distinct memory ecologies that preserve and disseminate refugee memory. We critically examine two podcasts that engage with refugee memory from the Vietnamese and Cambodian diasporas in the United States of America – Vietnamese Boat People (VBP) and Before Me (BM) – to illustrate this argument. Drawing on methodological insights from netnography and podcast ethnography, the study does a qualitative content analysis of the podcasts’ websites and transcripts. Positioning ourselves as reflective listeners, we examine how VBP and BM promote the preservation of refugee memory and oral histories. The analysis finds that these podcasts bring familial refugee memory into public digital spaces through conversational memory-making, archive subaltern histories, and foster collaborative mnemonic participation. Our observations reveal that these podcasts offer conversational mnemonic capital for refugee generations and create spaces of mnemonic belonging. We conclude by arguing that podcasts should be recognised as an emerging medium of memory preservation.