Migration, Participation and the Making of Homes: Narrations from a Refugees We [Hardcover]

1. A special place, quietly political

2. Welcome to the garden

3. NARRATION ONE - In full bloom: A cosmopolitan canopy

4. NARRATION TWO - Burgeoning and pruning: The shaping of the space

5. NARRATION THREE - Growing roots: The making of homes

6. Conclusion: Sowing seeds for the future

Postscript

This book is an ethnographic inquiry into the socio-ecological relationalities in an intercultural community garden in Germany, created in 2015 as a Refugees Welcome project. It explores this quietly political space of civic everyday which seeks to foster care for both people and planet. In three narrations, the book offers power-critical reflections on social encounters, participation, (in)equalities, and home-making. In innovative ways, the narrations also shed light on how peoples doings are entangled with the more-than-human  plants, soils, animals, water and more.

Migration, Participation and the Making of Homes increases our understanding of how communities navigate social heterogeneity and how people with refugee biographies shape their surroundings as active agents. The narrations show that a cosmopolitan spirit is alive in this garden, and the plants play a significant part in its expression. Yet, while the garden works as a retreat from hostilities that people may experience outside, it also remains a racialised space. Power relations work in complex ways, positioning individuals as not belonging where conflicts occur. At the same time, in instances less shaped by the local habitus, new dynamics develop between guest and host. The narrations demonstrate how all people in the garden are engaged in unique home-making processes, and in the making of the shared home which is the garden. The gardeners connect in the joy of tending and watching life grow, as the plants speak in their own way lC¸