This article investigates how first‐generation Australian‐Hungarians’ physical and social conceptions of home have been reconfigured by the changing political settings in Hungary after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I investigate whether the structural transformation after 1989 enabled Hungarians in Australia to shift their perception of the homeland from an abstract image to the homeland as a lived experience. This article suggests three main theoretical implications for scholarly work on home. First, this article draws attention and provides a corrective to the often‐overlooked tension between home's dual meaning, its practical and symbolic, lived and yearned‐for dimensions. Second, the article theoretically delinks but does not disconnect the concepts of “home” and “belonging” making the relationship between the two something to be investigated rather than something to be assumed. And third, I argue for the importance of emotions within experiences of migration and finding home and belonging.
Film has been recognized for its potential social and political impact since its beginning (see, for example, the debate between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno). Therefore, film, and in particular documentary film, can also be seen as an instrumental tool of social movements to bring about social and political change. Although generally ignored by social movement scholars, films can have a wide range of important impact on the public, social movement organizations and policymakers. Social movements continually attempt to create public space for debate of the issues they consider important, and films can become a crucial segment of that struggle as they create a forum in which the public can encounter issues (Whiteman 2003). Activist documentaries may provide a sense of shared identification around the issue at stake and this in turn can mobilize citizens, as was the case after the screenings of
Panama Deception
, a film about the 1989 US invasion of Panama. Activist films may also influence the activist communities themselves. The production process itself can stimulate greater communication among individuals and organizations and can strengthen organizational networks. For example, labor organizations have mobilized their members by educating them about the long history of labor activism in the southeastern US through
The Uprising of '34
(film about the 1934 textile strike). In addition, documentary films have proven to be powerful tools in influencing public policy. For example the documentary
Yes, In My Backyard
, exploring the dependence of one American farming town on the prison industry, helped spark debates about policy and reframe the policy agenda (Whiteman 2003).
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