Refugees’ Arriving through the Lens of Fiction: Unveiling the Ambivalences of Hegemonic Expectations

Abstract

In this article, we use fiction as a lens to study processes of refugees’ arriving in Austria. For that purpose, we draw on findings from our transdisciplinary and participatory project “The Art of Arriving—Reframing ‘Refugee Integration’” in which we have created a real-world laboratory and examined if and how the meaning-making processes involved in creating and interpreting art can foster reframing “refugee integration” concepts and provide alternative views on the arrival of refugees beyond an assimilationist lens. By inviting and accompanying artists from different cultural realms (literature, music, and photography) and with different refugee experiences during the process of jointly creating an artwork as well as by getting access to the recipients’ interpretations of these artworks, we gained insights into the various ways that artistic practices unveil and contest common hegemonic expectations that shape the processes of refugees’ (and other migrants’) arriving. Our analysis of the short story “Außen vor” (“Being [left] out”) written by Hamed Abboud, Anna Baar, and Mascha Dabić—of its creation and reception process—contributes to the ongoing debates on how refugees’ artistic practices can serve as means of cultural and social transformation.