Project

We Have Now Lost Two Homelands: Palestinians Displaced by the War in Syria

Program

ACLS Fellowship Program

Department

World Languages and Cultures & Political Science

Named Award

ACLS Centennial Fellow in the Dynamics of Place named award

Abstract

This book project focuses on the impact of mass displacement from Syria on Palestinian identity and political claims. In particular, it assesses the significance of Europe's new status as a land of exile for Palestinians displaced by the Syrian war, with an estimated 80,000 of them having fled there since the beginning of the war. It draws on fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2019 in the Middle East and in Europe. This fieldwork draws on interviews with Syro-Palestinians displaced to other parts of the Middle East (Lebanon and Turkey) and to Europe (Germany, France and Sweden) by the ongoing war as well as interviews with NGOs and volunteers assisting refugees from Syria in various host countries. It also draws on participant observation among Palestinian refugees displaced to France, Germany and Turkey by the war in Syria. Ultimately it examines how recurring displacement is reshaping Palestinian understandings of the Palestinian question.