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Accepted Paper:
In the Company of Plants: Multispecies care and migrant home-making in Germany
Hilal Alkan
(Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient)
This paper looks into the relationships different waves and generations of migrants from Turkey develop with the plants they grow and care for in Germany and explores the significance of multispecies networks in the processes of migrant home-making.
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws from the research I am conducting, which looks into the relationships different waves and generations of migrants from Turkey develop with the plants they grow and care for in Germany, in order to explore the significance of multispecies networks in the processes of migrant home-making. In the context of migration and displacement human and plant migrants share the challenges of acclimatization and adaptation in new contexts. Human-beings find in plants not only the metaphors for their struggles (rooting, being uprooted, branching, blossoming..etc) but also they take them as companions. While caring for their plants, migrants invest in settling and turning a foreign place into a home, both for themselves but also for the plants, who sometimes carry the scents, colors and textures of the home that is left behind. For migrants from Turkey, this involves a material exchange of seeds, cuttings and plant transfers in very unlikely conditions between two countries, that is followed by attentive hands-on care practices to help plants survive.