Our empirical research draws on three PF workshops set on the Irish border, the Ceuta exclave at the Moroccan-Spanish border, and the Turkish city of Adana. It is focused on exploring the ethical and methodological challenges of PF to develop this methodology in border and migration research.
The Irish border
The Moroccan-Spanish border
Twenty-six short essay films result from a three-month participatory filmmaking workshop in Ceuta (October-December 2022) with 13 Moroccan cross-border women. They work irregularly in the domestic service and represent 800 women in the same situation. Their films address personal testimonies to the
difficulties they experience in regularising their
situation after years, and even decades, of low-paid labour and a poignant lack
of legal rights, access to public health care or education. The workshop was
hosted by the local NGO Digmun, the Association for
the Dignity of Women and Children of Ceuta, which offers language literacy and
legal support. All films are compiled into the webdoc “ABCeuta: the Alphabet of the Border”.
To visit the webdoc and watch the films: here.
The Turkish-Syrian border
The one-month workshop in Adana was hosted by the cultural association Özgür Sinematek and involved 25 Turkish students from the Faculty of Media and Communication at Çukurova University. It aimed to promote dialogue between Turkish and Syrian students on campus and Syrian displaced people living in Adana since 2014, usually separated due to existing language barriers. The workshop sessions highlighted the economic and cultural challenges of integrating Syrian communities in Turkey due to everyday bordering and racism. The four resulting films, three short documentaries and one fiction, capture these experiences, as well as the consequences of the Earthquake of 6 February 2023 and the loss of memories for displaced Syrian families due to the war. The shorts will be finished in 2024. Stay tunned!