Beyond Home and Exile: Encounters between Syrian Refugee and Local Women in Germany

This practice-led research project employs the concepts of home and exile to examine the dynamics of encounters between Syrian refugee women and the German host communities in the medieval town of Altena and on the small North-Sea island of Föhr. The project includes two interdepended components: A written thesis and the 67 minutes documentary film Jenseits von Heimat (2024). The film portrays the day-to-day lives of three Syrian refugees (Batoul, Samar and Nibal) between 2018-2022 to shine a light on the complex attitudes towards newcomers in Altena and Föhr. The research investigates the impact of friendships on cultural identity and foregrounds the intimate consequences of global politics, of being forced to flee your country and develop a new sense of belonging in somebody else’s idea of home. In practice, the film develops the Staged Encounter method to initiate and record cross-cultural conversations between women about similarities and differences, religion and prejudice. Presenting on film these otherwise hidden encounters in the intimacy of home is a feminist act that assigns new meaning to domestic space as spheres of cross-cultural debate and embodies the slow progress of the negotiation of cultural differences. The written thesis has four chapters. The first (literature review) explores the concepts of home and exile with particular reference to the lives of Islamic migrants in Germany; chapter two examines factual filmmaking methods to visualise home and exile and strengthen the agency of the participants; chapter three develops the Staged Encounter to record cross-cultural conversations; and the final chapter examines how Jenseits von Heimat (2024) makes an embodied argument for open-mindedness to the spectator. The thesis shows that refugees and Germans both need to adjust to an altered reality, thus challenging the notion that migrants have to ‘integrate’ into a fixed host society. Instead, the film explores opportunities and barriers that arise from this situation to create new lives beyond home and exile, and, through the film and writing, critically and cinematically negates the binary opposition of both terms.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ph.D.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

PhD thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Westminster

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Hahnfeld, Maren

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Bate, D.
• Sprio, Margherita

Identifier

oai:westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk:x3v04

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk:x3v04