‘Discovering a different me’: Discursive positioning in life story telling over time

SynopsisThis article discusses agency in post-migration life story telling. Discussing excerpts from the life story of a well-known Moroccan Dutch town councillor as produced in 1999 and a follow up interview in 2008, it is demonstrated how the narrator strategically addresses and responds to various audiences who inform her sense of self in order to find a satisfactory balance between behavioural and relational forms of (in)dependence. Life story telling is approached as an agentic act in itself: it is argued that the articulation of past, present and future plans and the creation of meaningful links between achievements and disappointments demand and stimulate self-reflection and self-regulation, thus contributing to agency. Since the production of a life story takes place in the encounter between narrator and interviewer, the question how the agency of the narrator is negotiated in the interview setting is also addressed.