Abstract
Syrians’ mass displacement and settlement in transit countries has been widely documented, but migrants’ homes in Europe are less visible although essential, even if transient, for those like Syrian artist and activist Diala Brisly. This chapter is analysing a picture of the artist at home by Laure Delhomme (2019) in order to understand how the choice of a home is revealing the migrant’s progressive change from, according to Brisly, ‘no country and no room’ to a diasporic space, both intimate and uncertain. The idea is to question the photographic image of the migrant’s home as a mental topoï between integration and statelessness: a multilevel space and a negotiation ground where the migrant is rebuilding her dismantled personal history.
The aim is to show a home built on narratives with many intertwined stories. Such home is exposing the continuity of a life with its losses, adaptation and projects. It works as a mobile, multicultural escape route towards international citizenship. It brings a form of knowledge as well as a political voice, that is expressing the perspectives of the ones who have no place to claim and to belong to.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Zayton and Zaytonah magazine.
- 2.
Zeltschule https://www.zeltschule.org/ (director Jacqueline Flory).
- 3.
Exhibition title, in collaboration with the United Nations, 2016.
- 4.
The wish to preserve the ideal image of a society through its monuments gave birth to the idea of preserving old buildings, an idea which then transformed the monument into testimony or trace of the past.
- 5.
Estimate in 2015: 1500 camps in Europe, Africa and the Middle-East, hosting at least twelve million refugees and displaced people (Agier, 2014, p. 14).
References
Agier, M. (2002). Aux bords du monde, les réfugiés. Éditions Flammarion.
Agier, M. (2014). Un monde de camps. La Découverte.
Amirkhani, J. (2016). Between citizenry and privilege: Ai Weiwei and Bouchra Khalili, Art practical, November 10. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.artpractical.com/feature/between-citizenry-and-privilege/
Assmann, J. (1995). Collective memory and cultural identity. New German Critique, 65, 125–133.
BBC News. (2016). Diala Brisly: Paintings of hope for Syria’s children, March 19. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35847632
Beckett, S. (2010). III Seen III said. In P. Auster (Ed.), The selected work of Samuel Beckett (Vol. IV). Grove Press.
Boccagni, P. (2018). At the roots of home, away from it: Meanings, places and values of home through the biographic narratives of immigrant care workers in Italy. In Davis, Ghorashi, Smet (Ed.), Contested belonging: Spaces, practices, biographies. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Caron, R., & Damant, D. (2014). Survivre dans un camp de réfugiés. Entre réel et symbolique (note de recherche). Anthropologie et société, 38(2), 265–284.
Diawara, M. (2013). Kader Attia: A poetics of re-appropriation. In K. Attia (Ed.), The repair from occident to extra-occidental cultures. The Green Box.
Didi-Huberman, G. (2009). Quand les images prennent position, l’œil de l’histoire I. Éditions de minuit.
Foucault, M. (1994 [1983]). L’Écriture de soi. In Defert, D. & Ewald, F. (eds.), Dits et écrits IV, 1980–1988. Gallimard.
Foucault, M. (2008 [1969]). L’Archéologie du savoir. Gallimard.
Franzenburg, G. (2013). Displaced values, from remembrance to resilience. Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 56, 59–65. https://doi.org/10.33225/pec/13.56.59
Hall, S. (1994). Cultural identity and diaspora. In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader. Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Hopper, R. J., & Millett, P. C. (2016). Symbolon. In Oxford classical dictionary. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-6166
Kim, K., & Smets, P. (2020). Home experiences and homemaking practices of single Syrian refugees in an innovative housing project in Amsterdam. Current Sociology, 68(5), 607–627. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392120927744
Kohlenberger, J. R. (2005). Strongest Tniv (today new international version), exhaustive concordance. Zondervan Publishing Company.
Korac, M. (2009). Remaking home: Reconstructing life, place and identity in Rome and Amsterdam (Vol. 26). Berghahn Books.
Massena, F. (2016). Au Liban, Diala Brisly met l’art au service des enfants réfugiés syriens, TV5 Monde, October 20. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://information.tv5monde.com/terriennes/au-liban-diala-brisly-met-l-art-au-service-des-refugies-syriens-133428
McMillan, M. (2009). The front room: Migrant aesthetics in the home. Black Dog Publishing.
McMillan, M. (2019). Dub in the front room: Migrant aesthetics of the sacred and the secular. Open Cultural Studies, 3, 184–194.
Moorti, S. (2003). Desperately Seeking an Identity: Diasporic Cinema and the Articulation of Transnational Kinship. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(3), 355–376.
Morley, D., & Robin, K. (1996). Space of identity: Global media, Electronic landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. Routledge.
Morgan, E. (1968). The second life. Edinburgh University Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (2010). Identité: Fragments, franchises. Galilée.
Ordorica, A. N. (2021). I dream of a better future for the place I call home. The Guardian, Review Issue 180, July 3.
Perraudin, F. (2017). UK asylum seekers living in ‘squalid, unsafe slum conditions’. The Guardian, October 27. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/27/uk-asylum-seekers-living-in-squalid-unsafe-slum-conditions
Rangos, S. (n.d.). Ancient commentaries on Platonic dialogues, Encyclopaedia of Plato. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from http://n1.intelibility.com/ime/lyceum/?p=lemma&id=867&lang=2
Ricoeur, P. (2006). Memory, history, forgetting. University of Chicago Press.
Save the Children. (n.d.). Syrian refugee Children’ stories: Life as a refuge. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.savethechildren.org/us/what-we-do/emergency-response/refugee-children-crisis/refugee-stories
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture. University of Illinois Press.
Syria Untold. (2016). Diala Brisly dreams with Syrian children, March 2. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://syriauntold.com/2016/03/02/diala-brisly-dreams-with-syrian-children/
The Migration Observatory. (2019). Migrants and housing in the UK: Experiences and impacts. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-and-housing-in-the-uk-experiences-and-impacts/
The Migration Observatory. (2020). UK public opinion toward immigration: Overall attitudes and level of concern. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/
Tölölyan, K. (1996). Rethinking diaspora(s): stateless power in the transnational moment. Diaspora: a journal of transnational studies, 5(1), 3–36.
Université d’Orléans. (n.d.). Collection “art et éducation”. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.univ-orleans.fr/en/node/3155
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Guetemme, G. (2022). Collecting: The Migrant’s Method for Home-Making. In: Shamma, Y., Ilcan, S., Squire, V., Underhill, H. (eds) Migration, Culture and Identity. Politics of Citizenship and Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-12084-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-12085-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)