Linköping university - Department of Culture and Society (IKOS)

Master´s Thesis, 30 Credits – MA in Ethnic and Migration Studies (EMS)

ISRN: LiU-IKOS/EMS-A--20/15--SE

What Can Art

Teach us about Integration?

–The role of art in postmigrant integration: cases from

Germany, Sweden, and Luxembourg

Céline Couronne

Supervisor: Stefan Jonsson

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“Kein Mensch, den ich kenne, gehört einem einzigen, geschlossenen Kulturraum

an. Unser wirkliches Leben ist schon längst transkulturell und translokal, und

zwar jenseits von Herkunft. Uns ist es vielmehr ein Anliegen, die

Selbstverständlichkeit von Hybridität und Transkulturalität zu feiern und

durchzusetzen”1

Shermin Langhoff

1 “No person I know belongs to one exclusive, closed culture. Our real life has been transcultural and translocal

for a long time and this certainly beyond origin. Our concern is rather to celebrate and enforce hybridity and transculturality as a matter of fact.” (own translation). Shermin Langhoff (2011).

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Abstract

The term integration became a buzzword and is omnipresent in the current European discourses.

Despite its broad definitions, there is a tendency in migration studies and the political narrative

to focus exclusively on migrants and their descendants while upholding the vision of a fixed

“host society”, with an established national culture, in which migrants should integrate. The

present study aims to reframe the concept of integration by adopting a postmigrant approach

and by analyzing the contribution of art projects in this regard. To do so, the study draws on

two current theoretical approaches to integration in the social sciences, Stuart Hall’s

conceptualization of national culture, the postmigration concept and the societal impact of art

as theoretical framework. First, the notion of integration has been positioned theoretically in

current postmigrant debates. The content analysis demonstrates that the conceptualization of

postmigrant integration takes distance from the notion of assimilation and looks beyond the

topic of migration. Second, eight semi-structured interviews have been conducted with project

team members and project participants of the art projects “Newcomers”, “Leben, Erzählen,

Schreiben”, “Hela Bilden”, and the organization “Alter & Ego”. The thematic analysis of the

interviews showed the necessity to address the “host population”, i.e. individuals without

experience of forced migration, to overcome monolingualism and to concentrate on societal

diversity which contributes to the theorization of postmigrant integration. The present thesis

indicates the importance of the arts regarding their societal impact and agency to provide

alternative narratives on migration and integration. It also stresses the necessity of integration

policies and the European migration regime to take part in the reframing of current migration

discourses by directly addressing the “host population” and acknowledging today’s context of

plural societies in which everyone should integrate.

Keywords: integration, postmigration, societal impact of the arts, art projects, reframing

integration, postmigrant migration research, postmigrant integration

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Table of Contents

Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 3

Table of Contents...................................................................................................................... 4

Acknowledgments..................................................................................................................... 6

1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 7

1.1 Aim and research questions ......................................................................................... 8

1.2 Structure of the thesis .................................................................................................. 9

2. Previous Research ........................................................................................................... 10

2.1 The origin of “das Postmigrantische” ........................................................................ 10

2.2 Postmigrant approach to artworks ............................................................................. 11

3. Contextual Background.................................................................................................. 13

3.1 Integration policy in Germany ................................................................................... 13

3.2 Integration policy in Sweden ..................................................................................... 14

4. Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................. 16

4.1 The notion of integration ........................................................................................... 16

4.1.1 Integration in a society ....................................................................................... 17

4.1.2 Integration as a society ....................................................................................... 18

4.2 The national culture and identity ............................................................................... 19

4.3 The postmigration concept......................................................................................... 20

4.3.1 The postmigrant perspective .............................................................................. 21

4.3.2 The postmigrant society ..................................................................................... 22

4.4 Artistic practices and their societal impact ................................................................ 23

5. The Art Projects in this Study ....................................................................................... 26

5.1 Newcomers ................................................................................................................ 26

5.2 Leben Erzählen Schreiben ......................................................................................... 28

5.3 Hela Bilden ................................................................................................................ 30

5.4 Alter & Ego................................................................................................................ 32

6. Methodological Procedure ............................................................................................. 33

6.1 Informants .................................................................................................................. 34

6.2 Semi-structured interviews ........................................................................................ 35

6.2.1 Interview guides ..................................................................................................... 37

6.3 Reflexivity and positionality...................................................................................... 37

6.4 Analytical approach ................................................................................................... 39

7. Content Analysis – Postmigrant Integration ................................................................ 41

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7.1 Change and redefinition ............................................................................................. 41

7.2 Detachment from migration ....................................................................................... 42

8. Thematic Analysis – the Power of Art .......................................................................... 45

8.1 Art projects: from whom, with whom, for whom? A multidimensional impact ....... 45

8.1.1 From whom? - “A task that calls for humility” (Mylène) & Agency ................ 46

8.1.2 With whom? - “A wide and diverse image of the society” (Sara) ..................... 49

8.1.3 For whom?.......................................................................................................... 50

8.1.3.1 The private level - “Catalyst of well-being” (Mylène)....................................... 51

8.1.3.2 The public level & space .................................................................................... 52

8.1.3.3 The end product - “I wanted to leave my fingerprints” (Mohammad) ............... 54

8.2 Going beyond monolingualism.................................................................................. 56

8.2.1 Language diversity ............................................................................................. 56

8.2.2 Art does not need a common language - the “art language” (Sahar) ................. 58

8.3 Deconstruction of the national culture ....................................................................... 59

8.3.1 The whole picture of the society - Hela Bilden .................................................. 59

8.3.2 From national to human identity - “It’s just a part of our story” (Ma’an).......... 61

8.3.3 Strengthening of a common history ................................................................... 64

8.4 Sharing in a safe space ............................................................................................... 66

8.5 Art as a (forced) tool for integration .......................................................................... 68

8.5.1 Integration forced in the arts - “A fashion trend” (Mylène) ............................... 70

9. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 73

References ............................................................................................................................... 77

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Acknowledgments

I would first like to thank the participants of my study for their willingness to share their stories,

experiences, and for their inspiring work which was not only beneficial to my thesis but also to

me on a personal level.

I would also like to thank my supervisor, Stefan Jonsson, for his constant support,

encouragement, and helpful feedback throughout this project. I am also grateful to the EUMIGS

program which gave me the chance to study with the IMIB community at the University of

Osnabrück and the EMS community at Linköping University.

Lastly, I would like to thank my family and wonderful friends by my side for their patience and

support. I’m also grateful for these little moments: the encountered art in everyday life and the

beauty of nature which gave me positive energy.

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1. Introduction

We live in increasingly diverse societies and the topics of migration and globalization have

become the center of attention over the last decades. This is not only noticeable on a political

and social level but also in the art world. Indeed, the effects of migration and plurality are

increasingly addressed and negotiated in art and culture projects (Petersen, 2017). This includes

theatre plays, movies, photo exhibitions, and art galleries which flourish every year. The

question arises: How do artistic practices contribute and possibly transform our understanding

of migration and the plural society in which we live?

Historically, the arts played a significant role in influencing and transforming narratives in

societies (Belfiore & Bennett, 2008). In the current situation, debates on the political

contribution of the arts in terms of providing a space for the creation of alternative discourses

and narratives around migration have re-surfaced (Czollek, 2018; Demos, 2013). The present

thesis is an attempt to contribute to this discussion by focusing on the negotiation of the notion

of (postmigrant) integration through the work of art projects. For this purpose, I study three art

projects that reflect on migration. Two of them took place in Osnabrück, Germany, being the

“Newcomers” film project from Ma’an Mouslli and the “Leben, Erzählen Schreiben” (live, tell,

write) story project from Daniela Boltres. The third one, the “Hela Bilden” (the whole picture)

painting project from Sahar Burhan was organized in Norrköping, Sweden. In addition, and to

gain a complementary perspective, I analyze the work of the non-governmental organization

(NGO) “Alter & Ego” (the other and I) from Mylène Porta and her colleagues in Dudelange,

Luxembourg.

Why study the impact of these chosen art projects with respect to the notion of integration? The

term has a broad and complex legacy in the history of knowledge and scholarship. In the social

sciences, and particularly sociology, integration was from the outset a central concept referring

to the relationship of a set of objects that form a whole, or an integral entity (Holzner, 1967).

Thus, integration was used to describe and explain the cohesion of social forms and human

societies more broadly (cf. Holzner, 1967; Simmel, 1903). In the contemporary social sciences,

especially in migration studies, integration has increasingly been associated with migrants,

newcomers, and ethnic minorities and their relation to the “host society”2 (Hans, 2016). In this

study, I critically address this understanding of integration.

2 Throughout this study the terms “host society” and “host population” are in brackets as I want to raise attention and critically address the linked idea of an established, core, and immobile society that the terms imply.

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Indeed, since the 1970s, the notion of integration was primarily associated with migrants who

should integrate into a fixed majority society (Foroutan, 2015). This tendency remains

observable in the current work of traditional migration research which tends to reinforce a one-

sided focus on migrants and consequently creates a binary polarization between “us” and

“them” (Römhild, 2017). In response to this criticism, scholars in critical migration research

have begun exploring the postmigration concept which aims to create a shift in the current

European narrative by looking beyond the topic of migration when addressing societies and its

conflicts. Therefore, migration should not be addressed as an exceptional phenomenon that is

the reason for societal debates but as an integral part of the society (Foroutan, 2019). Despite

the increasing discussion that integration should address the “host society”, current integration

policies tend to remain focused exclusively on migrants, a discourse which also remains present

in the societal narrative (Foroutan, 2015). In that context, it can be observed that the notion of

integration is increasingly being rejected by migrants and their descendants and a tendency

towards a “dis-integration” movement is taking place which criticizes that integration is not a

social policy for all (Czollek, 2018).

Partly in response to the felt inadequacy of the concept of integration a discussion has emerged

that advocates for the term to be replaced by, e.g. “inclusion”, and certain scholars have

purposely renounced using the term and concept in their research due to its emotional and

political connotation (Foroutan, 2015; Treibel, 2015). However, banning the term or simply

replacing it, without changing its underlying exclusionary association and implementation

practices, seems meaningless according to Foroutan (2015). The term should instead be

decoupled from its fixed association and be redefined in today’s context of plural societies

(Foroutan, 2015). The notion of integration and its implementation through policies should

therefore be considerably reframed, and it is here that the postmigrant approach appears

relevant. Hence, there is a need, both theoretical and practical, to address and analyze the notion

of integration by taking a postmigrant approach.

1.1 Aim and research questions

The overall aim of this research is to investigate the concept of integration through an analytical

postmigrant lens, and thus to contribute to its reframing. I seek to do this by firstly positioning

the notion of integration theoretically in the current postmigrant debates. I will then adopt an

empirical approach by concentrating on art projects and artistic productions. I analyze how art

projects that work with the topic of migration and plurality, shift the notion of integration, which

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is commonly used in the current academic, political, and social narrative. Additionally, I

explore if they contribute to a postmigrant notion of integration. In doing so, my research also

aims at adding to the development of the postmigrant understanding of integration through art

projects. Of particular interest in this regard is to engage and combine the work of different

disciplines such as humanities, the social sciences, art research, and the work of the culture and

art scene to expand the understanding of the postmigration concept. The emerging research

questions are therefore the following:

RQ1. How is the concept of integration shaped theoretically when taking a postmigrant

perspective?

RQ2. How do art projects (Newcomers, Leben Erzählen Schreiben, and Hela Bilden) contribute

to a new understanding of integration in European societies?

RQ3. Do these projects contribute to the postmigrant conceptualization of integration?

1.2 Structure of the thesis

The introduction will be followed by a chapter on previous research that introduces the origin

of the term postmigrant and its establishment in the social sciences. I then describe studies in

the field and address the potential contribution of my thesis. In Chapter 3, I give a contextual

background to my study by introducing the current integration policy in Germany and Sweden.

The subsequent chapter elaborates on the theoretical perspective on which my analysis is based.

I first discuss two current approaches to integration in the social sciences, Stuart Hall’s theory

on national culture and identity and the postmigration concept respectively, as well as two

prevailing approaches in postmigrant research; and I go on to discuss the societal impact of

artistic practices. After setting the theoretical framework, I describe, in Chapter 5, the projects

that I analyze in my thesis: Newcomers, Leben Erzählen Schreiben, Hela Bilden, and the work

of Alter & Ego. I then explain my methodological procedure including a description of the

empirical material and reflections on my positionality. In Chapters 7 and 8 I then present the

content and thematic analysis of my data. Lastly, the conclusion reviews the main findings of

this study and potential further research.

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2. Previous Research

The following chapter addresses previous research in order to position this study in the current

academic debate. I first introduce my interest in art projects and then give a brief description of

studies that have applied a postmigrant approach to artworks in relation to the concept of

integration.

2.1 The origin of “das Postmigrantische”

The term “das Postmigrantische”, translated in the English context as (the) postmigrant,

originated in the culture and art scene in Germany, in part inspired by Anglo-American

literature (Langhoff, 2009; Petersen, et al., 2019). Langhoff, Kosnick, Priessner, and Kulaoğlu

initially developed the term in 2003 in connection to the film festival and conference “Europe

in Motion”. Their goal was to coin a new term able to address the importance of transnational

migration in the work of filmmakers and artists without evoking the exclusionary practices and

fixed associations that other terms did, such as the German term “Migrationshintergrund”

(migration background) (Kosnick, 2018).

In 2008 Langhoff founded the theater “Ballhaus Naunynstraße” in Berlin and established with

colleagues the term postmigrant on an institutional level by designating the theater’s work as

“postmigrant theater” (Gorki, 2020, para. 2; Kosnick, 2018). Langhoff emphasized that this

theatre production should not be considered a migrant’s theatre (Foroutan, 2019). Rather, its

objective was to give artistic voice to the social realities that developed in Germany as a result

of different migration processes while looking beyond the dominant narrative on migration and

integration (Espahangizi, 2016). This new theater concept aimed to have an impact in the

traditional theatre field which is criticized for addressing the topic of migration by producing a

cemented and stereotypical understanding of “the other” while excluding migrants and their

descendants from the production. Moreover, the emphasis was to address the stories and

perspectives of individuals from the second and third generations who did not migrate but

remain part of the current migration discourse (Langhoff, 2009). Hence, the postmigrant theater

stands more generally for an understanding of societal diversity that looks beyond the actual

origin of an individual (Langhoff, 2011). The term postmigrant has therefore been used initially

as a discursive tool both to express a critique in the culture and art scene in Germany, and to

make a political statement (Petersen, Schramm, Wiegand, 2019). Through its new aesthetic and

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content-related impulses the postmigrant theatre became a success. Until nowadays the

Ballhaus Naunynstraße is showing performances that induce new discourses on postmigrant

cultural and artistic practices (Ballhausnaunynstraße, 2020).

The postmigrant theatre did not only have a significant impact on the German cultural scene

but also in academia. Indeed, postmigration has been picked up and operationalized as a concept

in the social sciences, especially in the domain of critical migration research. It is increasingly

establishing itself outside of Germany and slowly resonates in the political and public European

context (Foroutan, 2019). However, as Espahangizi (p.1) states, it is important to keep in mind

that “the posmigrant is no child of academia”. Instead, the notion postmigration originated in

the culture and art scene and, most importantly, it is part of an empowerment process of

individuals for which the migration and integration discourse is an everyday reality

(Espahangizi, 2016).

Lastly, it is important to keep in mind that the prefix “post” in postmigration does not signify

an end to migration but rather an end to the “migrantization” of certain individuals and describes

the social negotiation that takes place after migration occurred (Foroutan, 2015; Petersen et al.,

2019, p.8). Moreover, it emphasizes the emergence of new narratives and reinterpretations of

the established migration discourse (Yildiz, 2014).

For this research, I have found it important to assume not only a theoretical social scientist

approach to the notion of postmigration but also to keep the field of origin of the concept as a

significant component of the analysis. Hence, I am particularly interested in considering art

projects when analyzing the academic development and expansion of the postmigration

concept. My focus lies on art projects in their entirety as I consider their creation and the people

involved in them to be as important for the present research as the artistic production per se.

Therefore, the three art projects Newcomers, Leben Erzählen Schreiben, and Hela Bilden, as

well as Alter & Ego’s work as complementary fourth perspective, will be analyzed and their

relation to the concept of integration will be studied by taking a postmigrant approach.

2.2 Postmigrant approach to artworks

After its operationalization, several studies have emerged that apply a postmigrant perspective

on different foci. A few studies have concentrated on postmigrant cultural and artistic practices

and/or have taken a postmigrant perspective when analyzing works of art. Sharifi (2017) has

analyzed social and cultural processes in Europe with a focus on the contemporary European

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theatre. He has observed how the postmigrant theatre initiated a shift in theatre production and

has taken a postmigrant perspective when addressing new trends.

In the book by Schramm, Pultz Moslund, Petersen (2019), the postmigration concept is

introduced academically, with a Scandinavian perspective, and different authors analyze

artworks from Europe, mainly from Denmark, Great Britain and Germany, by taking

postmigration as an analytical perspective. Three case studies are analyzed, being the art

performance “Whip It Good” by Jeannette Ehlers, the novel “NW” by Zadie Smith, and the

movie “Soul Kitchen” by Fatih Akin. In all three studies, the concept of integration that is

commonly used in classical migration studies is being questioned and i ts meaning seems to

shift. The studies indicate the increasing difficulty to support the discourse of a homogeneous

national culture in which individuals are expected to integrate. These findings show how the

postmigrant perspective can intersect with perspectives from disciplines such as migration

studies. Indeed, several scholars such as Foroutan (2015) and Römhild (2017) address in their

work the concept of integration by taking a postmigrant perspective. In this regard, I will

analyze Schramm et al. (2019) and Foroutan’s (2019) recent works more closely in my analysis

chapter.

It is important to emphasize that the postmigration concept is in development and subject to

different interpretations. Therefore, it should not be understood as a fixed concept but rather as

a critical analytical term which contributes to the reframing of discourses on migration in

contemporary societies (Petersen, Schramm & Wiegand, 2019). In this study, I aim at analyzing

the intersection between the postmigration concept and integration further by addressing both

the current academical debate as well as looking at art projects and their impact on the

understanding of (postmigrant) integration. In keeping with Langhoff’s (2015, para. 5) words

“I consider art as a practice for societal change”3, I argue for the importance of incorporating

the work of art projects in the academic discourse about integration.

3 “ (…) dass ich Kunst als Praxis zur gesellschaftlichen Veränderung verstehe”.

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3. Contextual Background

The term integration and its notion play a significant role in the political domain. Indeed,

integration can be understood as a permanent and irrefutable political task (Bommes, 2007).

For the last fifty years, the topic of integration has been an official policy goal in liberal

democracies. However, regarding the European Union and its member states, integration is not

a universal policy goal and its definition varies between different states (Collyer, et al., 2020).

As this study mainly focuses on art projects in Germany and Sweden, since the work of the

Luxembourgish organization Alter & Ego is analyzed as a complementary artistic approach, I

will briefly introduce in the following chapter the current situation in both countries regarding

integration policies.

3.1 Integration policy in Germany

Germany is officially defined as a country of immigration since the end of the 1990s which led

to several legislative and institutional changes (Sauer & Brinkmann, 2016). As a result of an

immigration law, enacted in Germany in 2005, the topic of integration and its promotion

became an official governmental task. Subsequently, several integration measures were

implemented such as the establishment of integration classes which are composed of German

language classes and so-called “orientation classes” which are teaching the so-called

fundamental values of Germany, and knowledge about the country (Hanewinkel & Oltmer,

2017). Furthermore, a national integration plan was developed in 2007 and an integration law,

affecting mostly asylum seekers and refugees, was enacted in 2016 (Hanewinkel & Oltmer,

2017; Sauer & Brinkmann, 2016). Integration measures are developed by the German

government, but Germany’s integration politics is implemented separately on the level of the

German federal states and municipalities (Hanewinkel & Oltmer, 2017).

According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees “Integration is a long-term process.

Its goal is to involve all people who live permanently and legally in Germany into society.

Immigrants should be given comprehensive and equal participation in all areas of society. They

are therefore obliged to learn German and to know, respect, and obey the constitution and the

laws.” (BAMF, 2020, para. 1)4. This definition follows the principle of the German integration

4 Integration ist ein langfristiger Prozess. Sein Ziel ist es, alle Menschen, die dauerhaft und rechtmäßig in Deutschland leben, in die Gesellschaft einzubeziehen. Zugewanderten soll eine umfassende und

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policy, being “Fördern und Fordern” (promote and demand) (Hanewinkel & Oltmer, 2017, para.

2). Furthermore, in the description of integration by the Federal Ministry of the Interior,

Building, and Community it is written that “integration can work only as a two-way process. It

requires acceptance by the majority population and the willingness of immigrants to learn and

respect the rules of the host country and to take responsibility for their own integration” (BMI,

2020, para. 3). Even though in the latter formulation, the “majority population” is addressed as

part of the integration process, when looking at the public discourse and how the policies are

put into practice, integration performances remain a requirement, especially for migrants.

Furthermore, it has been shown statistically that individuals with a “migration background”

(Migrationshintergund) in Germany do not have the same opportunities to participate in societal

areas such as education, the labor market, or in politics as individuals without a “migration

background” (Hanewinkel & Oltmer, 2017).

3.2 Integration policy in Sweden

Since the 1970s, the topic of integration has been present in Swedish politics as part of the

debate around multiculturalism (Solano, 2018). A Swedish Integration Board was active since

1998 in implementing the integration policy goals in Sweden until its closure in 2007 (Sveriges

Riksdag, 2020). Since then, its tasks have been taken over by the Swedish Migration Agency

and different ministries with an emphasis on the integration in the labor market through policies

by the Ministry of Employment (European website on integration, 2019; Government Offices

of Sweden, 2009). According to the official Swedish integration policy fact sheet “the goal of

integration policy in Sweden is equal rights, obligations and opportunities for all, regardless of

ethnic or cultural background” (p.1). Like the official German description, general integration

measures in Sweden are being described as supposed to target the whole population. Swedish

integration policy emphasizes labor market integration, access to education, anti-discrimination

measures, and housing. Furthermore, several reforms have entered into force in 2010 with a

focus on the integration of newly arrived refugees (Government Offices of Sweden, 2009).

Another emphasis of Swedish integration policy is put on proficiency in the Swedish language.

Indeed, most newcomers are entitled to an education in Swedish through the program “Swedish

for Immigrants” (SFI) to which newly arrived immigrants are highly encouraged to take part

gleichberechtigte Teilhabe in allen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen ermöglicht werden. Sie stehen dafür in der Pflicht, Deutsch zu lernen sowie die Verfassung und die Gesetze zu kennen, zu respektieren und zu befolgen.

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in. Similar to the German integration classes, newcomers, depending on their status, receive

besides classes in Swedish an introduction plan composed of “civic orientation” and

employment preparation training. The Swedish municipalities have an important responsibility

in the implementation of these measures by i.a. providing SFI training and facilities

(Government Offices of Sweden, 2009).

Even though Sweden has been addressed as a good example of immigrant integration and

Swedish integration policies have been described to be effective (as cited in Solano, 2018), the

lack of consideration of the “host society” within the integration process has been criticized.

Indeed, most policies address only the immigrant’s and refugee’s needs while excluding the

role of Swedish society. Their incorporation is however of importance in several domains such

as in the labor market where immigrants have the right to work but get no jobs as well as in

housing where landlords often exclude immigrants (Solano, 2018).

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4. Theoretical Framework

In the following chapter, I will outline the concepts and theories of importance for the present

study. First, I introduce the concept of integration by addressing its common understanding in

today’s European societies and by discussing two main sociological approaches. Second, I

outline Stuart Hall’s (1992) conceptualization of national culture and national identity. I then

present the postmigration concept more in-depth by addressing two current approaches in

academia, the postmigrant perspective and the concept of postmigrant society. Lastly, I

introduce the relation of artistic practices with the thematic of migration as well as their political

and societal impact.

4.1 The notion of integration

The word integration is omnipresent and “on everyone’s lips” (Treibel, 2015, p.33). Indeed, the

integration discourse has experienced growing salience since the beginning of the 21st century,

with noticeable effects in domains such as politics, pedagogy, social work, and daily life

(Varela, 2013). The everyday understanding of integration often refers to a smaller group of

“others” supposed to integrate into an established bigger group. This understanding is applied

to migrants who should integrate into the “host society” (Treibel, 2015). Hence, in public and

political debates, the main topic is often if and how migrants should integrate by demanding an

adjustment of the migrants to the culture and lifestyles of the “host society’s” population (Hans,

2016). In this regard, the term integration is often used synonymously with assimilation, which

originates from the assimilation theory developed by the Chicago School (Sauer & Brinkmann,

2016), of which more below. Furthermore, in the public sphere, the term integration has become

a political buzzword often used in everyday life without further explanation (Treibel, 2015).

Outside this discourse, the polemical notion of a so-called German “Leitkultur” in which

migrants should integrate into, has also gained popularity in Germany (Hans, 2016).

The integration term is being addressed more in-depth and as an analytical concept in academia

among different disciplines, and it remains an instrument that can be developed further (Treibel,

2015). In migration and integration research, there seems to be no agreement on any consistent

definition of integration, and several terms and concepts such as assimilation, incorporation,

and inclusion are often used interchangeably with integration. Furthermore, in the German

speaking context, a distinction between “system integration”, referring to the relation of the

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societies structures, and social integration, referring to the involvement of newcomers in

societal domains such as in the labor market and politics, is made (Hans, 2016, p. 25). It

therefore appears to be important to define what is being addressed when talking about “migrant

integration”. When taking a general social scientist perspective, two integration processes that

are of importance to my research can be observed: integration in a society, which is in

accordance to the everyday understanding of integration, as well as integration as a society

(Treibel, 2015). The following subchapters will concentrate on these two approaches to

integration and their pitfalls.

4.1.1 Integration in a society

Since the emergence of the discipline in the 19th century, integration is a central term in

sociology describing society as a whole entity in which its parts are interconnected (as cited by

Hans, 2016; Treibel, 2015). In early research in migration sociology, the work of sociologists

from the Chicago School was significant. Indeed, the classic assimilation theory, also known

as the straight-line theory, addressed the integration of migrants in the “host society” through

the process of assimilation, being the abandonment of their “culture of origin” and leading to

the fusion of different groups and therefore also to the presumed disappearance of differences.

In that context, assimilation was seen as an important and almost indispensable element for the

integration process (Hans, 2016). This theory dominated for a long time the scientific discourse

and remains partly present in current debates. Subsequently, different assimilation and

integration models have flourished which have addressed how migrants should integrate, and

these models have often taken the classic assimilation theory as their point of departure (Hans,

2016). For instance, the sociologist Esser has developed different dimensions of migrant’s

social integration depending on whether they are socially integrated into the country of origin

and/or in the country of destination. In this theory, “multiple integration” (p.2) is taking place

when the migrant is socially integrated into both the country of origin and the country of

destination. According to Esser (2001), this is only possible when special conditions are met

and is generally unlikely to happen. Assimilation is taking place when the migrant is only

socially integrated into the country of reception which is seen as important for successful

integration (Esser, 2001; Hans, 2016).

The straight-line theory has been criticized for being ethnocentric and normative by assuming

the existence of a homogeneous “host society” to which ethnic minorities should conform to.

In response to this, new assimilation and integration theories have been formulated. However,

theories such as Esser’s model remain dominant also in other German-speaking countries

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(Hans, 2016). The pitfalls of the straight-line theory have made classical migration research

vulnerable to criticism for using a one-sided understanding of integration, focusing primarily

on migrants and their descendants with the assumption that there is an established “host society”

in which they should integrate (Foroutan, 2015). Furthermore, migration research is repeatedly

understood and applied as research about or on migrants, and it amounts to what Römhild has

termed “migrantology” (Römhild, 2017, p.70). Hence, classical migration research has often

contributed to the reproduction of fixed categories and concepts which it aims to criticize at the

same time. Indeed, by focusing exclusively on migrants and their integration, the counterpart

of a homogeneous fixed national majority is being reinforced (Römhild, 2017). This

understanding of integration does not address the needed integrative efforts from the sides of

the “host society” (Foroutan, 2015).

I am aware that my account of how the concept of integration is used and applied in migration

research cannot do full justice to the rich literature on the topic and numerous scholarly

interventions in that regard. Yet, the general point retains its value, which is that integration

tends to designate a one-sided process, which objectifies migrants as outsiders that need to be

brought into a fixed and sedentary society. Hence, classical migration research tends to stick

with fixed cultural and ethnic categories also known under “methodological nationalism” (as

cited in Yildiz, 2018, p.46). In response to this criticism, critical migration research has aimed

to “demigrantise” (p.70) migration research, while adding a migration perspective in the

research about societies. By doing so, several new concepts and perspectives have been

explored, such as the concept of postmigration (Römhild, 2017). Before delving into this

approach, I would like to shed light on a different understanding of integration which comes

back to its original conception.

4.1.2 Integration as a society

Of importance when addressing the main sociological approaches to integration, is the

association of the term regarding equal access to and participation of individuals in specific

areas of society, such as education, housing, and employment. In that regard, integration

describes a situation that involves every individual, and thereby no individual can be seen as

permanently integrated into society (Bommes, 2007). Hence, integration is not only associated

with the migrant’s characteristics and effort but also with the societal, economic, and political

condition of the “host society” as well as its openness. In that regard, integration is being

decoupled from assimilation (Sauer & Brinkmann, 2016). The focus instead lies on the whole

society and its condition regarding its integration (Treibel, 2015), which refers to the initial

19

sociological definition of integration (Holzner, 1967). In this perspective, the assumption of a

fixed national majority, i.a. the German “Leitkultur”, to which migrants should adapt, has no

real foundation, and the assumption that migrants are a homogeneous cultural group seems

equally invalid (Sauer & Brinkmann, 2016). This definition of integration has been described

by Foroutan (2015) as a paradigm shift that took place in the last decade and tried to expand

the concept of integration theoretically by looking beyond the association with migrants and

their descendants and instead concentrate on the society as a whole. However, this shift is still

barely observable in the public and political understanding of integration and is rarely applied

in integration policies (Foroutan, 2015). Hence, scholars call for a reformulation of the

integration term in the public sphere (Treibel, 2015).

In conclusion, it can be said that the term integration is a contested one due to its different

meanings and implementation in several domains such as the public sphere, policymaking, and

academic research. This makes it difficult to grasp the concept in its totality. Despite its

inconsistency, the term integration is strongly present in European societal discourses where it

is being instrumentalized to mark otherness and to define who belongs in a society and who

does not (Treibel, 2015). It is in this context, that Stuart Hall’s analysis of national culture and

identity seems essential for a deeper understanding of the current instrumentalization of

integration.

4.2 The national culture and identity

Stuart Hall deconstructs in his work the dominant and hegemonic discourses around culture,

the nation, and identity. More precisely he addresses the notion of national culture as a discourse

that provides constructed national symbols, meanings, and narratives of the nation with which

individuals can identify with. Hence, national culture creates and strengthens national identities

and a feeling of national belonging. By doing so, a national culture emphasizes common origins,

traditions, and “the idea of pure, original people” (Hall, 1992, p.295). Furthermore, differences

between citizens are suppressed and the “other” is devalued. National identity is therefore

constructed with the help of cultural power, which is creating inclusion and exclusion

operations so that the national identity is perceived as unified. Following Benedict Anderson’s

argument, Hall thus describes national identities as an “imagined community” (as cited in Hall ,

1992, p.293) and the members of this community as believers in shared common values, origins,

and traditions. However, Hall is stating that “Western Europe has no nations which are

20

composed of only one people, one culture or ethnicity. Modern nations are all cultural hybrids”

(Hall, 1992, p.297). Accordingly, Hall emphasizes that there is not one identity in unity but that

individuals have different identities which should not be essentialized.

In his work, Hall assesses the potential changing effect of globalization on national cultures and

subsequently national identities by analyzing the British case. Even though a pluralizing impact

on identities can be observed, Hall is describing that national identities tend to be reinforced as

a defensive reaction of members of the majority group. He is emphasizing the complexity of

the subject which can’t be simplified in a shift between unified identities to their dislocation.

However, he reminds us that individuals are not born with a national identity but that this

identity is forming and transforming over time (Hall, 1992).

When looking back on the described policies in Germany and Sweden, and the common

understanding of integration, it becomes clear that the current European discourses around

national cultures are continuing the attempt to construct and maintain a fixed and homogeneous

understanding of the nation and the national identity. Taking the example of the assumption of

a “Leitkultur” of the German society displays the essentialist discourse of a German national

culture and German national identity in which outsiders should integrate.

4.3 The postmigration concept

In academia, the still developing concept of postmigration has been subject to different

interpretations. This in itself is seen as a strength, because it shows that the term does not refer

to one clearly defined idea but instead can be used as a critical analytical tool which triggers

the reconsideration of existing debates and perspectives (Petersen et al., 2019). Three major

approaches in academic research regarding the use of the postmigration concept can be

observed in the last decade, which shows similarities in certain aspects but also some mutually

exclusive differences (Petersen et al., 2019b). For one, the term was initially applied to critically

address ascribed identities to “postmigrant subjects” (p.5) such as descendants of migrants.

Despite its actor-oriented approach, criticism arose that the term might be misused as another

label for certain groups of individuals, which would perpetuate their marginalization (Petersen

et al., 2019). From an actor-oriented approach, the term developed increasingly towards a

critical social analysis that focuses on the entire society (Foroutan, 2019). Indeed, in other

contexts, postmigration is used as an analytical perspective to address societal struggles by

looking beyond the exclusive focus on migrants and their descendants. Lastly, the term is being

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applied to address contemporary societies as so-called “postmigrant societies” (p.5) which

refers to a concept developed by the political scientist Foroutan (Petersen et al., 2019).

The concept postmigration was initially applied in academia in the German-speaking context

before being addressed in the English, Spanish, and French-speaking context with different foci

(Foroutan, 2016; Yildiz, 2018). In that regard, it has been asked whether the postmigrant

perspective can be addressed beyond a national level by looking at the general European context

(Römhild, 2017). This is an interesting problem which cannot be treated in any detail in this

study, although it should be kept in mind as a background. As the present study analyses mainly

art projects in Germany and Sweden, with the Luxembourgish organization Alter & Ego as

complementary perspective, the focus will be especially on the German speaking postmigrant

debate, carried out by scholars such as Foroutan, Römhild, and Espahangizi as well as on the

recent Scandinavian debate by looking at the work from Petersen, Schramm, and Wiegand. In

the following subchapters, I will present the application of the term as an analytical perspective

and the conception of postmigrant society, these approaches will be of importance for the

analyses of the present study.

4.3.1 The postmigrant perspective

Emerging from the criticism of much-existing migration research that I discussed above

scholars have increasingly incorporated the postmigration concept in their work (Foroutan,

Karakayali & Spielhaus, 2018). Indeed, we can here observe a clear shift in perspectives from

“migrantology” (p.70) with an exclusive focus on migrants to a perspective based on the idea

that migration encompasses all areas of society and culture, and thus also addresses the so-

called “majority society” and its institutions (Römhild, 2017). Rather than taking migration as

its object of study, this research takes migration as its perspective for the whole society and

often suggests a critical revision of knowledge production (Römhild, 2017; Yildiz, 2018). In

this way, migration is seen as an integral part of society and not as an exceptional phenomenon

(Foroutan, 2019). The concept of postmigration has been developed into an analytical

perspective which enables a new way of framing concepts and discourses used in migration

studies. Thus, it forges new narratives and perspectives of migration (Petersen et al., 2019b).

Important in this regard is that the binary coding of “migrant” and “local” should be dissolved,

giving way to an idea of the plural society that now moves to the foreground. Indeed, the

postmigrant perspective refers to a constant hybridization and pluralization of societies that are

negotiated along with the topic of migration (Foroutan, 2019). The perspective has recently

been applied for analysis in different domains as well as different concepts. The concept of

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postmigrant society is the attempt to apply a postmigrant perspective on the notion of society

(Petersen et al., 2019b) and will be introduced in the following subchapter.

4.3.2 The postmigrant society

According to Naika Foroutan, postmigrant societies are characterized by sociopolitical

negotiations, for instance, legislative initiatives, that take place after migration occurred or

rather after having become a country of immigration. Furthermore, in a postmigrant society, it

becomes increasingly difficult to follow binary coding and separate between “migrants” and

“non-migrants” and the attempt to do so leads to an increase in racial thinking patterns. The

conceptualization of a postmigrant society therefore demonstrates that the imagined clearly

defined ethnic, religious, and cultural narrations of a society can no longer s tand. “New

alliances and antagonisms” (p.60) are furthermore described as taking place in postmigrant

societies. Alliances being marginalized groups getting together with other groups, not

necessarily marginalized individuals to fight for their rights and recognition in a plural

democracy (p.69) whereas antagonists oppose these alliances and their demands (Foroutan,

2019). Postmigrant societies are therefore dynamic and marked by struggles against

discrimination and racism (Petersen, et al., 2019). The main conflict in postmigrant societies

revolves around the topic of migration only superficially, instead the conflict is driven by the

notion of equal opportunities and participation in democracies which is not being respected. To

address societal issues, Foroutan encourages us to take a look beyond the notion of migration

and to apply the postmigrant perspective to address these conflicts fully as most conflicts remain

independently of migration (Foroutan, 2019).

Foroutan’s characterization of postmigrant societies has been criticized i.a. for its strong focus

on the political recognition of migration. The scholar Espahangizi takes a Swiss approach to

the concept and addresses the focus on the German context in Foroutan’s conceptualization.

Indeed, the recognition as a country of immigration is a specific German characteristic that

might not apply to other countries such as Switzerland which however experience similar

societal struggles and debates around migration and integration as Germany. Instead, the focus

should be as well on transformation processes that take place in societies in different domains

such as social, cultural, and political so that the concept can be addressed in other national

contexts (Espahangizi, 2018).

In conclusion, the postmigration concept leads to critical societal analysis and has established

itself as such in the social sciences. Coming from an empowerment act from the art and culture

23

scene, however, works of art revolving around the thematic of migration should be taken into

consideration for the academic development of postmigration and their impact on discourses

around migration and integration. In the following chapter, I address artistic practices

concerning the topic of migration and their potential political role.

4.4 Artistic practices and their societal impact

Globalization and migration have led to a change in the practices and institutions in the art

world over the last decades. Contemporary artists have increasingly engaged with this thematic

in their work. Scholars from i.a. the social sciences, cultural studies, and art history have

contributed to the growing discourse on the relation between contemporary art and migration.

More precisely, it can be observed that some artistic practices question common assumptions

about migration and give new perspectives on notions such as identity and community. This

observation addresses the societal impact and the political dimension of artistic practices as it

can lead to critical reflections upon different topics that artists, as well as the audiences,

contemplate (Petersen, 2017).

Research on the contribution of arts and culture to society grew since the 1980s in Europe which

led to the recognition of the sector’s impact and influenced policy development . Indeed, the

positive social benefits of arts have been stressed in recent studies (Reeves, 2002). According

to Landry et al., the social impact of the arts is described as the effect which goes beyond the

art object and performance itself and influences individuals in their life activities (as cited in

Reeves, 2002). Anttonen and colleagues (2016) expended the definition of the societal impact

of art projects by describing potential direct and indirect impact. The former one describes the

impact on a i.a. social level for individuals who participated in the projects such as a change in

their thinking or actions. The latter one refers to the impact on the passive surroundings of art

projects such as for non-attenders and the general environment in which the project took place.

All in all, the power of art is being emphasized as every art project has an impact on its audience,

project team members, and involved community (Anttonen et al., 2016). Despite the

predominant view that the arts have a positive societal impact, some studies emphasize that the

potential negative influence of the arts on individuals and societies should not be omitted

(Belfiore & Bennett, 2008). In this regard, scholars wish for more research and efficacy in

measuring the impact of the arts, for a stronger recognition of the sector’s contribution, and an

increased public and policy investment (Belfiore & Bennett, 2008; Reeves, 2002).

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The political theorist Mouffe (2007) has asked, in this context, whether artistic practices can

have a critical impact in a society dominated by capitalist production. She concludes that no

distinction between political and non-political art can be meaningfully made because artistic

practices necessarily have a political component. Indeed, artistic practices can contribute to the

maintenance of common assumptions but could also challenge them by questioning the

dominant hegemony. The latter case is referred to by Mouffe (2007) as critical art which is

giving a voice to those who have been silenced under the dominant societal discourse. In this

regard, Berggren (2019) addresses the connection between political and artistic representation

and discusses novel artistic strategies to address the unrepresented. The notion of agency and

empowerment of the portrayed persons is described as essential to political art. However,

Berggren invites us to rethink artistic practices that deal with the topic of migration by reflecting

on the role of artists and the meaning of representations, in other words, the depicted art subjects

in their work, as well as on their engagement with the audience. For example, some artistic

practices focus on the powerlessness of individuals and the system that generates it, the

migration regime, instead of focusing on the migrant itself. By doing so, the system is being

criticized and the audience is being included as they live in the system (Berggren, 2019). It

should however be noted that the relation between the state and the art world influences artistic

practices. Indeed, states take part in the production and distribution of art through a.o. laws that

are in place and the provision of funding. By doing so, states can support artists and projects

which reinforce their political interest and might undermine those who do not (Becker, 2008).

Lastly, not only the thematization of migration-related issues are of importance when

addressing the relationship between art practices and migration but also the recognition of

migrant artists and their work. In this regard, a debate took place on the labeling of “migrant

artist” or “artists with a foreign background” as it can lead to categorizations and differentiation

from “actual artists” (Petersen, 2017). Bromley (2017) advocates rejecting these labels to

overcome racializing tendencies. What remains of importance in that discussion is to consider

the artist’s (and individual’s) self-description. In that regard, some artists, authors, and film

producers described themselves as “postmigrants” when addressing their background which

often referred to their experience as migrants from the second or third generation but not only

(Ege, 2018).

Hence, artistic practices can generate counter-narratives to dominant hegemonic discourses

which underlines their importance. However it is important to bear in mind that including the

topic of migration in contemporary art can lead, on one hand, to new understandings of and

25

perspectives on international migration and the societies we live in but on the other hand, it can

also reproduce stigmatizations of the “others” and reproduce categorizations (Petersen, 2017).

For this reason, new discourses and debates in the art world have emerged which call also for

a rethinking of artistic practices. Lastly, as Mouffe points out, it is important to keep in mind

that social transformations cannot be realized by critical artistic practices alone but needs the

collaboration of traditional politics (Mouffe, 2007).

Before I present the chosen art projects for this study in the next chapter, I would like to

summarize the main theoretical arguments that are relevant to the following analysis. Two

theoretical approaches to integration have been presented. First, the association of the term with

the effort of migrants to integrate into a homogeneous “host society”, in which integration takes

place through assimilation; this is generally the everyday understanding of integration in

European societies. Second, the association of the term with the equal participation of

individuals in different areas of the society, in which integration is being decoupled from

assimilation, and which connects the term to its initial sociological meaning concentrating on

the society as a whole. Now the current notion of integration seems to feed and strengthen the

discourse on national culture and identity of European societies conceptualized by Stuart Hall.

As the term remains strongly present in societal discourses with an inclination to focus

exclusively on immigrants and their descendants, its reframing seems essential. This is where

the recently developed concept of postmigration appears as an interesting approach. It leads to

a critical societal analysis by questioning societal hierarchies, binary categorizations , and by

reframing concepts such as postmigrant society to open new academic debates and discourses.

Of main importance in its conceptualization is the concentration on the whole society and the

analysis of its conflicts by looking beyond the topic of migration. Emerging from the art and

culture scene, the arts sector should not be omitted when looking at the development of the

postmigration concept. Artistic practices have a political component and can potentially have a

positive or negative societal impact which in turn can affect common assumptions such as about

integration.

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5. The Art Projects in this Study

This chapter will introduce the art projects on which my study is based, being the Newcomers

film project, the Leben Erzählen Schreiben (LES) story project, and the Hela Bilden painting

project. I came across these projects during my Double Degree Master program in migration

studies for which I spend my first year in Osnabrück in Germany and my second year in

Norrköping in Sweden. Therefore, Newcomers and LES took place in Osnabrück and Hela

Bilden in Norrköping. All projects revolve around topics concerning migration that have been

addressed and reflected on through different types of visual arts, which was the criterion for

their selection. My interest lies in encountered art projects in everyday life and which deal with

the topic of migration. I therefore did not specifically look for projects describing their work as

postmigrant art.

As a fourth case, I address the Luxembourgish non-governmental organization Alter & Ego in

the study as its work in the art therapeutic domain enables an interesting and complementary

perspective upon my research topic. It was not possible to focus on one particular project of

Alter & Ego, because the art therapeutical projects finished and the organization concentrated

for a few years mainly on training for social workers addressing themes such as interculturality

and the deconstruction of prejudices. However, its work and the idea behind its approach are of

interest to my study topic and certain aspects from it will be considered in the analysis of this

study.

5.1 Newcomers

The project Newcomers is a documentary film depicting self-narrated stories of individuals

with “migration background” and who experienced forced migration. The movie has been

divided into chapters which are addressing different themes of the protagonist’s story and which

have been named as followed: “The Flowers of the Pomegranate Tree”, “Lost Love”, “The

Absence of Freedom”, “Rebellion and Death”, “Destruction and Hopelessness”, “Departure and

Arrival”, “Fear and Longing”, “Forgetting and Remembering”. In total 29 persons, originating

from eight countries and living in Germany, share their stories in different languages. Subtitles

in i.a. German and English are available to the audience. Every person is being introduced

through the appearance of their name and the city they currently live in. The protagonists were

filmed frontally and are telling their story in front of a black background as it can be seen in the

27

film’s poster (Figure 1). The project aims at creating a sense of understanding towards refugees

and their reasons for fleeing and wants to emphasize on their stories as human beings

(Newcomers, 2020).

The film team was composed of people with and without refugee experience and has been

produced in cooperation with the “Exil – Refugee Centre Osnabrück”, a non-governmental and

non-profit organization in Osnabrück which supports refugees and people with a “migration

background” in Germany (Exil, 2020; Newcomers, 2020). The film was released in May 2018

and has since then been shown in cinemas and during discussion events throughout Germany

as well as in other European countries. In the future, the film is to be made available on social

media and a film booklet has been created for school classes to thematize different topics of the

movie and discuss these in school classrooms and educational institutions (Newcomers, 2020).

Figure 1. Newcomers film poster.

Retrieved from https://newcomers-

film.de/downloads/.

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5.2 Leben Erzählen Schreiben

The project Leben Erzählen Schreiben (live tell write, LES) collected stories on the theme of

exile, border crossing, and arrival. The stories have been written and collected through

multilingual writing and “storytelling” workshops to which people living in Osnabrück and

surroundings were invited to participate. People with “migration background”, refugees as well

as locals were invited to participate in the workshops by sharing their stories, writing them

down, and/or listening to the stories of others. Subsequently, an event has been organized in

Osnabrück during which the authors could read their stories in front of an audience. According

to the project’s website, the project’s goal is to give all residents in Osnabrück a feeling of

belonging in the city in which they can commonly take part in and in which their stories have

a place (Exil, 2020b)

The collection of stories was initiated in 2012 by the “language activist” (“Sprachaktivistin”)

Daniela Boltres and is since February 2018 a project supported by the “Exil – Refugee Centre

Osnabrück” to which Daniela Boltres is the project manager. A similar project initiated by

Daniela Boltres collected poems that contributed to LES and which resulted in the creation of

an exhibition entitled “Wer versteht das schon?” (who understands that?) which exhibited the

poems in several European countries (Figure 2). The LES project ended in December 2018 and

its work resulted in the creation of a book entitled “Wir schreiben Geschichte(n)” (we write

(hi)story) (Figure 3) in which the collected stories and poems figure. This book is currently a

work in progress and has not been published yet (Exil, 2020b, Exil, 2020c).

29

Figure 2. Poem by Jonas Dogesch

for the exhibition “Wer versteht das

schon“ by D. Boltres, 2020.

Figure 3. Book “Wir schreiben

GeschichteN” from the project Leben

Erzählen Schreiben by D. Boltres, 2020.

30

5.3 Hela Bilden

The project “Hela Bilden” (the whole picture) is an oil painting project which invited people in

Norrköping and surrounding to collectively repaint the painting “Breakfast in the Open”

(Frukost i det gröna), a pastoral idyll by the renowned Swedish painter Carl Larsson, who is

generally seen as the major exponent of romantic nationalism (Figure 4). A copy of the painting

has been shared in 198 parts by the artist and project initiator Sahar Burhan and each project

participant could choose one part and repaint it on a canvas. The project took place for five

weeks during which the participants met and painted the canvases. Project participants were

according to the project’s description of different professions, gender, nationality, and ages, the

youngest being 3 years old and the oldest 90 years. Subsequently, all canvases were merged

into a single large work of art which depicted the “Breakfast in the Open” painting (Figure 5)

(Galleri Kameleont, 2020).

The project has been initiated and carried out in 2012 by the artist Sahar Burhan who owns the

“Kameleont” Art Gallery in Norrköping. The Gallery is exhibiting international works of art,

hosting art performances, and regularly organizing events and lectures on different topics such

as the production of art in diverse societies. Hela Bilden took place in collaboration with the

Norrköping Art Museum and Mirum Galleria. The project has been repeated a few years later,

in 2019, during which a different painting has been repainted by employing the same technique.

On the gallery’s website, the resulting paintings are described as expressing the beauty and

diversity taking place in the Swedish society and in which everyone has the right to be involved

in (Galleri Kameleont, 2020).

31

Figure 4. Painting “Breakfast in the Open” by C. Larsson, 1913. Retrieved from

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frukost_i_det_gr%C3%B6na_1910-13.jpg

Figure 5. Painting “Hela Bilden” by S. Burhan, 2012. Retrieved from

https://gallerikameleont.wordpress.com/

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5.4 Alter & Ego

The non-governmental and non-profit organization “Alter & Ego” (the other and I) is working

through different mediums on topics such as identity, diversity, and interpersonal relations to

increase tolerance and respect in the Luxembourgish society. In their work’s description,

cultures and identity are not understood as fixed entities which individuals represent. The

organization’s work moreover aims at going beyond a national understanding of culture and

identity and at reaching out to the totality of individuals living in Luxembourg. By doing so,

the organization developed pedagogical material, did training courses as well as different

projects. Creativity and art play a central role in their work through i.a. the work with art

therapy. Two projects were on at the organization, being “asile et adaptation” (asylum and

adaptation) which was working monthly through art therapy with asylum seekers around the

topic of adaptation and “zesumme liewen” (living together) which consisted in the creation of

a guide against prejudices towards migrants and workshops and discussions around it (Alter-

Ego, 2020).

33

6. Methodological Procedure

This chapter will inform on the methodological approach that I took to conduct the present

research. The goal of my thesis is to investigate the concept of integration through a postmigrant

lens and to analyze how art projects and their artistic production contribute to its reframing both

socially and academically. In the introduction above, I asked three questions that we shall now

return to and which were the following:

RQ1. How is the concept of integration shaped theoretically when taking a postmigrant

perspective?

RQ2. How do art projects (Newcomers, Leben Erzählen Schreiben, and Hela Bilden)

contribute to a new understanding of integration in European societies?

RQ3. Do these projects contribute to the postmigrant conceptualization of integration?

To respond to my first question (RQ1), I chose to do a qualitative content analysis on a sample

of material composed of two significant works in the domain of postmigrant research in

German-speaking countries and Scandinavia. I decided to concentrate on specific chapters of

the work of Foroutan (2019) entitled “Die Post-migrantische Gesellschaft” (the postmigrant

society) and the work from Schramm and colleagues (2019) entitled “Reframing Migration,

Diversity and the Arts”.

To respond to my second question (RQ2), I conducted eight qualitative semi-structured

interviews among the art projects Newcomers, Leben Erzählen Schreiben, and Hela Bilden as

well as the organization Alter & Ego as complementary perspective. For the analysis of my

interviews, I employed qualitative thematic analysis by following Braun and Clarke’s

methodological approach (2006). My interest was to assess the reasons behind the creation of

the project, its aim as well as how the project was experienced. Therefore, conducting

interviews with the project team members as well as with project participants was of importance

to me. A further interest is moreover on the final product and its reception outside of the project

which I thematized in the conducted interviews.

I will address the last research question (RQ3) through the outcomes of the content analysis of

the academic works and the thematic analysis of the interviews.

In the following subchapters, I introduce the informants of this research and their selection

before discussing the chosen interview methods and my critical reflection upon them. I then

34

address the reflections on my positionality as a researcher and develop further on the analytical

approach of this thesis.

6.1 Informants

The informants of this research have been selected among the initiators and participants of each

of the three art projects that I have chosen to discuss in this study. The project director and/or

film director of each project has been contacted. Concerning the project participants, contacts

were established through ‘snowball’ sampling (Flick, 2009) by asking the interviewed project

team members and searching for individuals in my own broader environment. Other than the

participation in the specific project, I did not define further criteria when contacting or selecting

the informants. The informants read and signed the informed consent form which was

composed of a short description of the research, a description of the participant's rights such as

their anonymity, and the confidentiality of the produced data as well as information about me

as the researcher. The interviews, which lasted between thirty minutes and one and a half hours,

took place in a calm environment, mostly in the informant’s offices or in the student council

room of the University of Osnabrück. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, two interviews took

place online via the software Zoom. All interviews have been recorded, after having my

informants’ consent, which facilitated its transcription. Two informants wished to receive the

transcripts of their interview and one informant wished to receive the quotes of his/her interview

that were used in the analysis.

In total eight persons participated in the study. Within the Newcomers film project , Ma’an

Mouslli the film director as well as Sara Höweler the film producer and Exil Verein manager

have been interviewed. Furthermore, I conducted an interview with Badreldeen Babiker who

participated in the project and is a protagonist in the film. Within the project LES, I interviewed

Daniela Boltres the project manager, and Mohammad Oudai Haidar who participated in the

project by writing several stories. For the project Hela Bilden, I interviewed Sahar Burhan the

project manager, and Margareta Brandin who participated by drawing one canvas of the

painting. Lastly, I interviewed Mylène Porta, Alter & Ego’s manager. Regarding Alter & Ego,

as already described previously, the interview concentrated on the NGO’s work in general and

will be considered as background and complementary information to the other three art projects

which are the focus of the study.

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The informants of this study are nationals from different countries, some of the countr ies in

which the projects have been done, being Germany and Sweden, while others have a different

nationality. However, all informants are currently living in the respective countries of the

projects. Four interviews have been conducted in English, three in German, and one in French.

Unfortunately, not all informants could give the interview in their mother tongue and the

potential language barrier might have impacted their responses. In the following, I will reflect

on my chosen interview method for the present research.

6.2 Semi-structured interviews

In qualitative empirical research different interview techniques can be distinguished within

semi-structured interviews (Flick, 2009). According to my group of respondents, I conducted

five expert interviews with project team members and three focused interviews with project

participants. I concentrated on two main topics in the interviews: the specific art projects on the

one hand and the notion of integration on the other. To consider these two topics is essential for

my reflection upon the chosen interview types and the creation of the interview guides.

I decided to conduct expert interviews with the project team members as my research focuses

on the different art projects, their development, realization, and potential impact. I considered

the project team members, which worked on the creation and development of the projects, as

suitable informants in this regard as they have information that is relevant to my research topic.

However, what is being an expert and who is seen as an expert in the usage of expert interviews

needs to be problematized and reflected by the researcher. Meuser and Nagel (2009) describe

that the researcher is rarely doing an arbitrary choice when defining an informant as an expert

but that this choice is being influenced by several factors. Indeed, expert knowledge and expert

status is commonly associated with a professional role which is a representation of knowledge

production in modernity. However, the term expert should be decoupled from an exclusively

professional role as expert knowledge is also emerging outside of the professional context . In

that sense, an informant is regarded as an expert when she/he has access to information relevant

for the research and which is not necessarily issued through a specific profession or

qualification. A further discussion that is relevant for my research project is the incorporation

of private and biographical aspects of informants in expert interviews. Different scholars have

debated wether this aspect is of importance in the context of expert interviews. Proponents

argue that the distinction between informants as experts and private persons would be difficult.

36

Furthermore, it is of interest to see how the personal life experiences of the informants might

have an impact on their position as an expert (Meuser & Nagel, 2009).

At first sight, it might appear that I attached the notion of an expert to a professional component

as I conducted expert interviews with the project team members who worked in the different

projects. This can be explained through my focus and interest in the creation and realization of

the project. In that regard, their knowledge about the project they worked in is seen as their

expertise. However, this is where my second topic in the interviews is of importance to be

addressed and reflected on, being the notion of integration. Indeed, in the second part of all the

interviews, I addressed the notion of integration and asked the informants whether they thought

that the project is of importance in that regard as well as about their understanding of

integration. Shifting the topic from the art project to integration, the understanding of expert

knowledge is shifting as well in my opinion. The eight informants have different backgrounds

and personal experiences with the topic of integration. Being a sensitive topic, their different

experiences are especially relevant. Depending on their personal experiences, the informants

might respond differently and might become experts in that regard. This observation addresses

the previously discussed importance of considering personal experiences and their impact on

expert interviews. Moreover, it is showing the importance of the positionality of the informant

in a research process as this might influence her/his responses. I will keep that aspect in mind

when doing the thematic analysis of my interviews.

For the project participants, I decided to conduct focused interviews, concentrating on their

experience with the project. By doing so, I received additional information about the project

itself as well as its impact on the participants and a potential audience. Initially, the focused

interview technique worked with a uniform stimulus that was presented to the informants before

the interview. However, variations in the application of this method can be observed over time

and in different fields of research in which the focus of the interview can be related to the topic

of study instead of a stimulus. Five criteria are being described regarding the design of the

interview guide as well as for conducting the interview which are non-direction, specificity,

range, depth, and personal context. Even though these criteria have been described for focused

interviews, they can be applied to different types of interviews (Flick, 2009) and have therefore

been taken into consideration for the creation of all interview guides.

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6.2.1 Interview guides

The respective interview guides have been created by keeping the aforementioned reflections

about the chosen interview techniques into mind. Accordingly, I developed the interview guides

for each informant and adapted them to the specific art project. The interview guides for the

project team members concentrated more on the idea behind the specific project, its realization,

and the personal reflection of the project team member in that regard. The guides for the project

participants focused more on their personal experience with the project and their reflection

about the project after participating. The interview items revolving around the topic of

integration remained the same for all respondents.

All interview guides are composed of a blend of open-ended and closed questions, mostly

followed by general as well as focused follow-up questions. Furthermore, the guides were

clustered into different sections to introduce different topics related to the research questions

(Magnusson & Marecek, 2015). The interview with project team members was clustered in the

following sections: the project and its creation, focus taken within the project, feedback about

the project, personal reflection, and finally the notion of integration. Whereas, the interview

with project participants was clustered as followed: the project, personal reflection after

participation, and finally the notion of integration. Finally, instead of gathering demographic

data through specific questions, the informants were asked to introduce themselves at the

beginning of the interview. By doing so, the informant had the freedom to share what seemed

important to them.

A pretest trial interview was carried out which lead to changes in the design of the interview

guides and the reformulation of certain interview items. Unfortunately, no pilot test has been

carried out as nobody has been found akin to an intended informant. In total eight different

interview guides have been designed and according to the preference of the informant the

interview guides and conducted interviews were in English, German or French.

6.3 Reflexivity and positionality

Scholars often differentiate between the positioning of the researcher as an insider or as an

outsider regarding the informant. In both cases, several advantages, as well as pitfalls, are being

described. As an insider, sharing a similar identity or background with the interviewee for

example can facilitate access to the target group and promote positive interaction. On the other

side, as an outsider, the researcher can take a neutral position and potentially gather more

38

detailed information (Sánchez-Ayala, 2012). However, this dichotomy of insider and outsider

position has been criticized for its simplistic binary thinking and the creation of a self and other

division with a strong focus on ethnic differences while other dimensions such as class and

gender are being overlooked. Hence, the positionality of the researcher can’t necessarily be

differentiated between strictly insider or outsider but is more complex and multi-dimensional

(Farahani, 2010). Moreover, it is important to address the concept of reflexivity when

considering the positionality of a researcher. Indeed, reflexivity goes beyond the recognition of

the researcher’s position within the research, it is addressing the constant critical self-evaluation

of this position throughout all the stages of the research process. In that regard, it is being

emphasized that the positionality of the researcher is rather fluid than static and its impact on

the research process and outcome needs to be reflected upon (Berger, 2015). The researcher is

the main actor in the research process and s/he needs to be conscious of her/his impact on the

research and reflect on it.

Regarding the different art projects, it is important to acknowledge that I was involved in the

Newcomers film project and the LES project during my internship in the “Exil - Refugee Centre

Osnabrück” which I did in spring 2019. During this time and parallel to my classes at the

University Osnabrück, I got the first inspirations and ideas for my master thesis. Hence, I had

an insider position regarding the informants of these projects as we partly worked together for

three months. This aspect might have influenced the interview process as some informants

already knew me and my position towards the art project. However, concerning the Hela Bilden

project and the works of Alter & Ego, I had an outsider position as I contacted the informants

for the research and as I did not work in these projects before. The collegial relationship that I

had with some informants compared to the neutral relationship that I had with other informants

potentially impacted the interview process concerning the topic of the art project. The

informants from Newcomers and LES might have shared less information about the project

itself as they might have assumed that through my internship, I already knew certain aspects of

it. However, they might have shared more personal experiences and reflections. Whereas the

informants from the Hela Bilden project and Alter & Ego might have been strengthened in their

position as ‘experts’ through my outsider position and might have shared more detailed

information about the project.

Regarding the topic of integration in my research and the interviews, my positionality shifted

again in relation to the informants. I am a white European student and grew up binational

between France and Germany. Therefore, my experience and personal relation with the topic

39

of integration is different from a person who migrated from a non-European country, a person

with a “migration background” who lives or was born in a European country, and a person

without a “migration background”. This aspect might have an impact on the informant’s

reaction to the topic of integration and their responses in that regard during the interviews which

is important to keep in mind.

6.4 Analytical approach

To analyze the selected academic postmigration works, I employed qualitative content analysis

along with the guidelines of the psychologist Mayring (2015). As already addressed previously,

I decided to analyze two chapters of respectively the book “Die post-migrantische Gesellschaft”

by Foroutan (2019) and “Reframing Migration, Diversity and the Arts” by Schramm et al.

(2019). In Foroutan’s book, I focused on the chapter “Grundlagen und Kernthese –

Ankerpunkte einer postmigrantischen Analyse” (p.27-71) for the analysis and in Schramm et

al. book I chose the chapters “Criticism and Perspectives” (Petersen, Schramm, Wiegand,

2019c; p.50-64) and “Introduction: Towards a Postmigrant Frame of Reading” (Moslund &

Petersen, 2019, p.67-75). As my interest lies in positioning the notion of integration

theoretically in the current postmigrant debates, I chose the chapters of the book that address

the author's work with postmigration. The goal of this analysis is to reduce the material to

delimit important information for my research, being the conceptualization of (postmigrant)

integration. To work with a categorical framework is essential in the use of content analysis.

As my interest in this analysis lies in positioning the concept of integration within postmigration

research, I decided to employ an inductive approach to the creation of categories. By doing so,

the categories of importance for my first research question will emerge from my selected

material without being defined beforehand. It should be noted that this analysis will be short as

it, and the respective first research question merely serves to position the notion of integration

in the current postmigrant debate. The thematic analysis which will be described in the next

paragraph is the main analysis and focus of my research.

To analyze the interviews, I firstly transcribed the verbal data of all interviews into written form

by keeping the original language they have been held in. For my transcripts, I put emphasis on

the accuracy of the spoken content by doing verbatim transcriptions and marked nonverbal

utterances such as laughter and longer pauses. Following the guidelines by Braun and Clarke

(2006), I then went several times through my transcripts and coded my data. Even though I

40

decided to follow a deductive approach for my thematic analysis which was driven by my

research interest and my second and third research questions, I tried to do a detailed account of

my data by coding many different aspects that I found of importance. While coding, I took side

notes of repeating topics and potential themes that are relevant to my research questions. Once

all my data was coded, I began sorting and collating my coded data into potential themes. By

organizing my codes and using my side notes, potential themes and subthemes emerged for

which I created several mind maps. I then reviewed the relevancy of my potential themes with

my research interest and assured that they accurately reflected my data set before defining them

as final themes for my analysis. The following chapter presents the final analysis of both the

content analysis and the thematic analysis.

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7. Content Analysis – Postmigrant Integration

In this chapter, I shortly analyze the conceptualization of integration in the current postmigrant

debates in the social sciences. I focus on Foroutan’s (2019) work on postmigrant societies and

the work and elaboration by Schramm and colleagues (2019) on the “postmigrant condition”.

In her book, Foroutan (2019) discusses her political approach to the concept of postmigrant

societies which impacted significantly in current academic debates as already addressed in the

theoretical framework chapter. Schramm and colleagues (2019) explore in their work, the

postmigrant perspective in relation to different works of art. They elaborate their

conceptualization of a “postmigrant condition” which they describe as more appropriate for

cultural analysis than Foroutan’s approach of postmigrant societies. They describe that instead

of discussing a postmigrant society, they work with postmigration as a condition or a state of

society which can emerge outside of political and demographic developments such as in

narratives of works of art (Petersen et al., 2019). The different perspectives taken by both

renowned postmigrant academic works display the diverse application of postmigration and

allows a more comprehensive analysis of the conceptualization of (postmigrant) integration. In

this regard, two categories significantly emerged from the content analysis of the chosen

chapters. On one hand, the topic of change and subsequent redefinition of the notion of

integration is addressed in all chapters. On the other hand, the detachment of the notion of

integration from the topic of migration is explored in most chapters. I will elaborate further on

these two categories in the next subchapters.

7.1 Change and redefinition

In both works, the postmigrant perspective is described to challenge and question common

understandings of traditional concepts in migration studies such as integration. Foroutan (2019)

describes that the postmigrant society fundamentally changes the notion of integration which

distances itself from an understanding of assimilation. Instead, integration is understood as:

42

“Integration can be defined anew as a societal guiding principle which is composed of the

segments recognition, equal opportunities and participation with the goal to overcome

discrimination and societal inequalities.”5 (Foroutan, 2019, p.41)

Instead of concentrating on a micro level on individuals, integration is being redefined on a

macro level by being addressed as a guiding principle for society. In the quote, Foroutan

addresses the promises of a plural democracy which determine the integration of a society

which she calls “postmigrant integration” (p.40). This description of integration joins the

“integration as society” approach and the initial sociological understanding of integration.

Schramm and colleagues (2019) confirm this observation of a change of the current

understanding of integration in a postmigrant context. They describe the expansion of the notion

of integration due to its growing complexity and reflect on its blend with the concept of

participation. Moreover, all three case studies in their book took a postmigrant lens on works

of art and establish the following:

“(…) ‘integration’ seems to lose cogency in all three case studies or to change from the ways

in which it is usually understood. Whatever the differences may be between their postmigrant

frames of reading, they all substantiate the fact that the idea of a homogeneous local or

national culture into which individuals or groups integrate becomes increasingly difficult to

sustain.” (Moslund & Petersen, 2019, p.73)

The quote displays the questioning of the assimilative understanding of integration of

individuals in a “host society”, which is constructed as fixed and homogeneous. This refers

back to Hall’s (1992) criticism of national culture and identity. Furthermore, the work by

Schramm et al. demonstrate the contribution of works of art in the current understanding and

development of societies and social scientist concepts. In the next subchapter, I will present the

detachment of the theme from migration in the expansion of (postmigrant) integration.

7.2 Detachment from migration

In her elaboration on the postmigration society, Foroutan (2019) further defines integration by

describing the notion of postmigrant integration as going beyond its bond to migration. In her

conceptualization, integration does not exclusively address migrants and their descendants.

5 Integration lässt sich somit neu definieren als ein gesellschaftsstrukturierendes Leitmotiv, das sich aus den Teilsegmenten, Anerkennung, Chancengleichheit und Teilhabe zusammensetzt mit dem Ziel, Diskriminierung und gesellschaftliche Ungleichheit zu überwinden.

43

Instead, the entire society is in the focus and everyone who takes part in it is concerned by

integration. Aside from this, Foroutan especially takes a political approach to postmigrant

integration:

“Integration became a political performance, to which the state and the plural democracy must

measure up to.”6 (Foroutan, 2019, p.41)

And

“The promise (of the plural democracy) is only fulfilled through an integration policy for the

entire society.”7 (Foroutan, 2019, p.69)

Foroutan describes postmigrant integration as a political performance that should be executed

by the state and that this performance determines the fulfillment of a plural democracy. In a

postmigrant society, integration is therefore decoupled from migration as it becomes a topic

that is supposed to involve the entire society and a political task of the state which should

guarantee equality for all citizens. Similarly to the initial sociological definition of integration,

the focus lies on the whole society and how it enables equal access and participation to all its

citizens instead of focusing on a particular group of individuals and their integrat ion in the

society. Schramm and colleagues (2019) focus on their conceptualization less on the political

task of the state but rather on the diverse aspect of integration which should not be focused

solely on the topic of migration:

“A postmigrant perspective thus substitutes the ideal of integrationist participation with a

pluralist understanding of participation as involving, sometimes conflictual and difficult,

negotiation across cultural and political differences (…)” (Moslund & Petersen, 2019, p.73)

Moslund and Petersen (2019) further elaborate on the merge between integration and

participation and highlight the numerous aspects of integration in a postmigrant context which

is based on negotiations on different levels that are not limited to migration topics only.

This analysis offers an initial idea regarding the conceptualization of integration in the

postmigrant analytical context. Foroutan (2019) reflects on how much “das Postmigrantische”,

coming from the art and culture scene, can be operationalized in the social sciences without

removing its critical and inspirational impulse. As Moslund and Petersen (2019) mention in

6 Integration ist damit zu einer politischen Leistung geworden, an der sich der Staat und die plurale Demokratie

messen lassen müssen. 7 Das Versprechen (der pluralen Demokratie) ist nur durch eine Integrationspolitik für die gesamte Gesellschaft einzulösen.

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their work, the postmigrant analytical perspective is fluid and still in development, and applying

it to the study of works of art, film and fiction contributes to its development and renegotiations

of the understanding of key concepts such as integration. The following analytical chapter aims

at contributing to this discussion by studying three art projects and their effect on our

understanding of (postmigrant) integration.

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8. Thematic Analysis – the Power of Art

In this chapter, I analyze my informant’s reflections upon the art project they worked on or

participated in. As a reminder, I concentrate on three art projects, being the Newcomers film

project, the Leben, Erzählen, Schreiben (LES) story project, and the Hela Bilden painting

project for which I respectively interviewed one or two project team members and one project

participant. Additionally, I address the work of the NGO Alter & Ego as a complementary

perspective, for which I interviewed the manager. The following subchapters highlight common

themes that came up during the interviews, which are relevant for my second and third research

questions. Despite the chosen deductive approach to my thematic analysis, I try to pay attention

for emerging themes that seem to be of importance to my informants and address these in my

work. However, the present study cannot do full justice to each art project, the reflections that

took place around it, and the potential socio-cultural impact of its end product. To concentrate

fully on these aspects would go beyond the scope of this study but would be of interest for

future studies.

I included quotes from my informants as they were expressed by doing minor grammatical and

syntactic changes for comprehension. I translated all non-English quotes into English in the

main text of my analysis in order to not interrupt the flow of the text. The original quotes can

be found in the respective footnotes.

8.1 Art projects: from whom, with whom, for whom? A multidimensional

impact

From the outset, my interest is to focus on the art projects, their creation, and realization instead

of exclusively focusing on the artistic production that emerged from them. One aspect that

stands out throughout all the interviews is that each project has an impact on both the people

involved in the project, the project participants, the project team members, as well as the

potential audience. This observation might seem like common sense but is important to address

as the focus on art projects tends to lie on the finished end product and how it impacts a potential

audience. However, the process of participating as well as conceiving and working on an art

project is an important part when considering the impact of a project. The following subchapters

will concentrate on the project’s team members, the project participants, and their reflections

46

on their experience in the respective projects. Finally, the created end products, and the effect

on the intended audience will be analyzed.

8.1.1 From whom? - “A task that calls for humility” (Mylène) & Agency

Sara, the film producer of the Newcomers film project insists in her interview on the importance

of a diverse team within the project:

“We noticed collectively that documentaries and reports on the topic of flight which can be

seen in the television, at least in Germany, were always made from the point of view of

German reporters and journalists. So, from above. Well, not from above, but for sure a

German point of view.”8 (Sara)

Sara addresses the observation that most media coverage on the topic of refugees takes a one-

sided German perspective when looking upon this group of newly arrived “others”. By

addressing the “German point of view”, she seems to refer to the perspective of people that did

not experience forced migration and that report about newcomers without taking their

perspective and voice into consideration. Hence, it was of importance for the team that the

Newcomers project was composed of a diverse group of individuals with different experiences

on the topic of flight. Daniela is also reflecting on her position as project manager of LES and

as a white person:

“That I am not saying, as a white person: ‘this is the space and I’m giving it to you liberally

and now you are allowed to talk and then everything is good again’. But rather that the space

is also shaped with people from the so-called target group.”9 (Daniela)

Daniela is addressing potential power relations that might come up in projects that are created

for newcomers in which the “host population” wants to “help” and does projects for migrants

and refugees. In that case, their superiority, which is already being strengthened through the

common understanding of integration and current integration policies would be reinforced. This

reflection around one’s positionality and behavior as project team members is important to keep

in mind regarding the conception of (art) projects because, as already addressed by Mouffe

8 Uns ist aufgefallen gemeinsam, dass die Dokumentationen, Reportagen, die so im Fernsehen zu sehen waren zum Thema Flucht zu mindestens hier in Deutschland immer aus Sicht von Deutschen Reportern, Journalisten gemacht waren und auch diese Sicht hatten. Also von oben. Naja, nicht von oben, aber auf jeden Fall eine Deutsche Sicht. 9 Also, dass ich nicht die weiße Person sage, dass ist der Raum und ich gebe ihn euch großzügigerweise und ihr dürft jetzt erzählen und dann ist alles wieder gut. Ja. Sondern dass auch der Raum mitgestaltet wird von Menschen aus der sogenannten Zielgruppe.

47

(2007), artistic practices can also reinforce dominant hegemonic assumptions instead of

challenging them.

Sara shares her own experience through producing the film:

“The learning effect was, that I think one cannot even to some degree understand what

happened to these people and how they must feel. And also, what consequences these serious

injuries of the soul can have and how important it is, that we offer a social network.”10 (Sara)

Sara refers to her reflection after having done the sound of an interview for which a protagonist

and Ma’an, the project director, talked in Arabic. Sara cannot understand Arabic but could feel

the suffering and emotionally loaded atmosphere. She realizes her inability to fully grasp how

a person with refugee experience feels as she did not go through this experience. Mylène has a

similar reflection:

“It is a task that calls for humility because that is what I tried to tell you, actually I learned

that we do not know anything.”11 (Mylène)

Mylène addresses her work as a social worker and manager of Alter & Ego where she works

with individuals that fled to Luxembourg. She says that despite her education in the field, she

does not know much about what these people went through and how they might feel. Mylène

addresses humility in her work and tries to teach this approach of “not knowing” and accepting

“not being able to know” in her workshops for social workers in the field.

In Sara’s and Mylène’s reflections, it can be observed that a learning effect takes place in which

they reconsider their position as members of the “majority society” who are commonly

understood as “all knowing”, superior, and teaching newcomers. Both now realize that, on the

contrary, they do not know everything and will not be able to fully understand how newcomers

feel. This reflection is relevant for the “host population” and should be addressed regarding

their integration process. As mentioned in the contextual background chapter, integration is

being described as a “two-way process” (BMI, 2020) in the current German and Swedish

integration policies. However, in both countries, criticisms arise that integration performances

10 Der Lerneffekt daraus war eigentlich, dass man es glaube ich, nicht mal ansatzweise begreifen kann was den Menschen widerfahren ist, und wie es ihnen gehen muss. Und was auch diese schweren Verletzungen der Seele

da machen können und wie wichtig es ist, dass wir eine Art soziales Netzwerk bieten. 11 C’est un travail d’humilité par ce que c’est ça ce que j’essayais de te dire ce que j’ai appris en fait, c’est que nous on ne sait rien.

48

remain a requirement mostly for migrants and that there is a lack of consideration for the role

of the “host population”.

Ma’an, the Newcomers film director, shares that he learned a lot from directing the movie:

“From the beginning, I thought my Syrian story, of the Syrian revolution is the worst thing

happening in the world. But in the end, my story is just one point, or the Syrian story is just

one point from the whole story. Because all the people have the same experience, in di fferent

countries. So just our story is a part of the story, like our movie. So that changed many things

in my mind. (…). I learned a lot from the movie, and at this moment I’m a one hundred

percent different person from before. From 2016 to this moment, I’m accepting everything.”

(Ma’an)

Ma’an reflects on his experience fleeing from Syria and how through directing the movie, and

all the stories that he heard, his position shifted from the focus on the Syrian case to a global

picture of people’s experiences. Throughout the interview, Ma’an’s personal connection to the

project is noticeable as he uses pronouns such as “us” and “we” when talking about the

experiences of refugees. Furthermore, he took agency and shared his story through the chosen

scenes in the movie:

“Most of the viewers are asking about my story. And I told them my story is in the movie.

Because I’m the director of the movie, so when I choose some scenes that is because some are

close to me. I can feel more in these scenes.” (Ma’an)

The personal connection is also apparent in Sahar’s reflection about her Hela Bilden project.

While conceiving the project and how she could use Carl Larsson’s painting, she exper imented

by photoshopping herself into the motif of the painting. She shares her thoughts about it:

“As an artist I started to think that I must find my place, I need to find a place to help me, to

feel that I’m a part of this country.” (Sahar)

This is referring back to the work and place of “migrant artists” in a country. By situating herself

in the painting, Sahar took agency and situated herself into Swedish society, and Swedish

history. Out of this reflection, Sahar developed her idea around the Hela Bilden project.

Furthermore, Sahar reflects on her choice to work with the topics of integration and migration

in her art practice which seems to enable her to reflect on her situation:

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“It’s maybe because it talks about my situation, my own situation. That’s why the whole time

you will find this topic (laughs) (…) so that’s why this topic of immigration and integration is

the first question in my life.” (Sahar)

All in all, it becomes apparent that the projects had an impact on the project team members. On

one side, creators without experiences with forced migration reflected on their position as

members of the “host society” as it was the case for Sara, Mylène, and Daniela. Their reflections

and what they learned from the respective projects confirm the need to address and confront

members of the “host society” in integration policies and the common understanding of

integration. On the other side, Ma’an shared that the project helped him to put his experience

in relation to the situation of other individuals and to accept his situation in Germany.

Furthermore, the projects also enabled Ma’an and Sahar to take agency by raising their voices

and get out of invisibility in the art world in Germany and Sweden, respectively.

8.1.2 With whom? - “A wide and diverse image of the society”12 (Sara)

All interviewed project team members attached importance to a diverse group of participants

in their projects, regarding their background, ages, sexual orientations, etc. This section looks

more closely at the experience of the three interviewed project participants, Badreldeen,

Mohammad, and Margareta. All interviewed participants share that they had a positive

experience in participating in the respective projects. Badreldeen, who told his story in the

Newcomers project addresses how participating was beneficial for him:

“From my participation I learned personally that I can or that one can simply share her/his

experience without fear and when one speaks openly, other people can be helped as well.”13

(Badreldeen)

Badreldeen realizes that raising his voice and sharing his story might be beneficial for others

and that he does not have to be scared to share his experience. This observation goes against

the common assumption of integration based on the assimilation theory in which people should

conform to a bigger entity and repress their own identity, experiences, and stories. On the

contrary, as Badreldeen addresses it, sharing one’s own story, when done voluntary, instead of

staying silent and conforming, is helpful for the narrator as well as for the listener. The projects

12 ein breites vielfältiges Abbild der Gesellschaft 13Von meiner Teilnahme persönlich habe ich gelernt, dass ich oder das man einfach seine Erfahrung ohne Angst erzählen kann und wenn man offen redet kann man auch anderen Menschen helfen.

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seem to have had a positive effect on all three participants. Besides, Mohammad addresses how

participation in such projects is related to integration:

“I think any project that encourages refugees or immigrants to participate or to join the

society events is a good project because it helps with integration, it helps to integrate into the

society. Because when you have to write, not have to, but when you are courageous enough to

participate in this kind of project you are already integrating, you are already dealing with

other people from other nationalities, like from Germany or other nationalities like Sudan,

Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan. So, it’s already integration. So, it’s like the first step towards

this goal.” (Mohammad)

Here Mohammad stresses that the act of participating in a project like LES is contributing to

the person's integration. In the quote, he says that integration is to deal with different

nationalities and not only the German one. When I asked Mohammad if he thinks that his

observation applies as well for participants that are not migrants he responded:

“The same because at least they are open-minded to share with other people from other

countries.” (Mohammad)

These observations emphasize the importance of such projects for project participants

regardless of their background. In the present case, it enables participants not to be scared to

share openly who they are as it was the case for Badreldeen and which questions the common

understanding of integration which is assumed to take place through assimilation. Besides,

participants try out something new which turned out to have a beneficial effect. Regarding the

wished diversity of participants, participants in these projects are getting to know the plural

society they live in.

8.1.3 For whom?

In this section, I would like to distinguish between the potential effects of the projects on a

private level, which is building on the previous subchapter, and the potential effects on a public

level and in public spaces. Indeed, the projects and the work of Alter & Ego differ in their

approach in this regard.

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8.1.3.1 The private level - “Catalyst of well-being”14 (Mylène)

As already described previously, Alter & Ego takes an art therapeutical approach for its projects

and ateliers. Accordingly, the NGO’s goal is interesting concerning its relationship with a

potential audience:

“I prefer using the word creativity instead of artistic production because it is not about

producing something beautiful. It is not about making an artwork either and even less in the

ateliers, it is not about making something that will be seen. Actually, it is for oneself. And this

is one of the important elements. So eventually it is artistic production, but it is not art as

commonly understood in the public space where a relationship with an audience is given.”15

(Mylène)

Mylène is giving a new perspective to art production, by emphasizing that the goal in her ateliers

is not to do something for an audience, that would be described as aesthetic, but to enjoy and

learn from the process of doing art and using creativity to work on and reflect on different

personal issues. What is important here is the concentration on oneself. Mylène is describing

how participants shared that they paid more attention to their well-being and took time for

themselves. In Alter & Ego’s work in ateliers, the relation with the outside and an audience is

inexistent. Interestingly, it adds to the direct societal effect of art (projects) as it emphasizes that

art can have an effect, used as a therapeutic medium, without necessarily needing an audience.

Even though the other projects in this research had an end product as a final goal (the

Newcomers film, the book from LES, and the Hela Bilden painting), it becomes clear, that the

process of participating and developing the projects had an impact on the concerned individuals

which reinforces this aspect of art that goes beyond the simple artistic production and refers to

the social impact of the arts (Reeves, 2002). The end product, however, and its reception

remains an important component for the impact of an art project and will be addressed in the

next subchapter.

14 Catalyseur de bien-être 15 Moi je préfère utiliser le mot créativité que production artistique par ce qu’en fait il ne s’agit pas de faire du beau. Il ne s’agit pas non plus de faire de l’œuvre, et encore moins dans les ateliers il ne s’agit pas de faire quelque chose qui sera vu. En fait c’est pour sois. Et ça c’est un des éléments importants. Donc ce n’est jamais,

alors finalement c’est de la production artistique mais ce n’est pas de l’art au sens qu’on l’entend dans l’espace

publique où en fait il y a la relation avec le spectateur qui est donné.

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8.1.3.2 The public level & space

During the interviews, the potential effect of the projects on an audience was an important

aspect for my informants, project team members as well as project participants. Badreldeen and

Ma’an address in this regard and according to their experiences in Germany, the need for change

in German society and the need for the “majority society” to open their eyes.

“That the German population and my friends can (learn) exactly which difficulties we

experienced to travel to Germany. And that we are humans, that we had problems in our

countries, and that we did not only come to Germany to earn money. A lot of people think in

that way, that refugees and migrants came to Europe only to earn money. That is not the

truth. And I expected (from the Newcomers project) that we would inform the people precisely

about the problems that we had and what happens exactly in our countries.”16 (Badreldeen)

“Listen to them (protagonists in the movie) and maybe you can learn something from them.

To change something in your mind, so we hope.” (Ma’an)

When talking about their expectations regarding the audience for the Newcomers project,

Badreldeen and Ma’an address the German “host population” and criticize their ignorance and

prejudices towards migrants and newcomers in Germany. Badreldeen wished to inform people

about the situation in his country to deconstruct prejudices. Ma’an emphasizes his hope for

change in the audience’s mentality through the movie. This goal of the Newcomers project and

expectation from Badreldeen and Ma’an, shifts the perspective from themselves, as Newcomers

in Germany, to the “host society” and their need to learn and integrate. Beyond this focus, the

potential audience of all projects was broad with a particular attention on a young audience, as

the Newcomers film and the LES stories have been shown and read in schools.

The Hela Bilden painting hung for a few months in the Mirum shopping mall in Norrköping

and was visible to all people passing by. Even though the painting was not exposed for a long

time, Sahar shares that she is positively surprised how since 2012 the painting stayed in people’s

minds as until today she is being contacted to do similar projects. In general, however, Sahar

focused on her reflections and encouraged the participants to reflect on it instead of

16 Die deutsche Bevölkerung, meine Freunde auch, dass sie genau (erfahren) können was wir für Schwierigkeiten gehabt haben bis nach Deutschland zu reisen. Und wir sind ja Menschen, dass wir Probleme in unsere Länder gehabt haben und nicht nur nach Deutschland, um Geld zu verdienen gekommen sind. Viele viele Menschen

denken so, dass die Geflüchtete und Migranten nach Europa nur wegen dem Geld gekommen sind, und dass ist nicht die Wahrheit. Und ich habe das so erwartet, dass wir die Leute genau informieren was wir für Probleme gehabt haben und was genau in unsere Länder passiert.

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concentrating much on an audience. This joins the approach of projects on a private level which

is mainly beneficial to project participants and to the project team members.

Regarding the reception of the LES and Newcomers projects, most informants shared the

emotional impact that the project had on the audience. According to Daniela, there was a strong

interest of the audience, that she described as mostly German speaking, to hear the stories of

the project as a lot of people attended the event organized in Osnabrück. She addresses that the

event moved the audience and that this was visible in the respective media coverage. Sara had

a similar observation concerning the reception of the Newcomers movie:

“The reviewers, being the media but also audience members were almost only people without

experience of (forced) migration and they all said that they were very touched. There was also

a review by Hendrik Broxtermann which is on the website. He had no contact until then with

people with refugee experience and he said that (the movie) deeply moved him, it practically

changed his world view. We received this kind of feedback a lot.”17 (Sara)

The movie led the audience to acknowledge and hear the stories of affected individuals, stories

which they may not have heard before. Furthermore, Sara notes that people showed more

interest and wanted to get involved through i.a. voluntary work after seeing the movie. The

movie seemed to have had a direct societal impact (Antonnen et al., 2016). Again, this shows

the need to focus on projects and integration measures not only on the newcomers but also on

the “host population” by actively incorporating them.

Badreldeen gives a supplementary account of the effect on the potential audience:

“When I hear the experiences from other participants or migrants who had to flee, it helps me

to keep calm and (to remember) that I’m not alone. Other people also made such

experiences.”18 (Badreldeen)

Badreldeen’s reflection shows how the movie is not only beneficial and of importance to people

without refugee experience as it is strongly wished by the project team members but that it also

seems beneficial for the newcomers in the country, the new members of the society.

17 Also die Rezensenten selbst so aus Medien aber auch Zuschauerinnen und Zuschauer waren fast durchweg Menschen ohne Fluchtgeschichte und die haben alle gesagt, dass es sie sehr berührt hat. Es gab auch eine Rezension von Hendrik Broxtermann die ist auf der Website. Er hatte keinen Kontakt bisher zu Menschen mit Fluchtgeschichte und er sagte es hätte ihn so tief berührt, also es hatte seine Weltsicht quasi verändert. Und wir haben echt viele solche Rückmeldungen bekommen. 18 Wenn ich andere Erfahrungen von anderen Teilnehmern oder Geflüchtete Migranten höre, dass hilft mir auch ein bisschen die Ruhe zu bewahren, und ich bin nicht allein. Andere Leute haben auch solche Erfahrungen gemacht.

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Media reviews about the projects are interesting to consider more closely concerning the

reception of the project on a broader scale and how these might spread the awareness about the

project and possibly its impact. To look further into the media coverages of the different projects

goes beyond the scope of this study but would be interesting for future studies.

8.1.3.3 The end product - “I wanted to leave my fingerprints” (Mohammad)

As already mentioned, the Newcomers, LES, and Hela Bilden produced art and finished the

project with end products. One aspect that struck the informants as positive in most projects is

the sustainability of the final products:

“Sound fades the moment I stop speaking and these traces stay.”19 (Daniela)

“We have something that won’t leave again. So, we actually have a product. A lot of projects

go to an end and then a new one begins without being much left from the former one. With

this movie we can continue working with it over the years.”20 (Sara)

Both Daniela and Sara are stressing that the projects resulted in a product – art production, film,

and book – that is not fading away and that can be reused. To reinforce that aspect of the project,

Daniela will try to get the book into the Osnabrück city archive. She is describing the book as

a political artwork (“politisches Kunstwerk”) and wants it to remain present in the city.

Similarly, Ma’an and Sara have as a future goal for the Newcomers project to upload full

interviews of the project in an online archive which will be accessible to everyone. Ma’an’s

idea behind the archive is the following:

“Maybe after 400 years, 500 years comes someone like me as a refugee and he is searching

on the internet for stories. He will find our stories 400 years before and he can learn

something that we are not learning from our history.” (Ma’an)

Ma’an is emphasizing the potential long-term effect of the project which will teach future

generations. The goal through the Osnabrück city archive and the online archive is therefore to

leave a trace in society for a lasting effect. Mohammad has a similar approach as he reflects on

his participation in the LES project:

19 Klang vergeht, in dem Moment wo ich aufhöre zu sprechen, und diese Spuren bleiben 20 Man hat etwas, dass nicht wieder weggeht. Also man hat tatsächlich ein Produkt. Bei vielen Projekten ist es so, dass die dann zu Ende gehen, und dann fängt das Neue an und es bleibt nicht so viel. Mit diesem Film da können wir noch über Jahre weiterarbeiten

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“I felt like I left a fingerprint in this project or this city. Hopefully, it will make a change. If it

didn’t, at least you’ll know you did your part in it.” (Mohammad)

Similarly, to Badreldeen’s and Ma’an’s wish regarding the effect of the Newcomers project,

Mohammad is expressing his hope for change in Osnabrück and German society. This emphasis

on change expressed by my informants is showing the actual need for change in western

European societies. For both the project participants and the project team members, the

potential indirect societal impact, as described by Anttonen et al. (2016), of the project seems

to be of importance.

This section assumes the importance of analyzing art projects in their totality and not only as

isolated artifacts because the projects affected the people involved in them. Indeed, all projects

and Alter & Ego’s work had a direct societal impact (Anttonen et al., 2016) as it affected its

participants, the project team members, and a potential audience by inducing reflections and

deconstructing common assumptions. An indirect societal impact on the general environment

where the project took place (Anttonen et al., 2016) was especially hoped by the LES and

Newcomers project, as stated by both participants and project team members. This

multidimensional impact of the art projects stresses the force and potential of art and art

projects, provided they have been developed and executed respectfully by avoiding unequal

power relations between the people involved in the project. The above-mentioned reflections

about the effect of the project will be deepened further in the next sections by taking closer

focuses on topics that emerged from the interviews and appeared relevant for my research

questions.

This observation is also an important contribution to the notion of integration as it indicates that

integration should not concern one particular group only. Instead, as the analysis showed,

integration (in a plural society) took place through the projects for the project team members,

project participants as well as some audience members regardless of their background. Hence,

integration is fluid and addressing everyone in a society which is contradicting the “integration

in a society” approach and classic assimilation theories which are using a one-sided focus on

migrants. This observation joins the conceptualization of postmigrant integration which

questions the assimilative understanding of integration (Moslund & Petersen, 2019) and the

postmigrant perspective which concentrates on the plural society by taking down binary

categories such as “native” and “migrant” (Foroutan, 2019). However, most of my informants

also stressed the need to directly address the “host population” through their projects and their

hope for change. This observation might raise the question if it can be looked beyond migrants

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and natives in a plural society just yet as there is a pressing need to address and confront people

without experience of forced migration and members of the “majority society” in integration

policies and projects. This seems essential for the advancement of western European societies.

8.2 Going beyond monolingualism

In all three projects language played a central role both in the work process itself and in the

execution of the final artifact. Two topics became especially apparent in the interviews, the

language diversity within the projects, and the idea of art itself as a nonverbal language.

8.2.1 Language diversity

The project team members of all three projects desired to have a diverse group of participants

and, accordingly, wanted to recruit as many people as possible for their projects. This began

already when spreading the word about the projects. Several languages were used in the

information about it, particularly so in the Hela Bilden project:

“I made the information about this project in Swedish and in 15 different languages. Yes,

because I need people who don’t speak Swedish to understand what they will do.” (Sahar)

The language diversity stayed present in the end products of the Newcomers film project and

LES which respected the participant's language choice and were beneficial for the audience.

Indeed, in the Newcomers film, participants talked in the language of their own choice,

including sign language, and subtitles in German and English were available for the audience.

Through this strategy, the stories of the participants were not altered by imposing a language

on them. Similarly, in LES, the participants could write their stories and poems in any language

they chose. Some of the produced work was then translated in English, German, and Rumanian,

and Daniela plans for further translations. Regarding the creation and exhibition of the end

products of her project, Daniela reflected on her work with the stories and poems in different

languages and on the incorporation of their translations:

“Early on I chose the postcard version. On the front side of these postcards, we see the

original text and only when the postcard is being turned around, we can see the translation.

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So that also here we show, to understand is tiring. You have to do something for it.”21

(Daniela)

“I printed big truck tarpaulins on which one could see huge Arabic or Hindi letters and only

very small – in German we say it so beautifully between the lines -, the German translation.

This means that from a distance you saw something that you cannot understand. Therefore,

an irritation occurred as it usually happens when I don’t understand something. And I wanted

to provoke a movement in space. I must come closer, to try to approach someone and to read

between the lines to try to understand.”22 (Daniela)

In both quotes, Daniela is referring to the end products being the postcards and the truck

tarpaulin of the poems project which contributed to LES. In these products, Daniela puts the

focus mainly on the original language by placing it in the foreground and bigger writing. By

doing so, she directly targets the audience that is not familiar with the language. She does not

want to give the same importance to the translation and does not wish to make it easier for the

audience to understand. On the contrary, she invites them to overcome their first negative

associations to a foreign language. By challenging the audience in this way, it might deconstruct

potential prejudices that could come up when seeing and hearing a foreign language to which a

person is not used. In that sense, she plays with the language diversity to pass a message and

actively involve individuals that might be used to an exclusive German language in Germany.

In this regard, the multilingual aspect of the project had an emotional impact both on the

participants and the audience, as Daniela shares:

“Hassan read his texts in Arabic in front of 100 pupils. (…) Hassan was completely mentally

exhausted because he told me afterward that a boy from the school with refugee experience

came to him and said: ‘You talk like me’. And then the little one cried and Hassan cried as

well.”23 (Daniela)

21 Ich habe mich früh für die Postkarten Variante entschieden. Auf der Vorderseite sieht man auf diesen Postkarten nur den Original Text und erst wenn man die Postkarte umdreht gibt es auch die Übersetzung. Also

dass auch hier abgebildet wird, verstehen macht müde, also du musst etwas tun. 22 Ich habe (…) große LKW Planen gedruckt auf denen man riesige Arabische oder Hindi Buchstaben gesehen hat, und nur ganz klein – man sagt das so schön im Deutschen, zwischen den Zeilen –, die deutsche Übersetzung. Das heißt also aus der Ferne hast du nur etwas gesehen was du nicht verstanden hast. Also es entstand diese Irritation wie überall, wenn ich etwas nicht verstehe. Und ich wollte eine Bewegung im Raum provozieren. Ic h muss näher herantreten, versuchen mich jemanden anzunähern und zwischen den Zeilen versuchen zu verstehen. 23 Hassan (hat) auf Arabisch seine Texte vor 100 Schüler und Schülerinnen gelesen (…) Hassan war völlig am Ende mit den Nerven denn er hat mir danach erzählt, ein Geflüchteter Junge an der Schule ist zu ihm gekommen und der hat gesagt: „Sie sprechen ja wie ich“. Ja, und da hat der kleine geweint und Hassan hat auch geweint.

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This encounter between Hassan and the pupil happened at an organized reading session at a

school during which some of the stories and the poems of the projects have been read. This

moment shows the emotional aspect of language and the importance of multilingualism in a

country for the wellbeing of its citizens. The importance of language diversity is reinforced by

Daniela’s observation that people were searching for their languages and dialects in the

postcards and letting her know in case it was not present.

This section shows the importance of the use of a diversity of languages, both to involve more

people and to make room for different languages in public space. In this way, the projects

counteracted the monolingualism of Sweden and Germany, which informs the integration

policies that I described in the contextual background chapter. Indeed, it is expected from

migrants to learn the official national language to integrate, implying that this language is the

only language present in the respective country. All three projects clearly show the importance

of acknowledging and giving space for the other languages present in the countries. The projects

give a new perspective on this monolingual understanding of societies by engaging the

audience, especially non-migrants, to get out of their comfort zone by getting to know and

getting used to languages different from their official national language. Going beyond

monolingualism is in that regard important for the integration as a society.

8.2.2 Art does not need a common language - the “art language” (Sahar)

Language is commonly understood as a verbal communication method. In contrast to the

previous subchapter which emphasizes the importance of multilingualism in art projects, the

Hela Bilden art project and especially Alter & Ego’s work emphasizes art as a nonverbal

communication method in its own right:

“One day came a man who was maybe 60 years old and he doesn’t speak Arabic or Swedish,

he is Kurd. So, we couldn’t speak. But he read the (project) information in Kurdish and he

came without speaking with me. He started to look after his part he chose something and

started to paint. Without any word, he understood what it’s about. So, it was very beautiful for

me, it’s not important to speak the same language with this art language in this way.” (Sahar)

Sahar is describing how there is not necessarily a need for a common language to come together

and communicate. In this regard, art seems to be a medium of communication and expression

that transgresses the verbal, as the man was able to participate and express himself artistically.

However, it also shows how important her advertisement in different languages was, as the man

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probably would have been less likely to hear about the project otherwise. The nonverbal power

of art is also actively used in Mylène’s work:

“When we work with people that cannot share the same language, we must find something, a

communication method which is superior to words. In this sense nonverbal. (…) The

nonverbal and in particular art can be a communication method, it’s a mediator to

communicate, which surpasses the hurdle and problematic of languages.”24 (Mylène)

Mylène consciously chose to work with art, creativity, and imagination not just for its

therapeutic purpose, but to bridge the limitation of verbal communication when working with

groups of people who do not share the same language. Mylène and Sahar are giving a new

dimension to language and the power of art which goes beyond the verbal and can transfer an

international message. This shows the importance of art in the sense that it enables a new

communication method.

8.3 Deconstruction of the national culture

Similarities and differences between individuals in a society have mostly been addressed and

negotiated in the Hela Bilden and Newcomers projects. The following subchapters will focus

on that thematic and the impacts of these projects on the national culture and identity of a

country.

8.3.1 The whole picture of the society - Hela Bilden

The project Hela Bilden stands in Swedish for “the whole picture”. The participants of the

project knew that they are painting a well-known piece of art and they could choose which part

they wanted to paint.

“But I didn’t say who the artist is or which artwork it is. You must yourself guess it. I ask

people to understand through this very short or little part: ‘can you understand what the

whole picture is about through this very little part?’” (Sahar)

This question refers to their painting but could also be understood in a figurative sense as Sahar

asked them to reflect on how much information they need before being able to know and

24 Quand on travaille avec des personnes qui ne peuvent pas partager la même langue il faut trouver quelque

chose, un moyen de communication, qui est supérieur aux mots, et donc, dans ce sens-là en fait, le non verbal. (…) Le non verbal et notamment l’art peux être un moyen de communication en fait, c’est un médiateur pour communiquer, qui dépasse le frein et la problématique des langues.

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understand a situation, such as the Syrian situation as she refers to in her interview. I will come

back to this part of the project in a few paragraphs. According to Sahar, 600 persons participated

in the project, which was much more than she expected. In the final product of the project

(Figure 5) the individually painted canvases have been joined to represent Carl Larsson’s

painting. Sahar described the end product as followed:

“It shows how different we are, and the result is beautiful. We can be different; we don’t need

to be exactly like each other. But the result shows that it’s beautiful to be different. (…) This

was the idea behind this project. That is the whole picture or Hela Bilden, if you cannot see

the whole picture maybe you can imagine how beautiful it can be if we are together if we are

different people.” (Sahar)

In her work, Sahar is actively taking apart the “imagined (national) community” that Hall (1992,

p.293) is addressing in his work and represents visually how societies are not composed of a

unified national culture and identity in which all the people are the same and share the same

values and traditions. Indeed, as the painting shows, society is not homogeneous and the people

from this society differ from each other. “Modern nations are all cultural hybrids” as Hall (1992,

p.297) stated. Nevertheless, as Sahar states, the results of this whole picture, this society

composed of difference, is beautiful and enriching. This observation critically questions current

Swedish and German integration policies presented in the contextual background chapter which

emphasizes teaching national cultural values, such as “German values” as parts of the

integration classes. In this regard, the deconstruction of the Swedish national culture through

the chosen painting is even more apparent when considering that Carl Larsson is a well-known

national painter as Sahar explained:

“The goal behind this was that if he (Carl Larsson) presents himself as only Swedish, so we

can with all these people who came from different countries, who are different, make this

artwork which is Swedish (laughs), only Swedish.” (Sahar)

Coming back to the participants of the project, their reflection upon the whole picture while

participating is taking a new turn as it invites and challenges the participant to reflect on their

understanding of the Swedish society. It also addresses open-mindedness and the fact that more

pieces, more information, and more encounters are needed to understand the whole picture.

Margareta who participated in the project shared the approach that she had while participating:

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“I guess I could have done more a reproduction, but it was not my interest for the square to

be that precise and not my interpretation of Sahar’s idea. In that way, I had the power to

make my own. (…) I did not try to make Carl Larsson, I made Margareta.” (Margareta)

Margareta is adding an interesting point to the project, which is that through her canvas in the

painting, she was present as a person with her own identity in the whole picture. She did not

want to reproduce but to be herself. This indirectly comes back to the deconstruction of the

national identity which is understood as unified and therefore also covers individual differences

and individual identities. Margareta enjoyed seeing her own work in the whole picture which

also emphasizes the importance to acknowledge and represent individuals with their own

identities. These observations confirm once more that the project had an impact on the

participants as well as on the audience who saw the final painting.

8.3.2 From national to human identity - “It’s just a part of our story” (Ma’an)

In all interviews, the reflection and conclusion about our common feature as human beings

came up. This approach was also a conscious message of the Newcomers project:

“From the beginning, I told the team that we don’t want to make a documentary film

about refugees as refugees. We want to make a documentary film about refugees but as

human beings. They are normal people with normal stories, they want to tell something

that they have experienced. Suddenly they had a bad accident, which forced them to come

to this country. Stop.” (Ma’an)

Both Ma’an and Sara emphasize in their interview the approach of the film project to portray

the experiences of human beings instead of explicitly concentrating on refugees. By doing so,

the focus is set on our feature as human beings instead of strengthening dividing categorizations

such as “refugee” and “local” and thus reinforcing differences. Ma’an’s insistence on the

normality of the individuals that share their story in the movie tackles the processes of othering

taking place in societies. Ma’an actively incorporates this approach of the project in the way he

directed and conceived the movie:

“We wanted to tell our story from the beginning until the end. So that is what we tried to

do in the movie. We have 8 parts in the film, the first part speaking about childhood (…)

and only in the fifth part they are speaking about the situation in the war in the revolution

and in that time. Just one part speaking as refugees. (…) I tried to build it just like my

story as a normal person, a story from childhood until our future.” (Ma’an)

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Therefore, even though the movie thematizes newcomers in Germany and their refugee

experience, a more complete story of the individual is being portrayed by addressing the persons

childhood, adolescence until her/his plans for the future. As addressed previously, Ma’an is

hoping that the movie would have the following effect on the audience:

“We want to change something in the people mentally and the audience mentally. That

when you ask someone about his story, just ask him about the entire story not just a part

of his story. (…) Just please look at us as a human being, as normal people, not as

refugees, poor people that just need help.” (Ma’an)

Here Ma’an is once more emphasizing his wish that people do not take a one-sided and

objectifying view and interest in a person due to her/his status as a refugee without looking

beyond that experience the person had. He is furthermore addressing, stereotypes and prejudices

that come up towards newcomers in Germany that he wants to overcome, partly also through

the movie. His own fight for agency, the agency of the portrayed individuals in the movie, and

all newcomers in Germany is becoming clear.

This approach of the Newcomers movie to focus on the stories of human beings enables also to

look beyond the common focus on different national identities. This might be the reason why

the project team members took the following decision:

“It was a conscious decision that no country is being mentioned in the entire movie. Only the

name and the city in which the person is currently living is blended in. Therefore, one does

not know where the person comes from and that was our conscious decision as we said that it

does not really matter. Because the person is a human being, being now here and lives for

example in Cologne. (…) Interestingly, after several projections people asked: ‘where did

they actually come from?’”25 (Sara)

The focus is on the person instead of being on a certain country which might be associated

automatically with a national culture and accordingly a certain national identity. Interestingly,

the audience of the Newcomers movie noticed that aspect of the movie which shows once again

that the movie affected its viewers, incited interest, and reflections.

25Es war uns auch eine bewusste Entscheidung, dass im ganzen Film kein einziges Land genannt wird. Also man sieht immer nur der Name und die Stadt in der, die Person aktuell lebt. Das heißt man weiß nicht wo kommt diese Person her und dass war schon die bewusste Entscheidung, dass wir gesagt haben es spielt eigentlich

überhaupt keine Rolle. Denn die Person ist ein Mensch, ist jetzt hier und wohnt meinetwegen in Köln (…). Spannend, natürlich haben auch bei vielen Vorführungen Menschen später gefragt: ‘wo kamen die denn eigentlich her?‘

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Mylène describes a similar approach in her work in Alter & Ego:

“We don’t meet cultures in the streets. So, we say intercultural but it’s clearly interpersonal .

But if we would say interpersonal it wouldn’t work. Most people are convinced that we meet

cultures, especially in Luxembourg we wear these glasses (…) and we stigmatize and

crystallize around it. Therefore, identity is something complex, it’s clearly identities that meet

each other and so (we want) to make these individuals meet around creativity.”26 (Mylène)

Mylène observes that in Luxembourg people are being essentialized according to their

nationality and associated culture, that people often see the culture before seeing the person.

Through the medium of creativity, she wants to promote interpersonal communication.

All in all, the Newcomers project and Alter & Ego’s work do not concentrate on a specific

category, for example a legal status or nationality, but on the person, the human being. By doing

so, the projects aim at deconstructing othering behaviors, objectifying associations and

prejudices that usually come up when hearing the word “refugee” or certain nationalities. These

negative associations are still present nowadays in Western societies and originate partly from,

as addressed by Hall (1992), national cultures being constructed as unified by suppressing and

devaluating the perceived “other”. Instead, the projects put the focus beyond the national origin

of a person so that people get to know each other as human beings. This approach joins the

approach of the postmigrant theater to look beyond the origin of an individual in society

(Langhoff, 2011). It also joins the postmigrant perspective that seeks to overcome binary

categorizations of “migrant” and “native”.

At this point, it is important to underline that one should not omit that even though we are all

human beings, some of us have more privileges due to one’s nationality and/or skin color and

are therefore more discriminated against and persecuted than others. Even though the projects

take a personal approach and aim at counteracting othering and prejudices towards the “other”,

the system that reinforces these prejudices and discriminations should be addressed as well.

This observation joins Mouffe’s claim (2007) that social transformations cannot take place only

through critical artistic practices without traditional politics to be involved.

26 On ne rencontre pas des cultures dans la rue. Donc on dit interculturel mais c’est bien, de l’interpersonnel. Mais si on dit interpersonnel ça ne marcherai pas. La plupart des gens sont convaincu qu’on rencontre des

cultures, surtout au Luxembourg, on a ces lunettes-là (…) et on stigmatise et on cristallise autour de ça. Et donc l’identité c’est quelque chose de complexe, ce sont bien des identités qui se rencontrent et donc faire rencontrer ces personnes autour de la créativité.

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8.3.3 Strengthening of a common history

Ma’an and Sara are aware of the negative associations with the word “refugee” in Germany and

shared their reflections around the title Newcomers that was chosen for the project. It refers to

the work of Hannah Arendt, a political philosopher who had to flee Nazi Germany:

“In this article, she (Hannah Arendt) said: ‘in USA we are not refugees anymore, we are

Newcomers’. In the beginning, it’s a new culture and a new language but five, six, ten

years later we are no refugees anymore, we are newcomers. So, we used this title from the

German history.” (Ma’an)

Arendt’s approach addresses the impermanence of the refugee status as once a person settled in

a country; this person should not be seen as a refugee anymore. Furthermore, Ma’an is

addressing the connection to the German history in the Newcomers project which is made

visible through the chosen title but also the project participants:

“From the beginning, we search for German people that have experience with ‘Flucht’

(flight) as refugees. So, the main thing is, we want to put our story as refugees in the

German history. We are a part of your history. We are not anything new.” (Ma’an)

The project explicitly wanted to include the “majority population” in the project by searching

for individuals that experienced forced migration. The project, therefore, searched for

individuals with refugee experience while actively fighting the current association that the

German population might not be concerned. By doing so, the project is reminding Germany its

history in which, as Ma’an says, German refugees and refugees in Germany is not something

new. Furthermore, Ma’an is adding that refugees in Germany are part of the German history

and not a separate phenomenon. The projects approach tackles othering mechanisms towards

refugees that take place in Germany and it challenges the current understanding of the German

national culture as it actively adds the story from the “other”, the refugee, in the German history.

This aspect in the project did not go unnoticed by the audience as the following feedback from

an audience member shows:

“We have two German people in the film, he (an audience member) told me: ‘I don’t

believe them’. He was disappointed because I used the German stories with the refugee’s

stories. He told me that it’s a different situation in a different time. So, you shouldn’t be

allowed to use these stories with current refugee’s stories. Because it happened years ago

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because of the second world war, and the situation now is not like before. I disagree but

he just told me: ‘I don’t believe this woman.’” (Ma’an)

For the audience member, it seemed impossible to combine the experiences from individuals

that he perceived as fitting to his categorization of “the other”, of the refugee, with experiences

from individuals that he perceived as members of his population. His reaction is proving how

present othering mechanisms are and the difficulty for individuals, who are actively employing

them, to accept new narratives. Nevertheless, the movie and the discussion this person had with

Ma’an led to first reflections and a confrontation with a new narrative of Germany. This is

confirming once more the need to address the “host population” in integration measures, as the

project Newcomers does. Indeed, the integration of the “majority population” in a new

understanding of the society, a new understanding of the national culture, should be taken into

consideration as well.

Not only the Newcomers project is addressing a historical component, Mohammad who

participated in the project LES shared a similar thought regarding the impact of the project:

“I only suspected that one day this book will be read from the new generations. Because

it’s supposed to be in the city archive, and they will think: ‘Once before there were those

immigrants ((used quotation signs while talking)) and now they are a part of the city.’ (…)

The project is the best way to tell the city (Osnabrück) about the city in the future, about

its story and its history.” (Mohammad)

Mohammad is addressing his hope that the book will contribute to the creation of a common

history of the city Osnabrück in which foreigners are seen as integral part of the city. Here

Mohammad is also addressing the hoped sustainable impact of the project which I addressed

previously. The book’s title “we write (hi)stories” (Figure 3) points on its work on Germany's

history.

This section observes that some projects such as Hela Bilden concentrate more on the

differences between people in society whereas other projects such as Newcomers and Alter &

Ego focus on the similarities as human beings between individuals. Both approaches are

important to address. The former one deconstructs the unifying and homogeneous features of a

nation in which foreigners must integrate according to assimilation theories. It gives as a

message that this homogeneous “host society” and national culture does not exist and that

everyone has different identities which makes the society diverse and beautiful. The latter one,

on the other hand, counteract othering mechanisms by looking beyond the ascribed national

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identity and origin of a person, which is being reinforced by current integration policies, and

by focusing on the person as a human being with different experiences. However, despite the

focus on human identity instead of the national identity, the Newcomers project purposefully

also searched for German participants with refugee experience. This is because the project team

members want to show how migration is not a new and exceptional phenomenon in Germanys’

(and Europe’s) history but an integral part of it, which joins the postmigrant approach. In that

case, drawing back on national identities seemed inevitable.

8.4 Sharing in a safe space

Both Ma’an and Sara from the Newcomers project and Daniela from LES project, emphasized

the importance and benefits of sharing one’s story, which is also the main component of their

projects. In their interviews, they reflect on the fact that everyone has the need to tell their story.

Ma’an is referring to his experience when talking about how this contributes to one owns

integration

“I think the most important step to integrate in this society is to tell our story.” (Ma’an)

Ma’an explained that after his arrival in Germany he was able to really begin living in

Osnabrück after sharing his story to friends. He said that participants in the Newcomers project

had a similar observation, that they felt relieved after having told their story for the project. He

also stressed that beyond this it enables people to learn from each other by actively listening to

each other which is something that Daniela addressed several times as well. Being aware of that

need to talk and to share, the Newcomers project, the ateliers of Alter & Ego and the LES

project aimed at providing a space for this purpose. All project team members of these projects

emphasized the importance to provide trust and security so that the people using the space felt

comfortable. Daniela described the idea behind the creation of such space a little further:

“The goal was to bring refugees, migrants, and international people together with locals

which can be third generation descendants from guest worker families or German natives.

That they meet in a space that I create, but I’m not creating it alone of course.”27 (Daniela)

27 Hier war das Ziel, Geflüchtete, Immigrierte und Internationale Menschen zusammen zu bringen mit „locals“

das können auch Menschen sein, die in dritter Generation von Gastarbeiterfamilien stammen oder Deutsche Einheimische. Dass sie sich also begegnen in einem Raum, den ich schaffe, aber ich schaffe ihn natürlich nicht allein.

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Daniela describes the projects creation of a space to share and tell a story but also as a space to

meet different people. She explains that she hopes that this space enables an encounter that

could also lead to the acceptance of differences and disagreements. This aspect reminds of the

above-mentioned analysis to focus not only on similarities between individuals but also on

differences and to be able to tolerate these. She is also sharing the observation that through the

fact that people meet, she could see how resentments and fear lessens.

The fact of “meeting each other” that takes place through such projects was repeated several

times by my informants. Both project team members and project participants from all projects

shared how through the projects they met new people and friendships were created. In this

regard, Ma’an and Sara stressed in their interviews that they gave as a message to the audience

to not ask strangers about their stories but to first meet each other, get to know each other and

being able to share each other’s stories as acquaintances or friends. Mylène is adding another

perspective to the importance of meeting each other, which also explains the name Alter & Ego

of the NGO she manages, being the learning effect for oneself and to get to know yourself:

“What is the encounter with the other? I give them (the participants) a moment to focus on

themselves and to realize that when we meet someone else it is about the other, but it is also

about me, it is maybe mainly about me. And thus, I need to understand the areas where I am

sensitive, I need to also understand the glasses that I’m wearing, the baggage that I’m

wearing on the other.”28 (Mylène)

These observations add to the value of Mouffe’s description of critical art. Indeed, through the

created spaces of the projects and created end products, the projects lead people to meet and

give a voice to individuals that have not been heard in the current debates. The voice is given

through artistic practices which, as already analyzed in the second analysis section can take

place nonverbally as well. However, the projects, as can especially be seen for the Hela

Bilden and LES project, emphasis on giving a voice to everyone by stressing that everyone

has the need to be heard. These projects go beyond categorizations and seek at addressing all

individuals and acknowledge a plural society which joins the approach of the postmigrant

perspective.

28Qu’est-ce la rencontre de l’autre ? Je leurs (les participants) offre un moment surtout pour se centrer sur eux et

pour se rendre compte qu’en fait quand on est dans la rencontre avec l’autre il s’agit de l’autre mais il s’agit de moi aussi et il s’agit peut-être avant tout de moi. Et donc que j’ai besoin de comprendre mes zones sensibles, j’ai besoin de comprendre aussi les lunettes que je porte, le bagage que je porte sur l’autre.

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On that regard, Sara and Ma’an shared the feedback from one participant of the Newcomers

project who was disappointed about the scenes that have been chosen from his interview and

that he wished that his situation and the situation of his country of origin was portrayed more

in the movie. This feedback is emphasizing the importance of wanting to speak but also being

heard, that people are listening to the stories. Mohammad is confirming this aspect of wanting

to share with other people when reflecting on his participation at the LES project:

“The whole project had kind of a good impact on me. Because at that time I could share my

thoughts, not only just my thoughts, it’s like my thoughts are now with other people. It’s our

thought, if they agree with me of course.” (Mohammad)

Therefore, it becomes clear that of importance is not only to tell one one’s story but to be able

to share the story which is being heard by other individuals. Integration policies should

emphasize and invest more on projects that bring people together so that they can meet and so

that exchange can take place in a respectful environment in which people are able to share

voluntarily with each other. Considering the feedback of one Newcomers participant, it is

reminding the importance of the agency of individuals that are sharing their story. Indeed,

through the project, this participant gained agency and could share his story. However, through

the chosen scenes in the movie, his agency diminished, and he had wished that his story and the

story of his country of origin would appear more in the movie. This is a difficult decision to be

taken by the movie director but this reflection between “giving a voice” and “agency” is an

important one. One option in that regard could be to adopt a collaborative and participatory

approach in art projects, in which participants have more to say regarding the end product of a

project.

8.5 Art as a (forced) tool for integration

In the second part of all interviews, I addressed the topic of integration and asked my informants

about their understanding of integration and how they would say their project and art projects

in general have a place in the current integration debate. In this part of the interviews, the

informant’s background and personal experience with the topic of integration became apparent

in their answers as I addressed in the methodological background chapter. Most informants

stress on the importance of the projects they were involved and of art projects in general

regarding the topic of integration in a society:

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“I know a lot of people, a lot of artists doing art in this country and they are doing a lot of

amazing projects to tell stories. And that’s very important, that’s the first step to integrate in

this society. So, the society understands the other culture. Until now many people ask me

about Syria: ‘Do you have cars in Syria?’. You cannot imagine, how people after the Syrian

crisis, after 6 years we have 1 million Syrians in this country and until now we have German

people asking us if we have cars.” (Ma’an)

As already addressed previously, Ma’an is calling out on the ignorance of the German “host

population” and the need of art projects to create change and to confront them. Here Ma’an is

addressing the integration of the “host society” which stresses that everyone in the society is

involved. Daniela is furthermore talking about the power of art to generate change:

“I think that art is symbolic acting and amongst others, it has the power to refer and it also

has destructive power. That concepts are being destroyed symbolically.”29 (Daniela)

Indeed, Daniela describes art as a way of acting, which comes back to the political component

of art and which reminds of Mouffe’s argument concerning the political aspect of artistic

practices. Daniela is describing how by taking action through art, assumptions and concepts can

be deconstructed and fear and hatred can be overcome. Sara reflected further on the emotional

component of art as a reason behind its beneficial effect and as an alternative tool to deliver a

message and create change:

“I think that art can be a tool which can transport messages which touches more on an

emotional level than on a factual level. And I think that emotions have a stronger effect

regarding a change in awareness.”30 (Sara)

Building on this, Sahar stressed several times in her interview how beneficial art is for herself

and how important the presence of art is in a society also in relation to integration:

“I think it’s very important to find people who are interested to meet, that have ideas to make

projects, to make art projects with music and with other methods. It’s very important to work

more and more with integration.” (Sahar)

29 Ich denke, dass Kunst symbolisches Handeln ist und dass hat unter anderem auch Verweiskraft, es hat auch Zerstörungskraft. Also das Konzepte symbolisch zerstört werden. 30 Ich glaube, dass Kunst ein Mittel sein kann, dass Botschaften transportieren kann, die einen insbesondere auf emotionaler Ebene stärker ansprechen als auf einer Sachebene. Und ich glaube, dass Emotionen stärker wirken, wenn es um einen Bewusstseinswandel geht, oder gehen soll.

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Lastly, Mylène is addressing how through her work with art and creativity it reinforced her

belief in the beneficial effects of art practices:

“I think that it reinforced the value of creativity. Of the importance of creativity .” 31 (Mylène)

All in all, the importance of art practices in a society, amongst others regarding the topic of

integration, is clearly being stated by most of my informants. Furthermore, the analyzed impact

of the present art projects confirms the beneficial aspect of art and creativity for the individuals

involved in the projects as well as the potential audience, the direct and indirect societal effect

of the projects. Margareta’s reflection upon her participation in the Hela Bilden project is a

good additional example of the beneficial impact the project had on her and on her

understanding of integration. Indeed, Margareta describes her own integration in the

Norrköping art society, as she calls it, through the project:

“It hadn’t come to my mind before that it was kind of integration for me to. (…) I think it

wouldn’t have come to my mind that my way in (the Norrköping art society) could come

through people who had only been citizens in Norrköping for seven years or I don’t remember

really, but I’m born here (…) and I had the chance to benefit from Sahar’s project.”

(Margareta)

Margareta’s reflection shows the change of perspective that she as Swedish born citizen was

helped by Sahar who is not a Swedish born citizen to integrate in the Norrköping art society.

Her wonder about this situation shows how deeply the integration discourse is engrained in its

one-sided position of migrants needing the help of non-migrants and members of the “host

society” to integrate. Margareta’s reflection is a beautiful example on how the Hela Bilden

project contributed to a new understanding of integration.

8.5.1 Integration forced in the arts - “A fashion trend”32 (Mylène)

Paradoxically, even though most of my informants emphasized the importance of art

concerning the topic of integration, most of them also shared their discomfort with the term and

the complexity of what it entails. Mylène shared that she rarely uses the term integration in her

work and prefers other words such as “living together or personal and collective well-being”33.

These reflections confirm the current rejection of the term as the dis-integration movement

proposes (Czollek, 2018) as well as the discussion to replace it due to its problematic

31 Je pense que ça a renforcé la valeur de la créativité. De l’importance de la créativité. 32 Un effet de mode 33 Vivre ensemble ou bien être personnel et collectif

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associations. It also reinforces the need for change in the understanding and implementation of

integration, the need to reframe the term.

Regarding integration and art projects, another aspect has been addressed by some informants:

the current trend to incorporate the term in projects. Margareta is sharing her thoughts on that

regard:

“The economy for artists in Sweden is depending on creating projects. If you want to get

money for a project it should contain integration, migration, women, and children. So it’s

kind of modern, it’s what you should do. You should do art that has a connection to

integration. In that way you kind of force art projects into being something that you can get

funds for and I’m not a fan of having to force a thing into a form just to get the fund. So that’s

why I’m a bit skeptical.” (Margareta)

Margareta is raising two points which is firstly confirming how the term integration became a

political buzzword, as it has already been addressed in the current understanding of integration

chapter. It becomes clear that the term is being instrumentalized to appear as a topic in projects

without further reflecting on it. Secondly, Margareta raises the precarity of artists and art

projects as they rely on funding. In that regard, she describes how the topic of integration

became a trend and is forced into projects in exchange of funding so that the project can take

place. This also illustrates the influence of the state in the art production in Western Europe as

addressed by Becker (2008).

Sahar shares a discussion that she had with a fellow artist concerning this matter and which

adds a supplementary aspect regarding the artist’s background:

“He said ‘why we, artists, who came from another country, why must we the whole time,

make art, create artwork about integration about migration?’ He asked me ‘if we are not in

Sweden or in Germany, if we are still in Syria, will we work about this?’” (Sahar)

This conversation is addressing expectations that artists with “migration background” might be

confronted with. It is raising the question if concerned artists feel the need to address these

topics in their work to raise their voice in the society they live in or if due to their background,

these topics are being forced upon them and their work is being reduced to these topics. This

discussion is joining the debate around the categorization of artists according to their

background (Bromley, 2017). However, as addressed previously, Sahar shared in her interview

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how dealing with these topics in her work seems essential for her as it enables her to reflect on

her situation.

All in all, this section as well as all previous sections highlight the important contribution of art

and art projects in a society, that should be acknowledged more by (state) institutions. By

focusing on the notion of integration, the analysis demonstrates the significant contribution of

the projects to new perspectives and narratives, which challenge common understandings of

migration and integration. Even though the projects use different artistic approaches, have

different goals and emphasis, they also complement each other, which stresses the wide-ranging

effects and different dimensions of art. In the following and final chapter, I will sum up the

findings of my analysis by referring back to my research questions.

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9. Conclusion

The aim of my thesis has been to contribute to the reframing of the term integration by taking

a postmigrant approach. In the following, the results will be summarized and discussed to the

predefined research questions. Moreover, the implications for future research will be outlined.

I first (RQ1) positioned the concept theoretically in the current German and Scandinavian

postmigrant debates. Both Foroutan (2019) and Schramm et al. (2019) described postmigrant

integration as challenging and redefining the common understanding of integration, by rejecting

its association with assimilation. Foroutan takes a political approach by decoupling postmigrant

integration from migration and describing it as a political task of the state which should enable

equal access to everyone. This joins the “integration as society” approach. Contrastingly,

Schramm et al. (2019) take less of a political perspective and emphasize instead on the fluidity

and plurality of the concept.

My second research question (RQ2) was exploring how the art projects Newcomers, Leben

Erzählen Schreiben, and Hela Bilden as well as the work of Alter & Ego contribute to a new

understanding of integration in European societies. My interviews with the project team

members and participants of the projects provided a rich and broad account on the creation,

realization, and reception of the projects. For this study, I mainly concentrated on aspects that

are in relation to the topic of integration, but I wish to accentuate that the projects should not

be reduced to this thematic. In the analysis of the data, different dimensions of integration

emerged. It became clear that the projects had a direct societal impact on the people involved,

as they incited reflections and change in behavior for the interviewed project team members

and participants and, according to them, for the audience as well. The projects deal with, as

well as depict the current state of the respective countries and ultimately European societies.

They give voices (to), faces and depictions of the social realities of the plural societies in which

we live. Regardless of their background, people involved in the projects seemingly were

encouraged to reflect upon and integrate into the plural society. Hence, the projects

concentrated on societal diversity and not on a particular group. This teaches us that integration

addresses everyone in society and as society is permanently transforming, integration will

remain open-ended. This finding reminds of the “integration as a society” approach with its

focus on the “whole society” which corresponds to Bommes (2007) description that everyone

is involved. In that approach, the focus however lies on the society itself and how equal access

in its areas is provided. The analyzed projects, by contrast, take a personal approach by focusing

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on the individuals and their understanding of, and reflection on the society they live in. Indeed,

the actual system and migration regime of the respective countries is barely being addressed in

the projects. Nevertheless, the beneficial aspect of the individual focus of these art projects

through their i.a. provision of a safe space and therapeutic impact should be acknowledged and

supported by the state.

As for the contribution of the projects to a postmigrant understanding of integration, which

tackles my third research question (RQ3), all projects deconstructed the notion of a fixed

national culture in which migrants should integrate to. This is challenging the “integration in a

society” approach based on assimilation theories. This observation confirms the

conceptualization of postmigrant integration by both Foroutan (2019) and Schramm et al.

(2019) which is taking distance from the notion of assimilation. Instead, it is concentrating more

on the “integration as a society” approach which is where my findings add a new potential

perspective to the notion of postmigrant integration: as I have already stated, this approach, and

partly the initial sociological definition of integration, focuses on the society as a whole and its

condition to provide equal opportunities for everyone. This also joins Foroutan’s (2019)

conceptualization of postmigrant integration which she describes as going beyond migration as

it is an expected political task of the state to fulfill the promises of a plural democracy. All three

projects and Alter & Ego’s work actively worked with language diversity, where art is partly

considered as a nonverbal language, which challenges the monolingual understanding of the

societies we live in. Going beyond monolingualism by acknowledging and giving space to more

languages seems important for the integration as a society and Foroutan’s (2019) understanding

of postmigrant integration and should be promoted in current policies.

As previously mentioned, the art projects put their main emphasis on the people in the plural

society instead of its political system. In this regard, the conceptualization of postmigrant

integration that the projects feed into, joins the understanding of Schramm et al. (2019), who

see the “postmigrant condition” as a state of society. Besides, the initial idea of the postmigrant

theatre and the postmigration concept put emphasis on looking beyond the origin of an

individual and on looking beyond migration in society by seeing migration as an integral part

of it instead of an exceptional object of study. Even though, the art projects focused partly on

looking beyond one’s origin, a strong priority, which has especially been emphasized by my

informants who experienced forced migration, was set on addressing and challenging the so-

called “host population”, or in other words the non-migrants and individuals without experience

of forced migration. My informants shared their hope for an indirect societal impact of the

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projects in this regard and expressed the need for change in European societies. The question

needs to be asked if migration can be seen as an integral part of the society without first openly

addressing the “host population” and their integration. It is important to remember that “das

Postmigrantische” i.a. emerged from an empowerment act to hear the voices of Germans,

descendants from migrants, who were still seen as migrants in their own country. For them

looking beyond migration is essential. However, the postmigration concept broadens and is also

addressing the voices of newcomers and how they experience the country they arrive in. My

informants notice the lack of knowledge and understanding about their country, their situation,

and feel the need for change in this regard. This is were looking beyond migration seems

difficult as non-migrants or individuals without experience of forced migration need to be

directly addressed and taught. They need to integrate into the plural society they live in and in

which migration plays an important role. By looking beyond migration, this important emphasis

might be forgotten.

As Römhild (2017, p.1) states “European societies have become postmigrant societies”, yet

migration is treated as a separate and exceptional problem and integration remains a task mainly

for migrants. The analyzed art projects demonstrate the necessity for change in that regard by

acknowledging plural societies and all its citizens. The Newcomers, Leben Erzählen Schreiben,

Hela Bilden, and Alter & Ego had a direct societal impact and provided new narratives of

integration. Even though the art projects did not describe their work as postmigrant art, taking

a postmigrant approach while analyzing them showed their contribution to the development of

postmigrant integration. Besides, given the fact that the projects took place in three cities; being

Osnabrück in Germany, Norrköping in Sweden, and Dudelange in Luxembourg; the

postmigrant perspective has been discussed beyond a national level. Currently, the

postmigration concept is addressed under different national settings, taking a general European

context seems essential for its development and is of interest for future studies.

This thesis shows the importance of visual arts and artistic, and creative practices in our

societies. Nevertheless, artists and the agency of the arts are rarely acknowledged in European

societies. The difficulty and precarity of being an artist have been expressed by some of my

informants. This study accentuates the importance of art in our societies and accordingly the

importance to acknowledge the work of artists. Furthermore, as Mouffe (2007) stresses, social

transformations do not take place solely through the work of critical art. Integration policies

and the European migration regime should be involved in the reframing of current discourses

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on migration and diversity and should actively implement the integration of the “host

population” and acknowledge the plural society we live in.

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