Neither Here Nor There - Return Mobilities

Migration is not a one-way street. Recent years have seen increasing transnational mobility and return migration, involving the rapid development of transport and communication technologies, the relative improvement of political and economic situations in the migrants’ homeland as well as anti-migration hostility and the exclusion of incoming people from the labour market in settlement countries. Moreover, return migration becomes an integral part of transnational mobility: not the end of the migration process but a transnational circular process based on multi-connectedness and multi-referential relationships between the country of “root” and country of “routes”. Return mobilities of children of conflict-generated refugee-diasporas such as People of Kurdistan are also returning to their parental homeland for various reasons.

One of these reasons is a strong sense of longing for their roots which lead to a search for (ethnic) identity in their post conflict homeland. Most of the returnees have developed their sense of ethnic belonging and attachment to their parental homeland through their families’ and communities’ narratives, diasporic Kurdish networks, associations and political events in diaspora. However, with the creation of the de facto Kurdish state in Kurdistan-Iraq, followed by the constitutional recognition of the autonomous Kurdistan Region in 2005, a significant return mobilities started among the first and second generations from western countries. The number of highly skilled British-Kurdish young people migrating to Kurdistan-Iraq started to increase in 2010. Moreover, people have also returned to contribute to help displaced Yazidis and Christian communities in the Kurdistan Region.

This documentary film is about five people (3 females and 2 male) from 4 western countries (Germany, UK, USA and New Zealand) who returned to Kurdistan for search of ethnic identity, belonging for imagined homeland and looking for a familiar home with the ambitions to contribute to reconstructing their parental homeland as well as making new identities. This documentary is telling their journeys, their root migration from coming back to Kurdistan, their migration history, the difficulties they have experienced, the opportunities they have seen, their transformations and their (future)aspirations.

Kurdî

Ev fîlma dokumanterî li ser pênc kesan (3 jin û 2 mêr) ji 4 welatên rojava (Almanya, Brîtanya, Amerîka, Zelanda Nû) ye ku ji bo lêgerîna nasnameya etnîkî, aîdiyeta welatê xeyalî û lêgerîna maleke nas vegeriyan Kurdistanê. bi mebesta ku tevkariyê li ji nû ve avakirina welatê dê û bavê xwe bikin û her weha nasnameyên nû çêbikin. Ev belgefîlm rêwîtiya wan, koça koka wan a ji vegera Kurdistanê, dîroka wan a koçberiyê, zehmetiyên ku hatine jiyîn, derfetên ku dîtine, veguhertinên wan û daxwazên wan ên (pêşerojê) vedibêje.

العودة الی الوطن هذا الفيلم الوثائقي یدور حول خمسة أشخاص (3 إناث و 2 ذكر) من 5 دول غربية (ألمانيا، المملكة المتحدة ، الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية و نيوزلند) عادوا إلى كردستان بحثًا عن هويتهم، وعن انتماءهم إلى الوطن المتخيل و مألوف لديه، مع طموحات للمساهمة في إعادة بناء وطنهم الأبوي وخلق هويات جديدة. يروي هذا الفيلم الوثائقي رحلاتهم، وهجرتهم الى الاصل (إلى كردستان)، وتاريخ هجرتهم ، والصعوبات التي مروا بها ، والفرص المتاحة لهم، واخیرا تحولاتهم وتطلعاتهم “المستقبلية”.