Tempus mutans: Temporal change in the crafting styles of forced migrants’ narratives about host societies

Abstract This study examines how migrants’ narrative form changes over time when the host society is treated as an external object of evaluation. Two interview waves with five West African migrants in Southern Italy (2018; 2023–2024) are analyzed across three domains: Economic–Political, Socio–Cultural, and Environmental–Geographical. Paired comparisons are reported only where within-speaker narratives were comparable across waves. Using the crafting-styles framework, the analysis shows a shift from more stable, closure-oriented tellings in 2018 to more reversal-driven, deconstructive tellings in 2023–2024. This form drift tracks changes in evaluation, agency attribution, and the narratability of the host society as a setting for future planning. Methodologically, the study shows how narrative selection and crafting-style patterns support parsimonious longitudinal comparison and strengthen within-case temporal inference beyond content-focused readings, while also clarifying how coherence and closure become harder to sustain under prolonged institutional contact and precarity.