Research on experience: Scenic understanding and mentalisation in interviews with refugees in uncertainty about their right of residence

The article discusses ways in which pedagogy and the social sciences can research experience – as an unconscious, bodily and affective dimension of the subject – in the context of flight and exile. Against this background, methodological considerations are first formulated on the difference between the German terms "Erfahrung" and "Erleben", which are both translated as “expirence” in English. It will be elaborated that the category of “Erleben” includes unconscious parts that require a specific methodological framework in order to be reconstructed. This methodological framework will then be outlined using the concepts of scenic understanding and mentalisation, which can enable an analytical inclusion of and focus on prelinguistic or nonlinguistic experiential content. Finally, the potential of a connection between the two concepts will be demonstrated by means of an in-depth hermeneutic analysis of an interview with a refugee with the German asylum status of “Duldung”.