Vortrag Making homes with plant companions: Multispecies care and migrant emplacements

People–plant relationships are multi-faceted, ranging from primarily utilitarian engagements to deeply affective bonds. This talk draws on ethnographic research with Turkish and Kurdish migrants in Germany to examine their relationships with the plants they cultivate. Within migrants’ migration trajectories and processes of settlement, affective relations with plants reveal two key affordances. First, the intimate care directed toward plants facilitates processes of emplacement for both plants and humans. Second, plants provide metaphoric resources through which migrants reflect upon and articulate their migratory conditions.

These affordances unfold in contexts marked by climatic and societal difference, xenophobia, and precarity. Under such circumstances, plants and people become increasingly intertwined in practices of care and endurance, as participants draw reciprocal parallels between themselves and their plant companions. These parallels—anthropomorphisms and phytomorphisms—emerge as modalities of intimacy that structure everyday life and shape broader reflections on the migrant condition.