Plantifying Emplacement

This article draws upon my research with Turkish and Kurdish migrants on their relationships with the plants they grow in Germany. Relationships with plants have two affordances in this context. Firstly, intimate care relationships with plants facilitate the emplacement of both the plants and the humans. Secondly, plants lend people metaphors to reflect upon their migrant conditions. Under the circumstances of climactic and societal differences, xenophobia, and precarity, plants and people grow closer and survive together, while the human participants of these relationships draw reciprocal parallels between themselves and their plant companions. These parallels—anthropomorphisms and phytomorphisms—unfold as modalities of intimacy within the lives of the migrants.