Going West: Intra-European Immgration after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Western European films.

Abstract

ABSTRACT My dissertation argues that the wave of immigration from Eastern to Western Europe that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the communist era in what was known as the Eastern bloc, triggered a respective wave of films dealing with the issue. The thesis concentrates on films depicting the specific wave of immigration from the European East to the European West, made by Western European filmmakers who do not share the immigrant experience themselves. In this respect the thesis deals with how this phenomenon of intra-European immigration was perceived and consequently depicted on screen by the West. Through focus on a variety of Western European fiction films, the thesis argues about the new type (and stereotypes) of on screen immigrant characters and the depiction of their integration and relationship with the host nations. The thesis also deals with how the filmic representation of the Eastern European immigrant differentiates from the respective representations of the past phenomena of immigration within and towards Europe (e.g. the post-colonial wave of immigration, the South to North wave of immigration and how fiction films deal with the new dynamics created amongst Europeans).