Nomadic Music: body demarcations of sonority in the migrant experience. Work in progress

Abstract

This paper is part of the research project “The everyday life in the emergency: territory, inhabitants and practices”, and
it’s focused on the inquiry about the social uses of sound and music by the Latin American immigrant population in
Santiago de Chile. The aim is to describe some of the conceptual, methodological and empirical advances produced by
the research team starting from three main hypothesis about the function of music and different kinds of sonority: a)
first, they assist in the production of self-understandings and personal boundaries; b) second, they play a role to make
conceivable the immigrant experience, and; c) third, they contribute to make comprehensible and manageable life in
the new territory. We show the conceptual arguments that support the three hypotheses, the methodological reflection
behind them and the empirical deployment involved in its testing.