Experiences of migration from Turkey to Germany: the female guest worker in contemporary documentaries

ABSTRACT

This article examines two documentaries that go beyond the audio-visual canon representing the guest worker from Turkey to Germany. Look, Listen Carefully (Özlem Sarıyıldız, 2021) and Gurbet is a Home Now (Pınar Öğrenci, 2021) provide a platform for migrant women to reveal their stories, expanding the sphere of representation of guest workers. Indeed, men’s labor is always at the forefront of the historical guest worker migration narrative, while women’s labor in the factory and domestic sphere has largely ignored. Moreover, the documentaries hold a mirror to the ongoing migration from Turkey to Germany. Both filmmakers are women and new wave migrants from Turkey to Germany, referencing a migration resulting from the growing authoritarian context in Turkey over the last ten years. The filmmakers examine the history of migration to understand their own position in Germany, engaging with the subjects of their documentaries to forge intergenerational links between migrant women. I argue that these documentaries are decolonial feminist works; they expand the sphere of representation of female guest workers, working against their historical invisibility, centralizing their voices, and contextualizing the power dynamics that have shaped their experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Turkey
• Germany
• migration
• feminist documentary
• guest workers
• counter history

Introduction

The article examines two documentaries that go beyond the audio-visual canon representing the guest worker from Turkey to Germany. The films provide a platform for migrant women, to reveal their stories and their experiences of labor, encompassing both the factory and domestic realms. Indeed, men’s labor is always at the forefront of the historical guest worker migration narrative; women’s labor in the factory and the domestic sphere has largely been ignored. I argue that these documentaries adopt a decolonial feminist approach by expanding the sphere of representation of guest workers to include women, working against their historical invisibility and thus writing women into history. They shed light to the historically situated power dynamics within the broader German context, as well as within migrant Turkish communities, that impact the female guest workers.

Özlem Sarıyıldız's Look, Listen Carefully (2021) is an ongoing oral history study that aims to convey the experiences of three working-class women who independently migrated from Turkey to Germany between 1961 and 1973. These women reflect on their years of labor and its impact on their sense of self and family relationships. The montage of the stories creates an overarching narrative that provides insight into a historical period often misjudged and misunderstood, viewed from the perspective of women who have been traditionally categorized as victims. The documentary acknowledges the agency of these women as they share their motivations and aspirations to move to West Germany during that particular period, allowing audiences to witness their individual stories and reclaim their own narratives within the broader historical context. This decolonial approach challenges dominant narratives, empowers the marginalized voices of these women, and contributes to the ongoing process of decolonizing historical representations.

The second documentary, Pınar Öğrenci's Gurbet is a Home Now (2021) focuses on the urban renewal plans in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district and their impact on the migrants from Turkey residing there during the 1980s. The documentary predominantly utilizes archival photographs as the primary visual source, weaving past memories with the present. These archives are brought to life through the use of poetry, music and interviews, providing a multi-layered portrayal of the history of migration spanning several decades. Like Look, Listen Carefully, the documentary adopts a decolonial feminist approach by highlighting women’s perspectives and their intersectional experiences within the realms of home, street and work. It delves into the generational shifts and reflects on the emotional complexities inherent in the migration history from Turkey to Germany. By centering these experiences, the film actively engages in the decolonization of historical representations of migration. This approach disrupts and redefines prevailing narratives, contributing to a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of migrants from Turkey in Germany.

Both filmmakers are women and new wave migrants from Turkey to Germany. New wave migration is characterized as a migration resulting from the growing authoritarian context in Turkey over the past decade. The films serve as a self-reflective tool for the filmmakers, enabling them to examine the history of migration and gain a deeper understanding of their own positions, identities and sense of belonging within the new cultural context of Germany. They actively engage with the subjects of their documentaries to establish connections among generations of migrant women, creating a new history through the voices of women and linking personal narratives to broader historical and social contexts.

First, I will provide a succinct historical backdrop, offering a contextual understanding of the labor and social status of guest workers in Germany, with a specific emphasis on women guest workers. By drawing on interviews with the filmmakers, I will examine the two documentaries mentioned in light of this history and how they serve as self-reflective tools for the filmmakers to understand new wave migration in relation to the dense history of migration from Turkey. Furthermore, by providing insight into how documentary filmmaking has been employed by feminists, I will exemplify how both documentaries embody a decolonial feminist approach and goals, challenging official histographies about migrant women and their mainstream representations by achieving a speaking position for them.

Understanding the guest worker

The guest worker refers to the term used to describe migrant workers who moved to West Germany between 1955 and 1973. During the post-World War II era, Germany faced labor shortages and initiated guest worker programs through bilateral agreements with countries in southern Europe and the Mediterranean. By the end of the recruitment policy in 1973, Turks constituted the majority of these guest workers. Referred to as the first generation of guest workers (Gastarbeiter), they arrived in Germany with the purpose of working in the industrial sector, primarily in low-skilled positions. As described by Lee (2011, 68), they served as ‘a flexible reserve of deployable and expendable workers for unattractive, lower-paying, and physically demanding jobs.’ Initially, guest workers came to Germany alone, leaving their families behind, as their recruitment agreements restricted their stay to a maximum of two years. However, in 1964, this policy changed, allowing for family unification. Turkey’s ongoing economic and political turmoil, along with the lack of proper and sustainable employment and education opportunities, made Germany an appealing destination for those seeking brighter future prospects.

However, despite their high aspirations for economic prosperity and personal freedoms, the reality faced by guest workers in Germany was much more complex and often led to significant disappointment. When it comes to employment, Jennifer Miller highlights that ‘[m]any guest workers were disappointed with their jobs for a variety of reasons ranging from low wages, strenuous working conditions, the risk of workplace injury, and general underemployment.’ (2013, 230) Another problematic aspect, as Miller argues, was housing where ‘company housing was often a key point of exploitation of workers who had few alternatives but to live in company-supplied housing, with rent deducted from their pay checks.’ (ibid.)

The agreements that facilitated the recruitment of guest workers did not anticipate the long-term impact on the lives of those who were recruited. The first-generation guest workers had ‘little knowledge of the German language, people, or customs’ (ibid., 62), thus deciding to stay did not automatically lead to integration. Instead, they faced challenges in finding their place within German society, with transience becoming a defining aspect of their social realities. Rob Burns argues that first generation Turks in West Germany had:

three particular obstacles to their social integration that tended to be emphasized: the inhospitableness of the host country, the cultural dislocation suffered in the process of migration, and the resulting tendency on the part of the migrants to try to combat both these pressures through a strategy of cultural segregation. (1999, 744)

Moreover, Horrocks and Kolinsky point out that labor recruitment policy of the Federal Republic was intended to keep the guest workers ‘at a distance from established society, neighborhoods, schools and social services.’ (1996, xviii) Within this context, ‘ghettoization that allowed them to preserve their traditional cultural values and in which the structure of a closely knit community provided stability and orientation.’ (Lee 2011, 69)

Although the guest worker arrangement was initially intended for the recruitment of single, preferably male workers, women were also included in the recruitment efforts. Between1961 and 1973, women did not set off to join their husbands abroad, but on the contrary, were the pioneers of family migration. Lea Nocera’s extensive ethnographic study from a gender perspective on Turkish migration to Germany sheds light on how West German authorities specifically designed measures to encourage female labor through ‘women’s work’. Nocera explains that women were recruited because

they had small fast hands capable of arranging and assembling minute electronic components, or of twisting cables together, inserting light bulbs, or soldering together the least visible parts of household appliances that were revolutionizing daily life in Europe and feeding young people’s dreams of modernity and change. (2013, 1)

When worker recruitments ceased in 1974, and work permits became unattainable, women were disproportionately affected. Those who arrived through family reunification or marriage encountered challenges in obtaining legal employment, leading to limited mobility beyond the confines of their family and home life. This greatly hindered their integration prospects and their ability to live autonomous lives. Therefore, while both male and female guest workers faced difficulties in adapting to life in West Germany, women experienced additional hardships shaped by gendered experiences.

Representing migrant women in Turkish-German cinema

Media and cinematic representations of migrant women often perpetuate a stereotypical image Turkish women as victims of patriarchy, pacified and oppressed by conservative values. This narrative has been repeatedly reinforced, even in the films of the German-Turkish filmmakers like Thomas Arslan, Tevfik Başer, and Fatih Akın, who emerged in the 1990s. Despite their intentions to challenge stereotypical representations of the Turkish migrant in German cinema and shed light on the structural problems that marginalized them within German society, the female characters in their films remained constrained in their portrayal. Consequently, while the films of these directors represented a significant departure from the typical depiction of minorities, women’s voices continued to be mediated by male filmmakers.

Turkish-German female filmmakers remained a ‘minority within a minority’ in ‘an almost exclusively male cinema’ (Rendi 2006, 78) although they were making documentary films as early as 1994, as exemplified by Hatice Ayten's documentary Gülüzar, a poetic account of the filmmaker's mother.¹ Documentary quickly emerged as a practical feminist alternative, allowing filmmakers to transcend the narrative constraints of commercial cinema. Through their documentaries, these filmmakers sought to present a more nuanced and accurate depiction of women’s realities, moving beyond the limited constructions that homogenize migrant women as archetypal victims. The documentaries explore themes of journey and the impact of migration on identity, breaking the stereotypes of the voiceless Turkish woman trapped in feudal and archaic cultural practices. Within these films, dialogue and conversation between different generation of migrant women serve as forms of ‘subcultural resistance’ because they allow for mutual understanding to be explored in spoken, women-identified terms (Lesage 1984, 517). Serap Berrakkarasu’s Daughters of Two Worlds (1990) addresses the problems of arranged marriages and marital violence without glorifying victimhood. The film centers around a dialogue between two generations of women who must navigate their own way between two cultures. Seyhan Derin’s documentary I am my Mother’s Daughter (1996) foregrounds her family history and the impact of migration, particularly on herself, her sisters, and her mother. Aysun Bademsoy’s trilogy, focusing on five Turkish German female soccer players in Kreuzberg, is an attempt to break stereotypes as Bademsoy chronicles their stories over a 10-year period. The women constantly navigate, negotiate, and claim space, challenging the traditional limitations imposed on women’s self-expression. In Serpil Turhan’s Köy (2021), three Kurdish women from different generations, originating from Turkey and living in Berlin, discuss their longing for home, the quest for belonging and the freedom of self-expression. Didem Şahin, in her work Bittersweet (2021), re-enacts her grandmother Nermin’s journey to Germany in 1963, transforming it into a present-day exploration that delves into the emotional weight of migration. Through their commitment to countering dominant narratives, amplifying the voices of women, subverting stereotypes and addressing intersectionality, the films contribute to the broader decolonial feminist project of challenging oppressive structures and reclaiming agency and dignity for migrant women.

While these examples highlight the significance of documentaries made from a decolonial and feminist perspective, where control over the narrative is returned to those who have historically been victimized and spoken for, this article focuses primarily on the most recent documentaries created by the latest generation of migrant filmmakers. Through the documentary format, these films establish a connection among four generations of migration, making their collective history audible and visible. The films not only interweave different migratory journeys but also provide an opportunity for the filmmakers to reflect on the experience of migration and understand their own relatively new status as migrants. The filmmakers themselves represent the new wave migrants from Turkey in Germany, with Özlem Sarıyıldız having resided in Berlin since 2017 and Pınar Öğrenci since 2018. The term new wave migration has been employed to describe the increasing number of citizens from Turkey who have relocated to Germany in the post-Gezi era.² This migration stems from political pressure, erosion of civil liberties and a sense of disillusionment regarding the future.

Sarıyıldız’s decision to leave Turkey began to form during the post-Gezi period, characterized by a growing sense of loss within Turkey’s society. She candidly reflects on this, stating:

I am ashamed to say this, but I felt a huge loss after Gezi. I realize that social movements are dynamic and that there is no ultimate goal to attain. That’s why I feel ashamed to say it, but I really felt that there was no room for us anymore. This sentiment became increasingly prominent between the Gezi protests and the coup attempt (Ö. Sarıyıldız, personal communication, 1 December, 2021).

While I have been in communication with Öğrenci, I have not conducted an official interview, but gathering from other interviews she has given, her departure from Turkey is also connected to ‘political reasons’ (as quoted in Istanbul Modern Sanat Müzesi 2021, translation added). Öğrenci was detained for four days in Diyarbakır, a south-eastern city in Turkey, during the last week of 2015. Her detention followed her participation in a peace rally protesting the impact of the conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on the region’s people. She was sentenced to one year and six months in prison, with her sentence later postponed for five years. Instead of living in fear and under threat in Turkey, she decided to leave the country and relocate to Berlin.

New wave migrants are often characterized as a heterogenous group:

secular, liberal, and highly educated members of the middle classes, intellectuals, families with high expendable income, and members of LGBTQ communities are among them, as are members of religious and ethnic minorities, and followers of religious-political movements like the Gülen network and others now criminalized by the Erdoğan regime. (Mariato, Öktem, and Zadrożna 2021, 106)

Consequently, they differ significantly in class, educational background and political affiliation from the migrants who came to Germany from Turkey as guest workers. It is worth nothing that since the Justice and Development Party (AKP here on) came to power in 2002, it has actively maintained strong ties with the Turkish diaspora in Europe. The AKP has pursued policies aimed at creating and mobilizing a transnational community, often resulting in tensions within host communities and with their governments. The emerging relationship between the new wave migration and the established diaspora has been marked by ‘prejudice, aversion and ignorance’ (Nurtsch 2019), leading to political divisions and polarization within these communities. The new wave migrants often hold the previous generations responsible for keeping Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power, resisting integration and upholding conservative values.

In this context, both Sarıyıldız and Öğrenci actively seek ways to bridge the gap between old and new waves of migration. Their documentaries work against politics from above, creating a congruence between their personal experiences and of those of their subjects. Sarıyıldız acknowledges the debt they owe to the experiences of the old diaspora and incorporates this aspect into her work:

We are indebted to the experiences of the old diaspora. We tend to ignore this fact, even deny it. But we owe them. I was curious about their experience beyond prejudices; I wanted to know how I could understand my own experience of migration through theirs. Especially the experience of women migrants. We speak about migrant women as the wife of someone, the daughter of someone, or simply cheap labour. That’s it. How did women make it here, especially those who came on their own? (Ö. Sarıyıldız, personal communication, 1 December, 2021).

Öğrenci, on the other hand, looks at each decade of migration in relation to domestic developments in Turkey, illuminating the diversity within the community and the shifts in migration patterns. She explains:

[… ] as I learned the reasons why generations before me migrated here, I felt like I was reading Turkey’s political history. Migration of the guest workers triggered by the economic crisis after the 1960 military coup, political migrants of the human rights crisis before and after the 1980 military coup, Kurds and Alevis fleeing the attacks in Eastern Turkey in the 1990s: all painted a picture of Turkey. (as quoted in Cengiz 2021)

While the migration experiences of intellectuals and guest workers differ significantly in terms of arrival conditions and available opportunities, Öğrenci suggests the importance of recognizing their similarities: the underlying reason for migration relates to the lack of sustainable options in Turkey, making migration a necessity. Additionally, despite having a 60-year history of migration from Turkey in Germany, prejudices against foreigners continue to be a daily reality of many individuals with migrant backgrounds (as quoted in Akbulut 2021, translation added). In that sense, actively challenging stereotypes by seeking out the stories of those affected becomes a crucial step towards change. It is here also that decolonial perspectives play a life-altering role. Decolonial feminist practices seek to dismantle the structural domination of their experiences and struggles by hegemonic Western women’s movement. Decolonial feminists such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Valeri Amos and Pratibha Parma have argued that the heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world are discursively colonized by Eurocentric and Western feminists to produce/re-represent a composite, singular ‘Third World Woman’, thereby fueling stereotypes. (Mohanty 1984, 334–335) Decolonial feminism rejects this understanding and the ways in which their cultural practices are examined as ‘feudal residues’ or ‘traditional’ and women as ‘politically immature women who need to be versed and schooled in the ethos of Western feminism.’ (Amos and Parmar 1984, 7)

The documentaries of Sarıyıldız and Öğrenci use the cinematic medium to develop their own modes of transmission and knowledge. They expose and combat the culture of invisibility by diverging from the path of European feminist history-writings as the history of racialized women has a different trajectory and process. Embodying the politics of decolonial feminism, they aim to empower disenfranchized constituencies, by providing ‘more truthful, unstereotyped images of women in their particular social, racial and class contexts.’ (Doane, Mellencamp, and Williams 1984, 7) Moreover, the films ‘build an insight into female subjectivities, experiences and perspectives.’ (French 2021, 87) As such, they are writing the history of migration through the voices of women, and, shifting the traditional definitions of that history (Newton 1988, 23). Women’s history has been characterized as a counter-history because it challenges the traditional, masculinist, objective history (Waldman and Walker 1999, 1). In the particular context of the guest workers, Miller underlines that ‘archival records and official documents rarely consider the ways in which male and female guest workers did and did not have different experiences along gender lines.’ (2018, 56) Documentaries by women migrants about women migrants, like Look Listen Carefully and Gurbet is a Home Now are cinematographic examples that reinterpret and reformulate official histories and archives by providing platforms for women to tell their own stories regarding their own labor; whether it be in the factories or at home.

Speaking without interruption: talking heads as privilege in Look, Listen Carefully

In Sarıyıldız’s work-in-progress titled Look, Listen Carefully, three women recount their stories of migration from Turkey to Germany: Hatice Alkan, Hatice Hanım Şen, and Mefharet Sayınbatur provide direct-to-camera interviews, shot in medium close-up, where they share their stories of migration, including stories about their lives in Turkey, the factors at play in their decision to migrate, the process of recruitment, the journey to Germany, the work and living conditions, but also topics such as motherhood, racism, and the idea of home. The camera frame foregrounds the women, with an out-of-focus background, but where objects can still be distinguished in the domestic setting of the home. The stories are intercut together in a montage that creates an overarching narrative of shared experiences and emotions, propelling the individual experience into the realm of the collective (Juhasz 1999, 202).

Sarıyıldız argues that documenting these experiences is crucial, as there is an urgency to these stories before this first generation is no longer with us. This urgency is also reflected in the formal aspect of the film, employing the talking head format primarily based on interviews or testimonies. The first feminist documentaries of the 1970s similarly adopted the realist documentary structure, because they saw making the films as an urgent public act (Lesage 1984, 508). Therefore, the interview, as a realist tool, aligns with the film’s political commitment.

However, the effectiveness of the talking head format has been extensively debated in documentary theory (Martineau 1984; Nichols 1991; Rotha 1939; Waugh 2011). While recognized for its empowering nature, interview-based documentaries have often been dismissed for lacking creativity, criticized for its ‘transparency (film’s capturing reality) or for the visual dullness’ (Lesage 1984, 519), its aesthetics belonging to television. The realist tradition in feminist documentaries was also highly contested; from a feminist perspective, realist documentaries were deemed intrinsically complicit with patriarchy (Johnston 2014; Kaplan 1983). Showing women’s ‘truth’ demanded radically new forms of representation if it was to emerge at all (Doane, Mellencamp, and Williams 1984, 8). Yet, advocates of early realist documentaries, such as Alexandra Juhasz (1999), contend that these films are more accessible, reaching a wider audience, and thereby facilitating political and cultural change more effectively. In Sarıyıldız’s film, the interviews enable an emotional connection with the speakers, as the simplicity of the format foregrounds the raw honesty of their personal journeys. Their need and struggle to articulate and express are visualized before us. In that sense, the talking head format here contributes to the empowerment and public presence of the women. Further, the film allows the audience to listen to women talk, without interruption, encouraging a political narrative to come through the personal journeys.

The three subjects of Sarıyıldız’s film are guest workers who came to Germany between 1961and 1973, at a time where there was a high demand for women’s labor in the country. This demand arose because German government policies discouraged middle-class and upper-middle-class German women from joining the workforce, promoting conservative gender roles that designated men as the sole breadwinners of the nuclear family. As a result, women guest workers were brought in to fill the labor gap, allowing German women to retire from low-skilled jobs and focus on motherhood (Miller 2018). In the documentary, Hatice, who worked as a cleaning lady expresses this very fact: ‘If it weren’t for me, how would those offices be cleaned? There wasn’t anyone to do it back then so they hired us … There wasn’t anyone in Germany. Thirty of us came to do the cleaning.’ (Look, 16:49–17:05) This insight ties in with the decolonial feminism’s mission to write the history of racialized women where particular focus on the cleaning industry becomes a clear example of how racial capitalism functions. According to Françoise Vergès, this economy.

wears out racialized bodies, depletes the strength of certain individuals, […] to become victims of illnesses … Wear and tear on the body is inseparable from an economy that divides bodies between those who have a right to good health and to relax, and those whose health does not matter and who do not have the right to rest. (Vergès 2021, 76)

Indeed, one prominent issue spoken about by the women relates to health. The women recount the medical examinations they had to undergo before coming to Germany. According to Miller:

West German officials gave these medical exams priority over vocational exams – whether out of fear of overburdening the West German health care system, a desire for the strongest workers, or a more biased view of Turkish health care – which suggests that they thought something was at risk with these workers. (2018, 85)

Moreover, this is one aspect of the recruitment that many guest workers remember the most and speak about extensively, being an ‘extremely negative experience for most applicants’ (ibid., 82). Hatice and Hatice Hanım’s words and gestures echo this discomfort: ‘They checked everywhere even under my bra and underwear […] A man would look, a German doctor, in Turkey’ (Look, 08:02–08:20) Hatice recounts. Hatice Hanım confirms this reality: ‘They even checked people’s private parts. That was uncomfortable because you were not used to it. But people put up with it because they wanted to go.’ (Look, 08:34–08:53) The medical examination, which lacked any consideration for the Turkish cultural norm of personal modesty is considered a ‘deeply personal violation’ (Miller 2018, 82) felt by the applicants, and the first encounter with different cultural norms even before the journey begins.

While being in ‘tip top shape’ was mandatory, the working conditions in the factories caused permanent health issues for Hatice Hanım and Mefharet. Soldering cables caused serious damage to Hatice Hanım’s stomach, poisoning her and making her unable to work. She was effectively fired from her job at the Siemens factory as a result of her inability to work. Merhafet worked with magnifying glasses and gold wires. Her blood pressure could not handle it and until today she has pain due to congestion. As for Hatice, she exclaims ‘Young or old, my advice to anyone is to never take a cleaning job.’ (Look, 16:16–16:23) All three had to stop working and go into early retirement because of their health problems relating to their years of labor. Vergès’s insights into this ‘economy of exhaustion, of fatigue, of wearing out gendered and racialized bodies’ becomes clearly embodied by these three women. (2021, 76)

Despite the significant presence of women guest workers in the labor force, women migrants have often been singularly seen as ‘brides’ following their husbands to Germany as a result of family reunification. Those who went there for work purposes have been framed as compromising the respectability and honor of Turkey as a nation. Nocera points out the role Turkey’s media has played in this regard:

newspapers contributed enormously to spreading and promoting the image of single Turkish women who were stained by a poor reputation. It was as if by being far from the social controls of Turkish society, and without men by their side, women were inevitably destined to lead disorderly and immoral lives. (2013, 9)

Look, Listen Carefully in that sense disrupts the narrative of the guest worker as male, Turk and Sunni,³ expanding the sphere of representation and contributing to the counter history project of feminism. It particularly brings into focus motherhood for women guest workers, and how domestic and factory work intertwine, a position that defies the male definitions of labor and guest workers. It sheds light on the reality and reasons for deciding to become guest workers. In that sense, the documentary removes labor from simply being a male phenomenon and demonstrates the ways in which women too came to Germany to financially support their families. Further, by providing a space for these women to express their personal accounts and various reasons for embarking on their migration journeys, the documentary challenges prevailing narratives that depict migrant women as victims of an archaic patriarchal society. Instead, it firmly situates them as empowered agents, capable of making decisions that are in the best interests of themselves and their dependents.

They actively seek to make their lives better and are not afraid to do what needs to be done for it, including leaving their children behind. In that sense, while ‘the sense of self for women under capitalism has traditionally had to come from their children, their house, their jewelery, and their clothes’ (Lesage 1984, 516), the verbalization of the three women in this documentary challenges and redefines the experiences allocated to traditional gender roles. As a matter of fact, the unrealistic expectation of having to work and taking care of children is underlined by Hatice and Mefharet, who were young mothers at the time of their arrival in Germany. Leaving the children behind was partly due to the temporary nature of the departure. Despite this, they still missed their children, leading to difficulties in re-establishing an intimate relationship with them. Reliving these allows the women to embody their subject positions in their own narratives.

Though there is a sense of unfulfilled justice, they express satisfaction with their decision to come, despite working hard for extended periods without living under the conditions that reflect their labor and sacrifice. ‘We learned a lot of things here. A lot of things.’ (Look, 45:10–45:16) says Mefharet. ‘I wouldn’t be able to look after the kids over there’ (Look, 45:57–46:05) reflects Hatice. ‘I’m glad I’m here’ (Look, 46:59–47:02), concludes Hatice Hanım.

Redefining space in women’s terms: Gurbet is a Home Now

Gurbet⁴ is a Home Now is a documentary that critically examines the urban planning principles in 1980s Berlin, which resulted in the displacement of migrants through occupancy quotas. The film focuses on IBA (International Bau Austellung), the post-war urban renewal project undertaken in Berlin’s district of Kreuzberg between 1984 and ‘87. It centers around the personal experiences and solidarity among the women migrants and guest workers living in Kreuzberg. In the 1960s, Kreuzberg became a place ‘temporarily’ rented out to guest workers, with post-war spaces still in ruins from past bombardments. This traumatic history has been left virtually untouched, as depicted in the film’s description of the housing conditions in 1970s Kreuzberg: ‘Everything was worn out, muddy and dirty. Walls were stained with water leaks [… .] Bullet holes remained in the wall of the buildings. Dangerous type of mold threatened to make the ceilings fall.’ (Gurbet, 22:35–23:04)

Photographs constitute a significant portion of the film’s visual landscape, showcasing these dilapidated buildings. Through animation and sound, the film breathes life into these images, taking the audience on an emotive journey in time. The animated smoke, for example, adds a third dimension to the buildings’ renewal and demolition, while also serving as a recurring visual trope throughout the film. It symbolizes the transience of the migrants, the uncertainty about their future, and their resilience in the face of imposed in-betweenness. The editing of the still images creates a visual dance, infusing the screen with vibrant energy and animating the depleted spaces, giving an impression of the lives lived inside of them. One of the documentary’s narrators, Lale, reflects, ‘there are many tears in these buildings’, encapsulating the profound emotional significance of these places. (Gurbet, 44:38–44:41) Indeed, for Öğrenci, the documentary was a means of holding on to Germany, as the transience felt by generations of migrants mirrored her own experience of Berlin (as quoted in Istanbul Modern Sanat Müzesi 2021, translation added).

Gurbet is a Home Now begins with a voice-over narration by Öğrenci who reads an advertisement from an anonymous individual named Hüseyin A., published in a German newspaper. This advertisement critically engages with the clichés and stereotypes associated with migrants: from noisy children and strange odors to archaic religious rituals and violence against women – reflecting the way in which Germans perceived Turks at that time. This ironic introduction accentuates the gravity of the prejudice faced by guest workers in Germany, pointing out the circumstances under which they lived. Even more significantly, Öğrenci asserts that this prejudiced mindset still lingers in society today, making this portrayal all the more relevant and urgent.

Öğrenci continues her mission as a committed filmmaker to decolonize representation, breaking prevalent stereotypes of guest workers. She incorporates still images of a protest, with one of the banners proclaiming, ‘Freedom to all political prisoners. End torture.’ (Gurbet, 03:42–03:54) Through this powerful visual, Öğrenci promises to offer a different and more nuanced narrative about Turkish migrants in Germany – one that reflects the diverse and multifaceted reasons behind their migration. A sound excerpt from the architect and scholar Esra Akcan’s lecture on IBA Kreuzberg 1984–1989 confirms this nuanced arrival to Germany. She states: ‘the non-citizens of Berlin had arrived either as guest workers since 1961 or as refugees after being forced out of citizenship due to the coup d’état in Turkey in 1980.’ (Gurbet, 03:42–03:54) Akcan recounts the story of a woman, referenced as NY, who clandestinely escaped from Mardin, Turkey, in the tumultuous aftermath of the coup. ‘You either had to take a gun to your hand or run away. We ran away, we migrated’ (Gurbet, 04:59–05:04) she says. The film complements her words with still images of ruins, mirroring the destruction of lives during the post-coup era in Turkey. The narrative voice-over of NY’s arrival into Kreuzberg is reflected visually, drawing audiences into the experience. As still images transport us to Kreuzberg, we are immersed in the bustling sound of crowds chattering and music resonating from the streets. This juxtaposition creates a visceral connection with NY’s journey and the atmosphere of her new surroundings.

The voices of women emanate on several levels in the film; not only through the stories told by interviewees but also in the making of the film: Öğrenci collaborates with architects Esra Akcan and Heide Moldenhauer; Akcan’s book Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship and Urban Renewal of Berlin Kreuzberg by IBA 1984/89 is one of the main textual contributions to the documentary which structures the film, while Moldenhauer’s archive of over 3000 photographs taken at the time of the IBA Berlin project not only visualizes the landscape in the historical sense, but serve to build parallels between the transience of the space and the transience of the lives of the migrants. The voices of women come together with immigrant literature as excerpts from Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Aras Ören’s works are recited through Öğrenci’s own voice or displayed as text on the screen.⁵ Özdamar’s narratives of migrant women and the search for intimacy, along with her personal migration story, add yet another woman’s voice to the documentary. Moreover, Öğrenci's own poetic expressions, woven throughout the film, serve as a poignant reflection of her experiences and perspectives. By intertwining her poetic voice with those of the interviewees and renowned authors, Öğrenci links the experiences of these different generations of migrants.

The lack of independence and a sense of entrapment is a prominent aspect that emerges from the narratives of the women featured in Gurbet is a Home Now. The film takes an intersectional approach, highlighting different forms of discrimination faced by these women. Victimization is not solely imposed by German institution; the film also sheds light on how German liberal feminist discourses perceived migrant women as victims of their husbands. They proposed that the only path to emancipation was to break free from men, suggesting integration through changes in customs and dressing styles. This approach reflects the tendencies of Western feminism, which simplifies the complex and conflicting lives of women of different classes, religions, cultures, races and castes, reducing them to their object status in relation to certain institutions and systems (Mohanty 1984, 338).

On the other hand, the film delves into the pressures faced by women in conservative cultures. The women narrators of the film, heard but only seen through photographs from their youth, share painful insights into the plight of young brides brought from Turkey, who were forced into kin-marriages. ‘They couldn’t stand it and ran away’ (Gurbet, 45:03–45:06), remarks Lale. She continues, ‘They were under pressure: don’t go out, don’t to that, don’t do this, stay at home, don’t go there … Some of them were not even sent to school, in case you’ll have a bad reputation or something.’ (Gurbet, 45:15–45:28) In this particular moment, the film deviates from using archival images and instead presents moving images that fill the screen – a high-angle medium shot of an unidentified space where people move about freely. This contrast between the women’s feelings of entrapment and the freedom depicted by the moving image underscores the stark disparity between their constrained lives and the liberation represented by the bodies in motion.

Another important distinction evident in the documentary is the revelation of the difficult working conditions of the first-generation migrants, as voiced through the experiences of their children, signaling changing times. Gülşen and Lale vividly recall their childhood, marked by rarely seeing their parents because they were working. They spent their days on the streets, playing with other kids whose parents were also away at work. Gülşen emphasizes the immense challenges faced by the first-generation, particularly the invisible labor by women, stating:

I don’t even want to think about those times, my parents’ times […] You have to clean the house, look after the children, then you have to do the shopping. You have to wake up early and meet the other women and go to work, coming home, shopping cooking. (Gurbet, 13:02–13:26)

Furthermore, Gülşen draws attention to the fact that her father took out his frustration and stress out on her mother, ‘my mom was also going through this.’ (Gurbet, 13:43–14:46) The contrast between each generation’s experience is captured with the sentence: ‘first generation suffered a lot. Second generation asked why. Third generation said no.’ (Gurbet, 08:01:08:14) In this sense, the film is also about resistance, solidarity and fighting back. This generational difference reminds us of the words spoken by first-generation women guest workers in Look, Listen Carefully; Hatice, Hatice Hanım and Mefharet all grapple with the dilemma of being single mothers who had to work, leading to strains in their relationships with their children. The recollection of childhood memories by Gülşen and Lale thus serves a form of reconciliation and mutual understanding of the labor hardships endured by their parents.

Another important feminist achievement the film lies in its revalorization of domestic labor. Through a rich visual archive of women in domestic spaces, the documentary accentuates the significance of this reality Additionally, the use of domestic task sounds, such as cutlery, boiling water, and crackling wood, immerses audiences in these spaces, forging a connection with the women as they carry out their household chores. Domestic spaces, typically portrayed as spaces of ‘seemingly powerless women’s subculture’ which are ‘rarely depicted in film as an interesting place or the locus of socially significant, multiple, interpersonal relationships’ (Lesage 1984, 518), now come alive through the stories of three women narrated by Öğrenci – Gülizar, whose year-long contract prevents her from returning to Turkey despite her unhappiness; Gülizar’s mother, Gonca Sultan, who discouraged her husband from forcing their daughters into arranged marriages before they reached the age of seventeen; and an unnamed girl from the eastern city of Van, whose desire to escape her conservative milieu led her to freedom in Istanbul. No one believes this girl is from Van, as her Turkish is too proper. Later, this same girl finds herself in Berlin in her 40s. Öğrenci says that this girl is ‘ … angry at those who led her there, who kept innocent people in prison, at the sulky officer in the foreigners’ office, those who constantly warned her and tried to teach her how to do things … ’ (Gurbet, 57:24–57:34)

While perhaps unknown to audiences, this last story carries autobiographical elements that echo Öğrenci’s own journey, forging a continuum across four generations of women migrants. Guest workers came to Germany with plans to return to their homelands; yet this foreign land eventually became their home. Will Öğrenci be rooted in Berlin? Will her gurbet turn into a home like it did for the previous generations? Sarıyıldız, on her end, notices that thanks to community, she feels at home:

I don’t miss Turkey particularly because I am able to build community here. We have the luxury and comfort of that. Diaspora is such an advantage because we can communicate with one another. Our experiences are similar, so we build on top of those backgrounds (Ö. Sarıyıldız, personal communication, 1 December, 2021).

Conclusion

Françoise Vergès defines decolonial feminism as ‘gesture of rupture: to dare to think beyond that which is presented as natural, pragmatic or reasonable.’ (2021, 83) This idea of rupture has also been used by feminist documentarians, such as Lisa French, to describe documentary as a tool to create space for ‘gendered understandings and potentially disrupt patriarchal views of the world that have to date dominated representation.’ (2021, 96) Sarıyıldız and Öğrenci’s documentaries offer insights into the social and emotional realities of women migrants, exploring not only their labor struggles, whether in factories or homes, but also delving into their emotional responses to the lived conditions they endure. The documentaries bring to light their stories, or in Vergès’s words, they ‘breathe life into that which has been condemned to non-existence, worlds that have been cast out of humanity.’ (2021, 83) By breaking away from the stock narratives about guest workers, these films reveal the textures of the immigrant experience, effectively challenging Eurocentric and Western perspectives on migrants. These feminist documentaries emphasize the active role women have in defining migration history, and by bringing them to light, accomplish the feminist goal of creating a counter history. They employ a variety of formal and stylistic elements, incorporating the debates by feminist scholars on how the representation of such films should approach reality. Connecting four generations of migration through the voices of women, the filmmakers are able to reflect on their new identities at the intersections of migration and womanhood.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodoeska-Curie grant agreement No 101025524.

Notes on contributors

Sirin Fulya Erensoy

Şirin Fulya Erensoy is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie post-doctoral fellow at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. Her current research project focuses on the audio-visual production of the new wave migration from Turkey in Germany. Her previous academic work concentrates on video activism as an alternative media practice, censorship in documentary film practice in Turkey and gender in genre cinema. Erensoy has presented her research at international film and media conferences and published her work in international academic journals and books. Erensoy was the host of independent news outlet Medyascope TV’s English news bulletin This Week in Turkey (2019–2021). She has worked as an editor, producer, translator, and researcher on several international film projects, and has directed her own short films and videos. She continues to curate and moderate film events in Berlin.

Notes

1 While not directly involved in documentary filmmaking, Sema Poyraz's contribution to the field is significant. In 1980, she became the first graduate of the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. Her graduation project, titled Gölge (1980), interweaves autobiographical elements into the narrative, chronicling the journey of a young girl named Gölge as she navigates the complexities of her life as the daughter of Turkish immigrants in Germany.

2 The Gezi Park Protests of 2013 began in Istanbul in reaction to urban development plans. The government had announced plans to replace the park with a shopping mall. Urban rights activists and ecologists objected to the plan and set up camp in the park, with the aim of protecting the historical and cultural heritage of the city’s architectural tissue. The protests grew rapidly; what had started as an environmental protest to save six hundred trees turned into a nation-wide political demonstration against the government’s growing authoritarianism.

3 The Sunni Turk image relates to the imaginary of national citizenship constructed by the Republic of Turkey upon its establishment, where a single ethnic and religious identity was aggressively imposed, causing the marginalization of other religious or ethnic identities. While there were shifts in this ideal when the AKP came to power, where the Suni aspect of national identity was emboldened, the desired citizenship still embodied conceived of the nation as homogenous in its composition. Cinematically speaking, Kurdish-German filmmaker Yüksel Yavuz broke with this imposed notion with this documentary My Father, The Guestworker (1994), wherein Kurdish identity was brought to the fore.

4 Gurbet, while not having a direct word translation in English, means the place away from home where one feels homesickness.

5 Aras Ören and Emine Sevgi Özdamar both came to Germany from Turkey in the 1960s. They were actors and involved in the theater scene in Berlin. Ören has been characterized as a proletarian poet who writes realistically, Özdamar’s works are often autobiographical, as she explores the complex reality of migration from women’s perspectives. For Gurbet is a Home Now, Öğrenci quotes from Ören’s What does Niyazi want in Naunynstrasse (1973), which draws parallels between the features of the buildings on Naunynstrasse (Kreuzberg) and exploited guest workers. This work, Öğrenci says, is the translation of the photographs into the language of poetry (as quoted in Cengiz 2021, translation added). Özdamar’s The Bridge of the Golden Horn (1998) and The Courtyard in the Mirror (2001) reflect the search for intimacy and solidarity among neighbors, complimenting the real stories told by the individual narrators interviewed by Öğrenci.