ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the visual and textual mechanisms used to construct narratives in terms of how they imagine, represent, and conceptualize notions of space, home, and identity under early twenty-first-century political conditions. Using sociological theories about space and migration, it seeks to put the aforementioned texts in conversation with each other and intends to highlight the difficulties – and sometimes impossibilities – of putting authentic stories into verbal and visual representations. Paula Bulling's Im Land der Fruhaufsteher was published in 2012, following six months of research on asylum-seeker homes in the East German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Bulling's Im Land der Fruhaufsteher stands out because it deals with asylum-seeker homes, spaces customarily hidden from the view of ordinary German citizens. Tucked away on the outskirts of towns or in remote parts of the German countryside, asylum seekers' dire living conditions are rarely visible to the German public or discussed in the German media.
