Contested rights to grieve in narratives of forced migrants living in Nordrhein-Westfalen (Germany)

Forced migration involves many different losses (e.g., people, places, homes, beliefs). However, grief for these migratory losses is neither recognized nor well understood (Caseado, Hong & Harrington 2010). This study explores and analyzes how experiences of loss involved in forced migration and their grieving are narrated by young forced migrants living in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Open autobiographical interviews asking questions about participants' life stories and imaginaries of the future have been conducted with forced migrants and German citizens aged between 18 and 30 living in NRW. Experts ¿ people who work daily with forced migrants ¿ were also interviewed. The interviews were analyzed following a Grounded Theory inspired approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2014). Forced migrants lose a life and future projects they had imagined for themselves before forced displacement. They express grieving by narrating troubling emotions, they continue to project themselves in the environment they escaped from and they mention their lost projects and plans when asked about their future prospects in NRW. These losses and their grieving are hardly recognized by German citizens, which appears to make it difficult for them to mourn what they have lost.