scholarly journals Solidarity with Soufra: Dividuality and joint action with Palestinian women refugees

Organization ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 135050842110510
Author(s):  
Christina Schwabenland ◽  
Alison Hirst
Keyword(s):  
Joint Action ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Women Refugees ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
Exchange Relationships ◽  
Palestinian Women ◽  
Palestinian Refugee

Based on an exploratory study of Soufra, a women’s catering social enterprise in the Bourj al Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, we analyze how solidarity across difference can be organized. We conceptualize “difference” not in terms of “whole” individuals, but in terms of dividuals, the multiple roles and social positions that individuals occupy; this enables similarities between individuals of different ethnicities, nationalities, and statuses to become apparent. We find that, despite their extreme and protracted marginalization, Soufra does not seek to organize solidarity relationships with co-resisters joining their struggle against oppressors. Rather, they initiate exchange relationships with different others via carefully managed impressions of similar dividualities (e.g. professional cooks and businesswomen) and different dividualities (e.g. having refugee status and lacking any citizenship). These encounters provide opportunities for solidarity relationships to be created and underlying cultural predispositions to be transformed. Whether these opportunities are taken up or rejected is dependent, at least to some extent, on the willingness of participants to allow such transformations to occur.

Palestinian refugee women and the Jenin refugee camp: Reflections on urbicide and the dilemmas of home in exile

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (14) ◽  
pp. 2897-2916 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahera Bleibleh ◽  
Michael Vicente Perez ◽  
Thaira Bleibleh
Keyword(s):  
West Bank ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
The West ◽  
Palestinian Women ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
The Future ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
The Right

In March 2002, the Israeli military launched its most lethal attack on the West Bank since 1967. In the Jenin refugee camp, the assault included the deliberate destruction of homes and infrastructure including the entire Hawashin neighbourhood. This article considers the memories of Palestinian women who survived the urbicidal war on Jenin and confronted the difficulties of reconstruction. It shows how women enacted particular forms of agency during the siege that do not fit into discussions of urbicide or national resistance. Our analysis also examines the reconstruction of the Jenin camp to understand how its transformation reveals its significance for Palestinian women at both the levels of the home and the urban camp. We argue that the meaning of the camp is inseparable from the different ways it is inhabited. Thus for Palestinian women, the spatial reconfiguration of homes during the reconstruction of the camp permanently erased the experience of sociality once lived by women before the attack. This not only reproduced the effects of the urbicide but also disturbed the ways women inhabited the camp and provoked fears that it could be transformed into a permanent space and thus preclude the possibility of the right of return in the future.

scholarly journals In/distinction On Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh’s A Photographic Conversation from Burj al-Shamali Camp

1970 ◽  
pp. 39-47
Author(s):  
Daniel Berndt
Keyword(s):  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Historical Photographs

As the “abbreviation that telescopes history into a moment” Cadava, 1992, p. 101),photography “is always related to something other than itself” (Cadava, 1992, p. 100).But rather than being material evidences that speak for themselves, photographs aremore like “silent witnesses” in relation to this “other”, and to the reality that definesthe context of their production and reception. By listening to various voices andstories around and about images, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh’s A Photographic Conversationfrom Burj al-Shamali Camp (2001–present) — a multi-layered project developed overthe time span of more than 10 years — is trying to get photographs ‘to speak’ aboutthis reality, in this case that of Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp in theSouth of Lebanon. Combining archival, historical, and anthropological practices,as well as a variety of artistic forms of expression — from publications and curatedexhibitions with a group of adolescents to Eid-Sabbagh’s most recent performancesand lectures that include a sporadic display of videos and historical photographs this project is primarily a tribute to the individual, in that it is the individual’s actionsand convictions that contribute to the formation of a meaningful community. At thesame time, it examines socio-political circumstances and dynamics while cherishingintimacy and personal recollections.

A Photo-Narrative of the Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Identities of a Refugee Adolescent

2019 ◽  
pp. 233-250
Author(s):  
Alex P. Davies
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Summer School ◽  
First Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
School Year

One's linguistic discourse is directly linked to his or her identity construction. The author conducted a qualitative study that investigated the sociolinguistic and sociocultural identities, both current and imagined, of a newly arrived adolescent of refugee status, named Yerodin, through a photo-narrative approach. Yerodin was unique in that he was 11 years old when he arrived to the United States but did not have any prior formalized schooling. Therefore, he was illiterate in both his first language of Swahili and second language of English. This study took place during a summer school program that sought to develop Yerodin and his siblings' literacy skills before the upcoming school year. Findings illustrated Yerodin's current identity as one who appreciated his experiences in the refugee camp prior to resettlement and as an English learner. Furthermore, Yerodin realized that English, his second language, and academics were key to accessing his desired communities of identity, including aspects of American culture and friendships with “American peers.”

scholarly journals Decolonial {R}evolution: Petrocracy and Geological Modernity from Detroit to Palestine and Back

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mirzoeff
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Site Conditions ◽  
The Holocene ◽  
Palestinian Refugee

This article explores what Grace Lee Boggs called {r}evolution—the horizontal construction of autonomous power from below by multiple subjects—in the context of anthropogenic climate change. This is a decolonial uprising from Haiti to Detroit against petrocracy, or the mutually reinforcing rule of fossil fuels and monotheism. I pursue a decolonial reading of the Holocene/Anthropocene geological epochs through an anarchaeological, visual, and discourse analysis of the excavations at Tell-es-Sultan, asserted to be the site of the biblical Jericho, to reconsider the “human.” The article interacts present-day, on-site conditions at the Palestinian refugee camp ‘Ein-as-Sultan with Kathleen Kenyon’s famous excavations (1952–1958), her discoveries and the museology associated with them, and the geopolitical and religious claims made for the site. I conclude by analyzing how “Detroit” is becoming the floating name for the non-continuous spaces of the displaced world, where displacement, drought, and counterinsurgency intermingle to deadly effect.

Palestinians to Citizens

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 204-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asem Khalil
Keyword(s):  
State Solution ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Willingness To Accept ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
British Mandate ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
Refugee Problem ◽  
The Right

In this paper, I first argue that, since the British mandate, citizenship regulations in Palestine contributed to dispossession of the rights of Palestinians, thus laying the seeds of the Palestinian refugee problem and its eventual consolidation. I then argue that citizenship regulations in host countries were exclusionary towards refugees in general, and Palestinians in particular, making it impossible for Palestinians to integrate in host societies. The so-called “Arab Spring” did not bring about any change in that sense. Finally, I argue that the narrative of statehood, although often separated from that of the “right of return”, constitutes but one narrative, and one from a completely different angle than the narrative of a “right of return”, where the ‘just solution’ creates the possibility of establishing a homeland for Palestinians where they, and in particular the stateless refugees, can be converted into full citizens. What was part of the problem for refugees is presented as part of the solution. This discussion is very important in today’s Palestine, which was just recently accepted by the un General Assembly as a non-member observer state. The importance of that move is the official Palestinian insistence on the need for a state on the 1967 borders, and the willingness to accept the formula of a two-state solution. Discussion related to citizenship and refugee status, and the right of return, are all back at the center of political and legal discussions.

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