Lea Drescher

From 2017-2022, Lea Drescher worked at the Berlin-based film production company mîtosfilm, which produces and distributes Kurdish stories between the Middle East and Germany. She worked as Production Manager on ‘In The Blind Spot’ by Ayşe Polat that premiered at Berlinale 2023 and received the Bronze Award for Best Film at the German Film Awards 2024 and she coordinated the Kurdish Film Festival Berlin for several editions. In 2024, she completed the M.A. program in Visual Anthropology at the Media University in Berlin with ‘This Must Be The Place’, which is her first medium-length documentary film.

Missed the connecting flight to Bishkek.
I’m annoyed because there’s no internet at the airport and because the journey seems to take forever. I keep reading Chingiz Aitmatov’s book ‘Childhood in Kyrgyzstan’. It’s actually ridiculous to think of my journey as exhausting in relation to the distance I cover in the time and the comfort with which I travel; compared to the days-long marches through the Kyrgyz mountains of little Aitmatov in the book, when he carried banknotes from village to village. He walked for hours, for days, wading through cold waters. (…) 
I am looking forward to seeing the mountains in Kyrgyzstan (…) The journey to Bishkek continues tonight at 8 p.m. and until then I am roaming around Istanbul in the sun, trying not to feel stressed. Suddenly the time in Bishkek seems far too short, the project overbearing, and at the same time irrelevant (…) What for? (apart from achieving a degree). Not knowing what’s ahead is giving me bad thoughts right now. Gözleme is ready.

field note, 05.04.2024, İstanbul, bistro

In spring 2024, I travel from Berlin, where I live, to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. I am researching the migration of nursing staff from Kyrgyzstan to Germany for my graduation film in Visual Anthropology. In Kyrgyzstan, I want to get to know participants of the EDUVISO program. 

The company EDUVISO has been training young people as nurses for the German labour market in cooperation with medical colleges in Kyrgyzstan since 2019. The nurses are placed with employers in Saxony, eastern Germany. Care for the elderly is a particular focus. EDUVISO promotes participation in its program at high schools throughout the country. 

So far, around a dozen nurses have been placed in Dresden and the nearby small town of Pirna. Hundreds more young people have joined the program. However, it is still unclear how many of them will actually migrate. It takes an enormous amount of motivation, perseverance and adaptability to go through all the steps as the process of becoming a fully recognized nursing professional in Germany takes many years and includes various exams. Passing the required German exams in particular proves to be a major challenge for many participants. 

With the research in Kyrgyzstan, I want to get a closer look at how the young participants imagine their future, what challenges they face when preparing for migration and what drives them to leave their home country to work as a nurse in Germany. What perceptions of Germany do they have from afar?

A year before I leave for Bishkek, I am looking for a topic for my final project when my grandfather dies. For the first time in my life, I say goodbye to someone who is emotionally close to me. Shortly after, my grandmother moves into a retirement home. She can no longer look after herself and the family is scattered across Germany. 

I visit her in her new home on a sunny afternoon. She seems in quite good spirits, shows me the sunflowers on the balcony, smiles about the lively life in the neighboring courtyard and tells me about a nurse from Cameroon who takes care of her. She says that many of the nurses working here come from abroad. 

A few months later, my grandmother also dies. It seems that the absence of my grandfather, who she spent most of her life with side by side, weakened her body faster.

That is how I begin to research the topic of migration and care. People come to a new country with hopes and plans for their future and here, they care for people who look back on many years behind, and who are now dependent on the support of others.

Current statistics predict a shortage of up to 690,000 care workers in Germany by 2049. Recruiting nurses from abroad is one of the strategies for closing personnel gaps. According to an analysis by the Federal Employment Agency, the proportion of care workers with a foreign nationality almost doubled between 2017 and 2022. 

People from economically weaker countries migrate to work in the care sector in economically stronger countries; this is a worldwide phenomenon of capitalism (global care chains). While overall more men cross borders to find work abroad, labor migration in the care sector is predominantly female.

“By ethnoscape, I mean the landscape of people who constitute the shifting world in which we live […] as more people and groups deal with the reality of having to move or the fantasy of wanting to move.”

Arjun Appadurai, Anthropologist, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, 1990: 7

When I learn that EDUVISO participants are being placed in the cities of Dresden and Pirna, I can’t help but instantly think of the increasing shift to the right. In the eastern German states, formerly the GDR, right-wing parties are getting a particularly large number of votes. However, the phenomenon of the increasing shift to the right is by no means limited to those areas. Right-wing and xenophobic attitudes are on the rise in society and politics across Germany, which was particularly visible in the 2025 federal elections.

Because I am concerned about this, but also want to understand the reasons for the increasing dissatisfaction and the associated shift to the right, I travel to Pirna and get into conversation with elderly people on the streets, in senior residences and with locals in a pub in the city center. I am especially interested in their concerns and wishes with regard to the care situation in Germany and the topic of immigration.

Lea: How do you imagine your life in Pirna?
S: A quiet life, not as hectic and rushed as here.
(…) I hope…I mean as you hear (laughs),
it’s really great in Germany, work is
easier there and makes you happy.

recording 08.04.2024, Bishkek

In the documentary ‘This Must Be The Place’ (45 min), I interweave the perspective of Kyrgyz nurses preparing for migration, the perspective of senior citizens and pub guests from the small town of Pirna and my own perspective as a documentary filmmaker traveling between places. 

To approach the complexity around the topic of migration and care work, I engage with a variety of voices and places that I encounter throughout my research journey. Rather than focusing on a single site, as would be the case with conventional fieldwork, I involve multiple sites of observation and participation. (multi-sited ethnography)

I see the film as a mosaic of impressions that poses questions rather than provides answers.

Lea: Where would you like to live when you’re old?

Student 1: In Kyrgyzstan, of course!

Student 2: I can’t say. Time will tell.

Student 3: (grinning) To be honest, in Germany. In some home for the elderly, so you don’t torture your children and grandchildren. 
(some laugh)

recording, 28.04.2024, Bishkek, A2 German course

The EDUVISO participants I speak to have been learning German for several years and some have difficulties passing the exams. At the same time, the German language also plays a crucial role for me in the research process. Without the participants’ knowledge of German, verbal communication between us would not be possible for the time being; I speak neither Russian nor Kyrgyz. But I also realize how our verbal exchange is limited by language barriers. Overall, spending time together beyond interview set ups makes a significant contribution to my learning process. We get to know each other while they show me around places in the city, we visit the family in the village, take a trip to the mountains by car or listen to music. 

Whereas the city of Pirna is also new to me, here, I approach people without getting to know each other before, spontaneously, which is possible through a shared language.

The town is situated in an idyllic location on the Elbe river, surrounded by hills. While my gaze kept falling on the mountains, animals and flowers while filming in Kyrgyzstan, I pay more attention to text and symbolism in Pirna, as I speak the language and am familiar with the socio-political context. Election posters and snippets of conversation from people passing by catch my attention.

I walk with G. and S. (*Kyrgyz nurses who just arrived in Pirna some weeks ago) towards the river. A few young people on bicycles pass by. One of the boys starts to sing “Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus” (“Foreigners out, Germany for the Germans”) to the beat of “L’amour toujours” by Gigi D’Agostino. 

field note, 02.06.2024, Pirna

Over the course of six weeks, Bishkek became more familiar to me, and I kept returning to certain places. Especially where there are animals to watch; pigeons bathe in the almost dried-up riverbed, and one afternoon I observe small puppies and their mother in the bushes next to the water. The babies may have been born just a few days ago. Squirrels hop around people in the park. 

Somehow, the presence of the animals makes me feel comfortable and relaxed as I try to engage with a new place and new people.

Later, in Pirna, I meet two of the nurses who have just arrived. After an interview, we watch the geese along the river and they remember the geese in Kyrgyzstan. Various people, old and young, seem to enjoy hanging out here among the cackling animals. For a short moment, it feels like a place can be shared by living beings regardless of language.

G: I have both feelings. Worried and happy and a little sad. Because soon I will fly to Germany and yes, I am afraid to start a new life in Germany. But I hope everything will be fine.

recording 08.04.2024, Bishkek

Lea Drescher
@dr.escha