Building space, building selves: revealing the feminist architectures of everyday places in contemporary narratives of forced migrant women

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Ravenscroft, M, 2024. Building space, building selves: revealing the feminist architectures of everyday places in contemporary narratives of forced migrant women. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

Building Space, Building Selves: Revealing the Feminist Architectures of Everyday Places in Contemporary Narratives of Forced Migrant Women explores contemporary film and literary representations of women whose lives are shaped, and who shape their lives, by the everyday spaces of sanctuary seeking. An interdisciplinary project, this thesis seeks to address the lack of critical attention given to gendered representations of forced migration in creative works, offering an alternative epistemological approach that explores how the stories and identities of forced migrant women unfold in relation to the spaces they encounter rather than the bodies in which they move.

This work takes shape as a journey that traverses various architectures. Through a decolonial feminist lens, each chapter examines representations of forced migrant women ‘building selves’ in different spatial contexts, ultimately identifying feminist architectures that reveal sites of resilience and reclamation, thus highlighting the complexities of their experiences. Chapter One explores gendered frameworks of liminality and transition by examining the significance of doorways as symbolic thresholds for protagonists Nogreh and Nadia in At Five in the Afternoon by Samira Makhmalbaf and Exit West by Moshin Hamid. Studying the spatial dynamics within rooms of the Immigration Reception Centre and the playhouse rehearsal space in Chapter Two illustrates dualling politics of hospitality and hostility for the women in The Bogus Woman by Kay Adshead and The Baulkham Hills African Ladies Troupe by Ros Horin. In Chapter Three, critical analysis of physical and symbolic walls considers their impact on both fictional and real-life women fleeing Mexico for the United States, emphasising their conflicting roles as sites of oppression and support in American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins and Los Lobos by Samuel Kishi. Finally, in Chapter Four, a feminist contrapuntal reading of the fraught site of home transforms it into a creative construction of self-identity in MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. by Stephen Loveridge and The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil.

Over these four chapters, the spatial significance of doors, rooms, walls, and rooms emerges. Rather than a distinct design style or practice, this thesis identifies them as feminist architectures, for and on behalf of forced migrant women. This is to say in identifying and understanding these tropes, we can read creative engagements and approaches to challenge traditional power structures and reclaim place for those often considered ‘placeless’. We can identify spatial moments of inclusivity and resistance, solidarity, and self-actualisation. Doors, rooms, walls, and rooms are symbolic and site-specific responses to the diverse needs and experiences of all individuals, either from their inception or by inscription through lived, embodied interaction with them. With the cultural critical identification and exploration of such feminist architectures, this thesis responds to the urgent need for more nuanced readings of the narratives of forced migrant women, and spatial and relational approaches to understanding them in the real world.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Ravenscroft, M.
Contributors:	Name Role NTU ID ORCID Yousaf, N. Thesis supervisor EMS3YOUSAN https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2806-8624 Bowring, N. Thesis supervisor AAH3BOWRIN https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2584-1231
Date:	January 2024
Rights:	The copyright in this work is held by the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the author.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Arts and Humanities
Record created by:	Jeremy Silvester
Date Added:	27 Jun 2025 08:59
Last Modified:	27 Jun 2025 08:59
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53832