Exploring transnational feminism among refugee/migrant women through ethnographic filmmaking

Abstract

This dissertation examines how transnational feminism can be understood and explored through ethnographic filmmaking. Through a comparative analysis of three visual ethnographic studies – Rebekka Friedman’s (2024) A lens into the everyday: visual ethnographies and making a multi-storied film in North-eastern Sri Lanka, Alexandra Darcy’s (2017) More Than Words: Co-Creative Visual Ethnography, and Katarzyna Grabska’s (2022) In Whose Voice? And for Whom? Collaborative Filming and Narratives of Forced Migration – this study investigates how feminist and collaborative methodologies can reshape the ethnographic filmmaking practice, offering more ethical, reflexive, and participatory forms of representation as well as how they can illuminate the intersecting realities of displacement, identity, belonging, and connections across borders. In this context, the problematization of the notions of transnationalism, diaspora, and solidarity seemed particularly crucial for this research. Thus, drawing on visual anthropology, feminist theory, collaborative ethnography, as well as transnational and diaspora studies, the dissertation situates ethnographic filmmaking as both a research method and a form of political engagement that can challenge conventional hierarchies between researchers and participants. It argues that collaborative and feminist approaches not only enable more egalitarian and co-creative modes of knowledge production but also illuminate the complex ways migrant and refugee women negotiate identity, belonging, and solidarity across borders. The comparative analysis highlights how the three visual works examined here engage with questions of voice, representation, and agency, demonstrating that ethnographic filmmaking can serve as a transformative tool for articulating transnational feminist practices and decolonizing the research process. Most importantly, the dissertation argues that when grounded in collaborative and feminist methodologies, ethnographic filmmaking can itself become a mode of transnational feminist practice.