I am pleased to share Татьяна Bogacheva’s contribution to the January 2018, „Misplaced Women?“ Workshop in the Public Space in Berlin — hosted by Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin Weißensee — and her attempts to innerly process and express in performative ways her concerns, fears and experiences around the gendered perspective of homelessness. (Tanja Ostojic)
“Home is a human right”: (Home is the most dangerous place for women worldwide, domestic violence competing only with car accidents as the main cause of death of women; and, non-European perspective on the institutes of human rights reveals their essentially colonial nature.)
A Contribution by Татьяна, Tatiana Bogacheva
Tatiana Bogacheva: “Home is a human right”, January 2018, „Misplaced Women?“ Workshop. Intervention Berlin, Alexanderplatz. Photo: Sajan Mani
Cosmopolitan is the preferred self-description of affluent dwellers of global cities reaping the fruits of the centuries of colonialism and its aftermath, globalisation, international division of labour, justice of transnational institutions and ‘illegal’ migration. Either an explorer or an expat, it is more likely to be a man who abandons one place for another or refuses to be associated with one nation, while women’s migration is a public secret. Study-mamas, oil-wives, domestic helpers, those involved in affective labour and care—neither their individual motivation for migration nor their role in shaping the world are given sufficient recognition—they are modernity’s roadies, not its driving force.
Tatiana Bogacheva: “Home is a human right”, January 2018, „Misplaced Women?“ Workshop. Intervention at Berlin Alexanderplatz. Photo: Sajan Mani
When crossing borders alone for work, women are detained on the suspicion of being trafficked due to the persisting victim-centred approach of international human rights and humanitarian organisations which feed into moralistic and patronising narratives. What is primal, the hysteria about endemic sex trafficking or capitalism’s dependency on the surplus of unpaid domestic work? Constraining migration of women through the narratives of danger, human trafficking being its extreme, legitimises restrictions on the freedoms of women and effaces their political agency and grievances connected with their class, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation.
Tatiana Bogacheva: “Home is a human right”, January 2018, „Misplaced Women?“ Workshop. Intervention at Berlin, Alexanderplatz. Photo: Sajan Mani
Finally, women are barred from the ultimate dropping-out from the societal demands and refusal to do cartwheels to carve oneself a place in the globalised world. You don’t see many female rough sleepers on the streets of Berlin. They sleep in the airports and the sitting couches of overnight trains; on the spare beds in hospitals; at libraries and offices; and at the friends’ sofas and even at their own risk at home with their partners; but they don’t sleep on the street because they—our dutiful daughters, immaculate mothers, virtuous wives and selfless partners—are our only hope on this beautiful,
bright
cosmopolitan
creative
meaningful
modern
peaceful
fair
blue perlaceous planet Earth.
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Tanya Bogacheva worked in human rights, media and education before commencing her graduate studies in critical cultural studies in Berlin.
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Text written by Tanya Bogacheva
Photo of the public intervention: Sajan Mani
Edited and first published by Tanja Ostojić, 2018/2019 on the Misplaced Women? project blog
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Donate to Berliner Kaeltehilfe
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Please visit as well other contributions and posts from the same workshops:
Contribution by Hoang Tran Hieu Hanh
Public Presentation of the Misplaced Women? Workshop, Berlin, January 2018
Participants of the January 2018 „Misplaced Women?“ Berlin Workshop by Tanja Ostojic. Photo: Sajan Mani
Misplaced Women? 