Who Gets to Tell Their Story? Voice and Identity with Sandra Evers

But, you know, Sandra, it also continues, doesn't it? Because even in the society in which we live, we still have people who are voiceless.

unable to voice who they are in any meaningful way because it's just like here you know refugees or immigrants you know which which identity are you going to wear you're either going to be a refugee or an immigrant if you're not from this country and i think that's true in a lot of different societies today even if you're an outsider you're an outsider and we will identify you as an outsider And it takes an awful lot for you to get your voice heard, for you to identify yourself.

I think that still rings true.

Tell me about your understanding of, know before this we were talking about covid and how covid shifted identity for pretty much everybody because we were dealing with things very unfamiliar to us about not being able to go out having to be locked down you know doing things differently six feet apart that kind of thing and that's quite different so in your understanding In what way do things like that impact identity and voice for people?

Yeah, that's a very tremendously important topic that I've been focusing on already for quite a while, basically since the early 2020s, when this all hit us.

I was already the initiator of the Anthropologist Children and Youth, and my big question was, what does...

This COVID lockdown, everything that entails the fear of getting sick, all these issues, losing grandparents that you could see, you know, all these very heavy mental bewildering topics and realizations.

What did it do to our young people? because they are developing their identity and you do that in relation to others and all of a sudden you're locked into a house literally and the only thing you can identify with or the way you can make connection with is basically digitally you know with with the internet and so what does that do to the our youngsters who have lived under that situation for quite an essential amount of time has spanning over their young time of their youth the limited time of their youth.

And I notice, I speak a lot to youngsters about that, and I notice a lot of these young people have actually tremendous mental pain.

And I think it has a lot to do with that time, you know, that they are not quite sure why they are so unhappy and why life is not as they hoped it would be.

But I think a lot of their normal identity development has been hampered by these periods of fear and limitation and particularly lack of identification with others around you in real life.

So I think it has had a tremendous impact on everybody, but particularly our children and young people.

who in a very early period in their lives were confronted with limitations, with isolation, with mental pain, with fear, all these things that, you know, youngsters, you wouldn't want them to deal with it too early.

In this case, it was the case.

Schools were also closed, so they couldn't go to school.

They couldn't see their friends.

So it brought a lot of agony.

I've seen it in my own children who became very fearful and isolated.

And particularly my former husband, my husband at the time, he said, oh, no, we have to wear the masks, you know, inside the house.

And he was really getting sort of paranoid because of it.

It's not good for children.

You know, that whole sort of How do parents deal with it? That also impacts on the children.

So I saw that they were afraid as well because he was so terribly afraid about it.

So that had a huge impact on my children, but also children in that same age group.

So I'm just curious how you reflect on it, the three of you.