Viena Latina. Articulating Latin American migration memory in a European capital

VIENA LATINA is a pilot project for the participative articulation of migration memory in Europe. It employs oral history, participative methods from social sciences and the arts, as well as innovative dissemination strategies to build a platform for the post-migratory experience of Latin Americans in Austria’s capital Vienna. By collectively recording and reflecting biographical memory, documents and photos from this history, VIENA LATINA will build a dynamic archive of migration memory that is designed to grow and interact with other segments of Viennese society. Thus, the project will empower communities to inscribe the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) migratory experience into the living mnemonic landscape of Vienna.

The project tackles a key dimension of postcolonial Europe: its multicultural societies rooted both in the history of European imperialism and in the impact of authoritarian regimes in the Global South. With its key dimensions of participation, articulation and mnemonic empowerment, and with a team formed of experienced experts and Citizen Scientists, the community-based project will investigate this multi-faceted history and build spaces of articulation and empowerment, of communication and selfrepresentation in the city. At the same time, VIENA LATINA includes citizens from various European countries and, through its dissemination program, is conceived as a pilot project to trigger similar approaches throughout Europe, including other post-migratory communities, such as “Arab” or “African” citizens in European societies, who share a central feature with Latin Americans in Europe: they are highly heterogeneous groups often subsumed under a generalizing label. VIENA LATINA will dedicate a significant effort to disseminate the participative toolset developed by this project through European policy maker and stakeholder workshops.