Title | Self and Belonging : Visual (Self-)Representations by Afghan Migrants |
Author | Sarah BITTEL |
Director of thesis | Alessandro Monsutti |
Co-director of thesis | Ruth Mandel |
Summary of thesis | Studies of migration have paid frequent attention to migrants’ representation in media and political discourses. However, there is little focus on migrants’ own visual production and the relevance of such self-representation. Therefore, my study will focus on the visual communications employed by selected Afghan migrants in Greece and Germany. Here, visual communication refers to everything that addresses itself to sight, such as photographs, videos, drawings, texts with graphic elements, and that are addressed to a specific audience. For this study, I will focus on visual representations that are addressed to family members back home, peers, members of the host community, and policy makers. I will explore the images that Afghan migrants share for their capacity to reveal social phenomena, their relationships to the world, and lived power relations (Mirzoeff, 2013). Investigating migrants’ visual culture will allow me to better understand concepts of self and belonging and, more broadly, life in exile. I will pay special attention to how images speak to migrants’ social aspirations, obligations, and preconceptions of “Europe.” |
Status | middle |
Administrative delay for the defence | 2023 |
URL | |