Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Refugee and diaspora memories: the politics of remembering and forgetting

This special issue opens up a conversation between three multidisciplinary fields: memory studies, diaspora studies and refugee studies. The introductory paper articulates an analytical framework addressing various forms of memories of displacement. It defines the concepts of exilic and diasporic memories with regard to the classical and post-modern conceptions of diasporas and shows, beyond their formal opposition, the extent to which these two notions interrelate. The article continues by highlighting four themes that cut across the collection of papers in this special issue: the relationship between individual and collective memories; the diversity of actors (re)producing memory narratives; the transmission, negotiation and contestation of memory across space and between generations; and the confrontational and syncretic dynamics which between different types of memories. To conclude, the paper addresses the political implications of the production and dissemination of memories of displacement.

The Inter-generational Politics of ‘Travelling Memories’: Sahrawi Refugee Youth Remembering Home-land and Home-camp

Drawing on primary research conducted with Sahrawi children and youth in the Sahrawi refugee camps, Cuba, Spain and Syria between 2001 and 2009, this article explores the Sahrawi politics of ‘travelling memories’, assessing how, why and to what effect memories of both the Western Saharan home-land and of the Algerian-based home-camps ‘travel’ between older and younger generations and across geographies in contexts of ongoing mobility. I start by exploring the ways in which Sahrawi children and youth ‘inherit’ and negotiate memories of their home-land and home-camps when they are temporarily separated from their families for educational purposes. In particular, this raises the question of whether the transmission of memories in such contexts of separation takes place in spite of childrens distance from their families and home-camps, or because of this. I then examine the ways in which youths memories ‘travel’ with them to their refugee home-camps upon graduation, analysing how their memories relate to those memories prioritised both by the international community mandated to secure a political solution to the protracted conflict, and by the older Sahrawis who monopolise not only the political infrastructure in the refugee camps, but also the ‘official memory’ of home-land and home-camps alike. Overall, I argue that the transmission of memories of the home-land are complemented and at times superseded by the development of and longing for memories of youths home-camps. As such, multiple processes of memory-making and memory-recuperating underpin diverse political commitments to a plurality of home-spaces, including both the home-land and the home-camp. Recognising the intersecting and at times conflicting nature of memories of home-land and home-camp leads us to question the implicit assumption that political mobilisation revolves around memories of the home-land alone, or that the home-land should itself be the focus of political action and change.

On the threshold of statelessness: Palestinian narratives of loss and erasure

ABSTRACT This article examines how Palestinians in Europe negotiate, mobilise, and/or resist, and ultimately problematise, notions of statelessness as a concept and as a marker of identity. Centralising Palestinians’ conceptualisations in this manner – including accounts which directly challenge academics’ and policy-makers’ definitions of the problem of, and solution to, statelessness – is particularly important given that statelessness emerges as both a condition and a label that erase the ability to speak, and be heard. The article starts by examining perceptions of statelessness as a marker of rightlessess, home(land)lessness and voicelessness. It then explores statelessness through the paradigm of the ‘threshold’, reflecting both on interviewees’ ambiguity towards this label, status, and condition, and the extent to which even Palestinians who hold citizenship remain ‘on the threshold of statelessness’. It concludes by reflecting on interviewees’ rejection of a label that is imposed upon them ‘from a distance’ via bureaucratic processes in Europe.

Palestinians and the Arab Uprisings: Political Activism and Narratives of Home, Homeland, and Home-Camp

ABSTRACT This article examines the ways in which Palestinians have been affected by the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath, especially in light of their statelessness and protracted refugeedom. It does so by analysing the narratives of 49 Palestinians who were based in France, Sweden, and the UK at the time of interview between 2012 and 2014. We show that the forms of mobilisation and/or identifications that Palestinians in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and beyond engaged in with regard to the Arab Uprisings, transcended the link between the host state and the homeland. They extended to a plurality of in-between spaces such as Palestinian refugee camps, Arab host states, and Arab countries experiencing the uprisings. We argue that these in-between spaces became salient to broader conceptions of Palestinian identity and activism because Palestinian-ness is shaped not only through attachment to place, but also through particular experiences that are associated with Palestinian identity.

Repressentations of Displacement from the Middle East and North Africa

This article draws on research with and about refugees from across the Middle East and North Africa and examines the current Syrian refugee crisis through the tropes of visibility and invisibility. Adopting a deconstructive framework, it purposefully centralizes what has previously been assigned a peripheral position throughout the ever-expanding “archive of knowledge” (following Foucault) vis-a-vis particular refugee situations and critically interrogates how, why, and with what effect only certain bodies, identity markers, and models of humanitarian response become hypervisible in the European public sphere. The article starts by tracing the roles of visibility and invisibility in constituting the “ideal refugee” (and the concomitant figure of the “a-refugee”), before turning to refugee-refugee humanitarianism as an invisible form of Southern-led (rather than Northern-led or Northern-dominated) responses to displacement from Syria.

Transnational childhood and adolescence: mobilizing Sahrawi identity and politics across time and space

Abstract This paper proposes the importance of examining not only how and when diasporas are mobilized by political brokers, but also which members of diasporic populations are strategically engaged both according to their own characteristics (including their age) and the nature of their diasporic hosting context. It explores how Sahrawi refugee children and youth in the Algeria-based Sahrawi refugee camps, Cuba, Syria and in Spain have been mobilized by their political representatives (Polisario), asking why particular cohorts of youth have been actively encouraged to promote and protect ‘the Sahrawi cause’, while other members of the diaspora have not. Drawing on a framework that facilitates comparison both within and across cases, the paper argues that a combination of factors influence the extent to which the Polisario is able and interested in activating the support of Sahrawi children and youth, including the characteristics of the students themselves, their position within the respective host contexts, and the space and resources available to the Polisario/SADR in each location.

Embracing Transculturalism and Footnoting Islam in Accounts of Arab Migration to Cuba

This essay traces the development of Cuban analyses of Arab migration to the island from the 1500s to the present. It examines whether there is a specifically ‘Cuban’ school of ‘migration studies’, analysing the nature and implications of Ortizs concept of transculturation underpinning the postcolonial development of ‘Cuban national identity’. It further argues that, despite official Cuban claims regarding post-revolutionary racial equality, Arab migration has not only been historically and politically marginalized in accounts of the development of ‘Cuban identity’, including in Ortizs own work, but diverse ‘waves’ of Arab migration to the island have been characterized by what I refer to, following Derrida, as the accumulative ‘footnoting of Islam’. In conclusion, I argue that Muslim Arab immigration prior to the Cuban Revolution has been entirely overshadowed by a systematic focus on Christian Arabs, in effect leading to the category ‘Arab’ being practically synonymous with ‘Christian’ or ‘Maronite’, with wide-ranging implications for our understanding of Cubas academic and political discourses regarding national identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Introduction: Articulating Intersections at the Global Crossroads of Religion and Migration

This introductory chapter examines the ways in which religion and migration have intersected in scholarship and suggests ways in which studies of these intersections can be enhanced. More specifically, it reviews significant terms and concepts, proposes expanding the scope of research by attending to marginalized perspectives, and creates avenues of dialogue between different methodologies. Bringing together a variety of voices—theologians, religious studies scholars, philosophers, ethnographers, and refugees and immigrants themselves—around a range of issues related to religion and migration—conceptions of the relationship of humans to each other and to God, the religious experiences of immigrants, and the organizations involved in humanitarian aid and activism—in a number of global contexts will enable us to understand these processes more fully.

Conflicting Missions? The Politics of Evangelical Humanitarianism in the Sahrawi and Palestinian Protracted Refugee Situations

American Evangelical actors have long been active across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), both during periods characterized by relative peace and stability, and in contexts of conflict and forced migration. Throughout the 2000s, Evangelical groups1 have played increasingly visible and controversial roles in relation to the humanitarian crises emerging from “new” wars, including the invasion of Afghanistan (2001) and the war in/on Iraq (2003).2 Responding to such “new” conflicts, these groups have provided various forms of material assistance to displaced individuals, families, and communities, whilst engaging in what Olivo-Ensor (2003) refers to as “disaster evangelism” amongst particularly vulnerable populations. Indeed, proselytization by organizations providing humanitarian assistance in such situations has been vocally criticized by diverse observers (i.e., Christenson 2003; Cottle 2003; Sikand 2003; Thaut 2009), paralleling broader concerns regarding Evangelical interventions in conflict and displacement situations outside of the MENA region. In addition to vehement critiques by secular groups, Ferris notes that “the humanitarian work of some Evangelical groups is frequently criticized by traditional faith-based organizations which are committed to respecting the religious beliefs of those whom they assist” (2005: 317).

The Veiling of Religious Markers in the Sahrawi Diaspora

States play key roles in promoting and controlling religious symbols, and yet Soares and Osella note that ‘insufficient attention is devoted to how the state intervenes to promote, co-opt, thwart, or isolate various forms of Islam and (“good” or “bad”) Muslims’ (2009, pp. 10–11). In turn, even fewer studies have analysed the ways in which religious symbols have been strategically mobilised by non-state actors. This chapter addresses this lacuna by examining the case of a non-state actor which has de facto control over a specific refugee population. I explore the ways in which Sahrawi refugees’ political representatives — the Polisario Front and their related government-in-exile, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) — have engaged in a range of representational strategies which ultimately ‘veil’ religious symbols such as mosques, madrasas, and especially the milhafa, arguing that the Polisario Front/SADR does so in order to maximise diverse short-and long-term benefits both inside and outside the Sahrawi refugee camps. More specifically, I argue that the purposeful distantiation from (or ‘veiling’ of) Islamic religious symbols has been enacted during interactions with secular humanitarian audiences to demonstrate the ‘ideal’ nature of the Sahrawi camps in order to ensure the continuation of humanitarian and political support, which both keeps refugees alive in their refugee camp homes and simultaneously maintains international support for the Sahrawi quest for political self-determination (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2014).