A Piece of Home is a practice-based PhD project that examines how documentary film can function as a counter-hegemonical archive for communities excluded from recognition. Introducing the new term unrecognised migrants, the research redefines existing migration discourse by shifting attention from the notion of illegality or lack of documents to the structural mechanisms that actively deny visibility and belonging.
The project follows Afghan migrants living in Türkiye and explores how the politics of naming, visibility, and authorship shape the representation of displaced lives. Their collective act of playing cricket becomes a gesture of remembrance and resistance, transforming a space of exile into a fragile but meaningful piece of home.
Through observational and reflexive strategies, the film intertwines the filmmaker’s own migration history in an autoethnographic framework that turns subjectivity into a method of inquiry. The written dissertation situates this creative practice within a broader theoretical constellation, engaging with concepts such as Agamben’s homo sacer, Augé’s non-place, Bakhtin’s chronotope, and the re-signification of play as a tool of resistance.
Together, the film and text demonstrate that artistic research can produce knowledge that is both analytical and affective, challenging dominant narratives while reimagining the political potential of documentary cinema.
