Becoming Elsewhere : Latin American Migrants’ Narratives of Identityand Belonging in Europe

This thesis explores how Latin American migrants in Europe construct and express theiridentities while navigating emotional legitimacy, resilience, and pluralism withinpostcolonial power structures. Drawing on narrative identity theory, affect theory,existential phenomenology, and the concept of coloniality of power, I investigate howmigrants experience and negotiate belonging, recognition, and emotional expression incontexts shaped by racialized histories and structural inequalities.The research combines three methodological approaches: in-depth narrative interviewswith Latin American migrants across European countries; digital ethnography focused onmemes that reflect shared emotional experiences; and autoethnographic reflectioninformed by my migration journey. Together, these methods enable an analysis that isparticipatory and situated, aligned with the principles of Communication forDevelopment, which values lived experience, voice, and co-created knowledge. Thisperspective treats migrant narratives not as anecdotal but as meaningful contributions tounderstanding identity and belonging in motion.The findings reveal that migrants often perform emotional resilience to meet socialexpectations, while simultaneously carrying conflicting and often unspoken emotions,also defined as emotional pluralism. Expressions of discomfort are frequently withhelddue to perceived expectations of gratitude, raising questions about emotional legitimacyand the right to express complex and contradictory feelings.Rather than presenting a singular narrative of adaptation or success, this study highlightsthe ongoing emotional labor involved in migration and suggests that identity is not fixed,but continuously reconfigured through storytelling, silence, and embodied affect.Migrants are not merely adapting to new environments; they are also reshaping themthrough presence, humor, and everyday participation.Ultimately, I argue for communication and development frameworks that recognizeemotion not as peripheral, but as central to how migrants live, interpret, and transformtheir place in the world.