For my thesis project I introduced three books which are dealing with the topic of migration. I focused on Eritrean culture in Basel because Eritreans are the biggest foreign community in Switzerland. In every book we are looking on their culture from a different perspective as is visual identity, lifestyle and post-migration image. Also, I was intrigued by the moments where we meet the Eritrean lifestyle with the Swiss and local culture of the city, thus creating a transnational space of two continents.

 

The books together give context to each other and in same time we learn what is obtaing to create the new home. I am showing symbolic attributes of their home which simultaneously represents places of residence, such as rooms, church, restaurants, and symbolic attributes of the local way of life, such as friends, music, food, languages, and customs. I refer to the fact that home is not anchored to the migrant only in one area within national borders and hence in one state, but space and home become an unbounded place. Those images tell us about the state of the place and the person after the migration process, that is when the individual is already settled down and creates a home in the new context, which influences his or her identity.