Paper short abstract:

Studying the latest wave of emigration from Estonia to the “West” during the global pandemic, 55 people of Estonian origin who are residing in different parts of the world documented in photography and video their everyday environment.

Paper long abstract:

Since Estonia joined the EU in 2004, further boosted by the 2009 economic recession, there has been a significant growth in transnational mobility among Estonian young adults. Studying the latest wave of emigration from Estonia to the “West” during the global pandemic, I invited 55 people of Estonian origin who are currently residing in different parts of the world to document in photography and video their everyday environment. The participants were given 14 themes related to the notion of home which they could explore and contribute to on a voluntary basis. The collected material of over 700 photographs and 16 hours of footage captured mainly by smartphones forms a visual mapping of the young Estonian diaspora from the angle of mediated spatiality. The material invites the participants – the majority of whom were women – to engage with the notion of home as a spatial relation by framing and capturing their surroundings and experiences.

Following the limitations posed by the pandemic on the participatory as well as transnational fieldwork and the availability of new technologies of capturing and sharing audio-visual data, the project contributes to the ever more important collaborative, experimental, and artistic methods in anthropology. The co-creative nature of the project facilitates epistemological critique, providing “multisensory knowing” (Pink 2009), provoking “cinematic imagination” (MacDougall 2006), and envisioning the research participants as active and creative co-creators of knowledge. The material enables “new ways of seeing” with regards to the well-debated questions on belonging, homing, and the self/other in a migrational experience.