Migration, Culture and Identity: Making Home Away 3031120841, 9783031120848

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Making Home Away: Introduction to the Collection
Remaking Home Through Displacement
Thematic Resonances
Chapter Contributions
References
Chapter 2: Watfa’ Speaks
Contextualizing a Shared History
Mass Influx and Asylum in the Ottoman Empire
Deterritorialized Belonging and Social Duty of Hospitality
Interviewing Watfa’
Watfa’ Remembers Damascus
Conclusion: Pursuing Home
References
Chapter 3: Refugee-Refugee Hosting as Home in Protracted Urban Displacement: Sudanese Refugee Men in Amman, Jordan
Introduction
Refugee Hosting as an Act of Care
Context
Care and Home in Displacement
Living in Hosting Relationships
Exchanges and Ambivalences of Care in Refugee-Refugee Hosting
Being and Feeling at Home
Place Belonging
Politics of Belonging
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Archiving Displacement and Identities: Recording Struggles of the Displaced Re/making Home in Britain
Introduction
Recording Life Histories Through Civic Engagement in the Archive: Methods and Methodology
Archiving “moving memories” of Home to the Displaced
Remembering “Home”: Which Home?
The Displaced and “Crisis of Reception”
London as a Complex Home: Identities of Sudanese, Syrian, and Moroccan Displaced Men
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Archival Home Making: Reference, Remixing and Reverence in Palestinian Visual Art
Introduction
The Archive, Art, and Home
Reclaiming Home: Archival Sensibilities in Contemporary Visual Art from Palestine
The Art Competition and the Archive as Theme
The Exhibition: Process, Practicality, and Materiality
Archival Art and the Intergenerational Relations of Home Making
Concluding Thoughts
References
Chapter 6: Collecting: The Migrant’s Method for Home-Making
The Migrant
The Migrant at Home
The Symbolics of Home
The Language of Home
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Syrian Experiences of Remaking Home: Migratory Journeys, State Refugee Policies, and Negotiated Belonging
Introduction
Remaking Home in Displacement and Resettlement
Migratory Journeys and Displacement
UN Resettlement
State Policies for Resettled Refugees
The UK
Canada
Experiences of Loss and Belonging in Remaking Home
Spatial and Temporal Experiences of Loss
The Labour of Homemaking
Cultural and Linguistic Barriers
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: Making Home in the Earth: Ecoglobalism in the Camps
Tending “This Plot of Land”
Ecopoetics in Action
Flowering: Past into Present
Watering the Garden
References
Chapter 9: Home Is Like Water: Nigerians in the Migration Pathway to the UK
Stories Matter
Tidal Perspectives
Imagined Geographies
Oceanic Talismans of Home
Weathering Storms at Sea
Conclusion: Home Is Like Water
References
Index

Citation preview

POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP AND MIGRATION

Migration, Culture and Identity Making Home Away Edited by Yasmine Shamma · Suzan Ilcan Vicki Squire · Helen Underhill

Politics of Citizenship and Migration Series Editor

Leila Simona Talani Department of European and International Studies King’s College London London, UK

The Politics of Citizenship and Migration series publishes exciting new research in all areas of migration and citizenship studies. Open to multiple approaches, the series considers interdisciplinary as well political, economic, legal, comparative, empirical, historical, methodological, and theoretical works. Broad in its coverage, the series promotes research on the politics and economics of migration, globalization and migration, citizenship and migration laws and policies, voluntary and forced migration, rights and obligations, demographic change, diasporas, political membership or behavior, public policy, minorities, border and security studies, statelessness, naturalization, integration and citizen-making, and subnational, supranational, global, corporate, or multilevel citizenship. Versatile, the series publishes single and multi-authored monographs, short-form Pivot books, and edited volumes. For an informal discussion for a book in the series, please contact the series editor Leila Simona Talani ([email protected]), or Palgrave editor Anne Birchley-Brun ([email protected]). This series is indexed in Scopus.

Yasmine Shamma  •  Suzan Ilcan Vicki Squire  •  Helen Underhill Editors

Migration, Culture and Identity Making Home Away

Editors Yasmine Shamma Department of English Literature University of Reading Reading, UK Vicki Squire Department of Politics and International Studies University of Warwick Coventry, UK

Suzan Ilcan Department of Sociology and Legal Studies University of Waterloo Waterloo, ON, Canada Helen Underhill School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Newcastle University Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

ISSN 2520-8896     ISSN 2520-890X (electronic) Politics of Citizenship and Migration ISBN 978-3-031-12084-8    ISBN 978-3-031-12085-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover credit: © Yasmine Shamma, 2019. The image shows a caravan in Zaatari Refugee Camp. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For the displaced who so generously shared their stories with us.

Acknowledgements

This publication stems from the ‘Lost and Found: Testimonies of Migration, Resettlement, and Displacement’ project funded by the British Academy’s ‘Tackling the UKs International Challenges’ grant scheme. The editors wish to thank Mauricio Palma Gutierrez for his able help with editing, references and formatting. We mostly wish to thank the many Syrian refugees we spoke to throughout our time conducting fieldwork associated with this project. They shared their stories with generosity, humility and warmth which made this book’s completion feel increasingly vital. This book is dedicated to them, and their pursuits of making their homes away feel necessarily full.

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Contents

1 Making  Home Away: Introduction to the Collection  1 Helen Underhill, Vicki Squire, Yasmine Shamma, and Suzan Ilcan 2 Watfa’ Speaks 11 Dawn Chatty 3 Refugee-Refugee  Hosting as Home in Protracted Urban Displacement: Sudanese Refugee Men in Amman, Jordan 31 Zoë Jordan 4 Archiving  Displacement and Identities: Recording Struggles of the Displaced Re/making Home in Britain 55 Rumana Hashem, Paul Vernon Dudman, and Thomas Shaw 5 Archival  Home Making: Reference, Remixing and Reverence in Palestinian Visual Art 79 Helen Underhill 6 Collecting:  The Migrant’s Method for Home-Making101 Genevieve Guetemme

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Contents

7 Syrian  Experiences of Remaking Home: Migratory Journeys, State Refugee Policies, and Negotiated Belonging123 Suzan Ilcan and Vicki Squire 8 Making  Home in the Earth: Ecoglobalism in the Camps147 Yasmine Shamma 9 Home  Is Like Water: Nigerians in the Migration Pathway to the UK169 Marissa Quie and Titi Solarin Index193

Notes on Contributors

Dawn Chatty  is Emeritus Professor in Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, UK. She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. Her research interests include refugee youth in protracted refugee crises, conservation and development, pastoral society and forced settlement She is the author of Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (2010), From Camel to Truck (2013) and Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State (2018). Paul Vernon Dudman  has been the Archivist at the University of East London, UK, Archives for 20 years, whose archives include the Refugee Council Archive. Paul curates the Living Refugee Archive and edits Displaced Voices: A Journal of Archives, Migration and Cultural Heritage. He is Secretary for the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration Executive Committee, a co-convenor of the Working Group on the History of Forced Migration and Refugee, and Convenor for the Oral History Society Special Interest Group on Migration. Genevieve Guetemme  is a senior lecturer at the University of Orleans, France. Her research focuses on collecting and studying cultural and artistic images of displacement. These representations stand at the interfaces between drawing, photography and text, and investigate the ability of images to initiate an inclusive and hospitable process. The aim is to produce efficient instruments to understand recent political contexts or, to say it differently, to reveal the transformative power of art as a way to adjust to new communal spaces. xi

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Rumana Hashem  is a political sociologist and a lecturer in Sociology at the Nottingham Trent University. She is an immigrant researcher and a coordinator of the Working Group for History of Forced Migration and Refugees. She is also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London. Her research cross cuts gender, development, conflict, displacement and border struggles of women and young people from the global South. She mostly works pro bono in the UK, and taught and researched in five British universities. Suzan  Ilcan  is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research focuses on migration and borders, humanitarianism, and citizenship and social justice. She is the co-author of The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Migration, Citizenship, and Temporary Protection in Turkey. Zoë  Jordan is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), Oxford Brookes University, UK.  Her recent research has been in Jordan and Lebanon, paying attention to how displaced populations respond to and manage their displacement in protracted and urban contexts. Marissa Quie  is a Fellow and Director of Studies in HSPS and History and Politics at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, UK.  She is also College Lecturer in Politics and Director of Studies in HSPS at Magdalene College Cambridge. Her current research focuses on the challenges and opportunities linked with migration and displacement as a consequence of war and conflict, political, socioeconomic and environmental crises. She is interested in the motifs of participation and protection that characterise debates about people on the move, including refugees, internally displaced people, women and marginalised groups. Her work engages with the connections between migration, peace and security. Yasmine Shamma  is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary English Literature at the University of Reading, UK, specialising in twentieth–twenty-first century literatures. Her research attends to the poetry of place, and ranges across regions in its focus—from New York City to refugee camps. She is the author of Spatial Poetics, the editor of Joe Brainard’s Art, and the author of further works attending to contemporary literature’s registration of the dimensions of displacement.

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Thomas  Shaw is Associate Director for Digital Innovation & Open Research at Lancaster University Library, UK.  During the research described here, he was Head of Collections & Digital Library at the University of East London. This included responsibility for overseeing the library’s archives and special collections and promoting their role in wider civic engagement. His wide-ranging professional and research interests include the transformational impact and value of digital for libraries and archives, and the role for libraries and archives to achieve positive impact for society through innovative engagement with partners. Titi  Solarin is the Founder and Managing Director of Rerouting Initiative CIC. Rerouting Initiative is a multidimensional project focused on social justice, offering support services to ‘irregular’ and detained migrant women. It also works to support those who are deported to Nigeria. As a Nigeria-born British citizen, Titi and her family have extensive lived experiences of ‘irregular’ migration to the UK.  These experiences coupled with her educational journey which earned her a master’s degree in criminology gave birth to the Rerouting Initiative. Vicki Squire  is Professor of International Politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, UK.  Her research cuts across the fields of migration, citizenship and border studies, and she has published widely on the themes of asylum, sanctuary, migration, displacement, humanitarianism, border struggles and solidarity activism. Helen Underhill  is a Researcher in the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape at Newcastle University, UK, where she works within the GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub. From a background in Anthropology and Fine Art practice, her research engages creative methods for understanding the socio-cultural values of water and associated dwelling practices.

List of Figures

Fig. 5.1

The catalogue for the YAYA 2014 exhibition in Ramallah, published by the A. M. Qattan Foundation. (Author photo) 91 Fig. 6.1 Diala Brisly, Child Labour © Brisly (Zayton and Zaytonah magazine)104 Fig. 6.2 Children painting the school tent at Yahya, Bekaa, north Lebanon, Oct 2016 © Brisly 105 Fig. 6.3 Diala Brisly at home, Valence (France), 2019 © Laure Delhomme107 Fig. 6.4 Diala Brisly, Dream catcher copic marker and ink © Brisly (Zayton and Zaytonah magazine) 201 117

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CHAPTER 1

Making Home Away: Introduction to the Collection Helen Underhill, Vicki Squire, Yasmine Shamma, and Suzan Ilcan

This is a book about homemaking in situations of migration and displacement. It explores how homes are made, remade, lost, revived, expanded and contracted through experiences of migration, to ask what it means to make a home away from home. We draw together a wide range of perspectives from across multiple disciplines and contexts, which explore how old

H. Underhill (*) School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] V. Squire Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] Y. Shamma Department of English Literature, University of Reading, Reading, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_1

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homes, lost homes, and new homes connect and disconnect through processes of homemaking. The volume asks: how do spaces of resettlement or rehoming reflect both the continuation of old homes and distinct new experiences? This collection examines the complex negotiations implicit in the pursuit of home, as these are enacted by people moving across regions, state borders and different repertoires of belonging, which often include affective, social, political and economic dimensions. While refugee resettlement has been examined within the context of migration management on a global scale, this volume shifts the focus toward migrant perspectives and experiences of rehoming. This is not to overlook the significance of ‘hostile environments’ that shape processes of reception. Rather, it is to pay attention to the ways in which these conditions intersect with the life transitions of people experiencing both the loss of home (see for e.g. Arvanitis & Yelland, 2019; Murrani et al., 2022) and its remaking. Migration, Culture and Identity: Making Home Away generates critical perspectives on these issues from across the broad fields of the social sciences and humanities. Collectively, the authors explore the ways in which remaking home involves multiple negotiations of rights (e.g. to housing and employment), while providing important insights into the ways in which practices of homemaking generate diverse forms of activism. Far from engaging a static conception of home, where home is largely a fixed place with which one has a straightforward sense of identification and belonging, the book explores “home as an experiential dimension of the migrant’s everyday life” (Boccagni, 2016: XXII). As an interdisciplinary team of editors, we are especially interested in developing multi-­ dimensional appreciation of this ‘experiential dimension’. This is informed by, and understood through, various discourses, artforms, genres and practices, which facilitates a multiplicity of perspectives on what home means and how it takes shape.

S. Ilcan Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

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Remaking Home Through Displacement We have come together as editors here on the basis of our previous participation in the research project, Lost and Found?: A Digital Archive of Testimonies of Migration, Displacement and Resettlement. The project, funded by the British Academy “Tackling the UK’s International Challenges” scheme, centred on the curation and creation of a digital archive that showcases testimonies from Syrian refugees living in displacement (www.makinghomeaway.com). This archive offers a sample of Syrian refugee testimonies, which are pinned to various resettlement locations. It includes a wealth of original field interviews conducted with Syrian refugees resettled in Jordan, Cyprus, Canada and the UK, along with diverse images of refugee homes, which are curated as part of an accessible online archive. The archive offers insight into the various social practices, relations, losses, aspirations and forms of belonging that shape the lives and struggles of Syrians. For example, we learn about their escape from the war, movements across borders, separation from household members, paths of arrival and experiences of homemaking. It also enhances international understanding of the contemporary Syrian refugee crisis while highlighting the need for changed policies, both within the UK and beyond. As we discussed our research, the variations as well as the intersections between our disciplinary perspectives began to surface. Yasmine Shamma’s background is in Literary Studies, while Helen Underhill’s background is in Anthropology. Suzan Ilcan and Vicki Squire undertake interdisciplinary work across the fields of Politics, IR, Geography and Sociology. Despite these differences, we found our mutual concerns coalesced around several shared terms and stakes: homemaking as a process, as a site of contestation and resistance, and as a site of alternative ways of being in the world. Viewing these as fruitful areas to further pursue, we found they also demanded further space for growth. This book is precisely an attempt to open up such a space. As editors and contributors, we have a shared investment in the pursuit of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of lived experiences of migration. We would like to express our appreciation to, and admiration of, the many authors who have joined us in this endeavour by contributing to this book. While the Lost and Found project focused on Syrian experiences of resettlement, this book does much more. It extends the analysis of experiences of remaking home to Palestinians displaced (often multiple times) across the Middle East, as well as to groups such as Sudanese men in

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Jordan and Nigerians in (and out of) the UK. The collection is by no means exhaustive in its coverage, yet nevertheless retains multiplicity of perspective at its core. We pursue a definition of home as hybrid and fluid, moving beyond static conceptions associated with the nation and the state to highlight the ways in which homemaking remains in flux (see also: Kim & Smets, 2020; Wilkinson & Ortega-Alcazar, 2017). Drawing together established and emerging scholars from across the humanities and social sciences has been critical to this endeavour, including those from the disciplines of Anthropology, Geography, History, International Relations, Literature, Politics and Sociology. Building collaborations with various migrants, refugees, practitioners and artists has also been crucial. The purposes we pursue in this volume are threefold. Firstly, we seek to present a diversity of contemporary works on processes of homemaking in contexts of migration and displacement. Currently such research is undertaken by disparate projects and scholars. We seek to bring these together to cross-fertilise a range of informed perspectives on experiences of remaking home through displacement. Such perspectives bring to the forefront not only the nuanced, multifaceted and contextual dimensions of remaking home through displacement but also the ways in which displaced peoples live through processes of attachment such as nostalgia, memories, kinship, friendship, loss and hope. Secondly, we seek to advance methodological imaginations in scholarship surrounding homemaking. We do so by drawing together work of various genres and forms that centre the lived experiences, testimonies and negotiations of those who are displaced. Thirdly, we seek to explore the dynamics between policy framings and lived experiences of homemaking. This enables appreciation of the tensions that emerge in contexts of migration and displacement (see also: Brun & Fabos, 2015; Perez Murcia, 2019), as well as of the ways in which racial categories and colonial legacies continue to shape fields of lived experience. Our hope is that the chapters within this book will be drawn upon and further developed by the still emerging interdisciplinary field of scholarship on homemaking in displacement.

Thematic Resonances The chapters in this collection connect in various ways, holding together and pulling apart in ways that we find productive and stimulating. There are a range of thematic resonances that might be highlighted here; we will map just a few. The first relates to issues of temporality and historicity,

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which are present across all the chapters in the sense that homemaking is a process that is ongoing, marked by continuities and discontinuities and cannot be reduced to any simple linearity. Several chapters speak with particular poignance to this theme. For example, the piece by Dawn Chatty with Jihad and Watfa’ Darwaza provides both a sense of time passed in lived experiences, as well as in the framing of hospitality over time. It provides a powerful reminder that bureaucratic and policy structures, and the forms of violence they enact, are not inevitable or immutable. Helen Underhill also draws our attention to temporality and historicity in her analysis of contemporary Palestinian art, showing how intergenerational differences point to continuities and discontinuities of lived experiences and emphasising the importance of archival work to the work of homemaking. Rumana Hashem, Paul Vernon Dudman and Thomas Shaw similarly engage the archive in their analysis of the differentiated experiences of those resettling in the UK. This addresses a second theme to which many of the chapters speak: testimony, archive and voice. Engaging in detail with the testimonies of those with lived experiences of migration, the chapter provides an alternative archive of voices that generate rich reflections on the challenges of remaking home in situations of displacement. The centring of migrant and refugee voices is also a key dimension of the chapter by Suzan Ilcan and Vicki Squire, who point to the ways in which displaced Syrians negotiate and contest challenging conditions to remake home not only at sites of ‘resettlement’ but also at various locations along the way. Hostility, hospitality and care also arise as recurrent themes in this book. Marissa Quie and Titi Solarin provide rich insight into the UK’s ‘hostile environment’, highlighting the importance of stories to the migrant experience while providing a rich sea metaphor in their description of home as ‘like water’. While water reflects fragilities—not only of persons but also of territorialities—it also provides sustenance, and in this respect might be understood in terms of hospitality and care. These are themes that Zoë Jordan tackles directly in her analysis of refugee-refugee hosting. While providing safety and security, Jordan’s chapter shows how care and mutual homemaking involve the sharing of finances, information, intimacy and emotional support. Within contexts of hostility and violence, we thus find life-sustaining dynamics of homemaking built on connections that are in a continued state of flux.

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The materiality as well as the symbolism of homemaking is something which also resonates across multiple chapters in this book, which collectively engage poetry, art, metaphor and voice as a means to reveal these complexities. For example, Yasmine Shamma’s focus on refugee gardening highlights the ecological dimensions of homemaking in the camp environment. Drawing on poetry and traditions of literary ecocritism, the chapter draws attention to the ways in which homemaking in displacement can involve a forging of relations with the earth at large. From another angle, Genevieve Guetemme draws attention to the material connections that are drawn across time and space in the continued work of homemaking. By exploring the interrelation of homemaking and artmaking, the chapter weaves cultural artefacts and memories into the analysis. Without doubt, there are many more themes and resonances that can be found across the chapters in this book. We will now turn to a summary of each contribution as an invitation to the reader to explore these resonances for themselves.

Chapter Contributions In the opening chapter, Dawn Chatty with Jihad and Watfa’ Darwaza historicises the process of making home in new spaces. Specifically, the chapter draws on interviews conducted with a member of the oldest surviving generation of Palestinians who came to Syria in the 1930s. This group made new places to call home for themselves, without losing sight of their roots in Palestine. Jihad and Watfa’ arrived in Damascus as ‘exiles’ after being expelled from British mandated Palestine. They were later joined by family members after the 1947–48 war, who were then classified as refugees. For these Palestinians, the process of finding comfort and ease, and of making new places to live in exile, was a significant contribution to the social fabric of the city throughout the mid-twentieth century. The analysis situates Watfa’s narrative in a rich history of exile and hospitality in the region. It highlights processes of belonging and making home in the former Ottoman region of Bilad al Sham that were based on acceptance of the ‘other’, a local conviviality that tolerated differences among social groups. In doing so, it provides an important historical context and counterpoint for discussions of more recent Syrian experiences of exile in the neighbouring states of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Zoë Jordan’s chapter analyses the role of household-level refugee-­ refugee hosting relationships. The analysis focuses on hosting as a relationship of care and as an essential site for understanding refugees’

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experiences of home and displacement. Based on qualitative research with Sudanese men living in urban Amman, it explores the alternative levels or arenas of belonging generated through care networks, which allow displaced individuals to survive in hostile contexts. Though they are unable to achieve full belonging, Jordan argues that hosting relationships hold potential for both ‘place-belongingness’ and, to a more limited extent, a ‘politics of belonging’ through everyday practices of dwelling and care-­ taking. Despite household-level hosting being an overlooked practice in humanitarian and forced migration studies, such acts are crucial in understanding urban displacement. In attending to the everyday ways in which these men created and experienced such relations of care, Jordan re-­ focuses our attention on how refugees inhabit and negotiate protracted urban displacement and, in doing so, present claims to home. Rumana Hashem, Paul Vernon Dudman and Thomas Shaw of the Living Refugee Archive project investigate identity and memories of home and loss through engaging the testimonies of those remaking home in England and Scotland following experiences of displacement. The chapter presents extracts from life histories of displaced men and women who migrated from countries in the Global South before 2016, which was a watershed year due to the Brexit vote. The authors highlight the challenges people faced in remaking home under restrictive immigration policies presented within the framework of the ‘hostile environment’. Recognising the different meanings of home involves an effort to decolonise knowledge in the archive. The chapter develops a non-essentialist intersectional approach to identity, migration and diaspora in order to comprehend the paradoxical, relational, multiple and complex meanings of home. In so doing, the authors argue that home to the displaced is not solely about materiality or spatiality; home and identity are influenced by the politics of belonging and the policies of the host country. Continuing the archival theme, Helen Underhill addresses recent invocations of the archive within contemporary visual art from Palestine. Using ethnographic detail from the 2014 iteration of the Ramallah-based Young Artist of the Year Award, the chapter presents the work of archival artmaking as homemaking work, exploring how artists collect together what has been scattered or displaced, preserving both the material and the ephemeral in face of dispersal and destruction. Through processes of reflection and reference, this artwork draws together different concepts of home and homeland, and by reinterpretation it remakes these in reference to the changing circumstances of new generations. These references

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seed discussions around reverence, and what the past and its material, cultural and personal echoes mean for making home in the present, both on an individual basis, and collectively as a nation subject to ongoing displacement. The artworks discussed within the chapter foreground homemaking as a long-term project with intergenerational dimensions and implications for the significant Palestinian cultural value of Sumud (trans: ‘steadfastness’). Genevieve Guetemme also engages with practices of homemaking by artists and with the theme of collected artefacts and visual ways of documenting and responding to displacement. The chapter provides analysis of the emotional and material elements of home making, via engagement with the work and home environment of Syrian artist and activist Diala Brisly. While Syrian homes are largely invisible and undocumented, they remain an essential base, even if transient, for those granted refugee status. As Brisly says: “We don’t have a country; we don’t have a room”. The chapter nevertheless shows how Brisly curates her home-room as a narrative with many intertwined stories, in so doing exposing the continuity of a life built on losses and adaptation. The analysis of Brisly’s images, and the process of collecting and curating material objects as part of her art and homemaking practices, highlight the physical and mental topoï that make a home for refugees, showing how a place becomes ‘habitable’. Suzan Ilcan and Vicki Squire explore the recollections of refugees who have survived the current Syrian war and who are confronted with the challenges of forced displacement, relocation, loss and belonging. The chapter draws on in-depth qualitative interviews with refugees from Syria who have relocated to London, Canada and Coventry, UK to chart experiences of displacement and rehoming as these emerge across the migratory journey. Exploring the diverse temporalities and means by which Syrians create home ‘away’ from home, the analysis highlights how processes of homemaking involve struggles in the face of state policies and social conditions that create barriers and exacerbate the labour required to negotiate everyday experiences of loss and belonging. The authors suggest that resettled refugee experiences of homemaking expose the problematic framing of home in conventional and static terms, which works against various aspects of belonging, and generates mixed experiences of resettlement. Yasmine Shamma dwells on the notion of building in homemaking, by drawing attention to the periphery of the refugee tent and caravan, and the way refugee gardening within camps is at once transgressive, regressive

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and progressive. The chapter focuses on the experience of Syrian refugees living within camps in Jordan, to highlight the tendency to root the act of homemaking in gardening practices and metaphors. It shows how Syrian refugees temporarily or impermanently displaced throughout the camps of Jordan’s deserts exhibit, in their gardening practices and pursuits, an environmentalism whereby something transgressive is at play. Drawing on interview material with the refugees, the chapter works to foreground refugee voices in understanding the complexities of displacement. It reflects on the progressive yet regressive implications of the transgressions of gardening and the tendency of stateless subjects to become entangled in the timeless practices of planting trees, flowers and fruits in the here and now. In the collection’s concluding chapter, Marissa Quie and Titi Solarin engage the experiences of those migrating between Nigeria and the UK. It explores experiences of life under conditions of a ‘hostile environment’, while also probing the experiences of Nigerians who have been placed in detention in the UK and those experiencing conditions post-deportation. This enables the authors to explore the multiple perceptions and experiences that generate the meaning of home. Developing a sea metaphor of home as ‘like water’, the authors draw attention to the flux and liquidity of home; to the overspilling of spatial and temporal boundaries. This chapter asks what happens when a person falls—legally and politically— into the ‘fissures’ that open up between nation states, and explores, via rich testimony, how these individuals attempt to reconstitute a sense of belonging, how they make home (and how their homemaking is thwarted) within complex migration pathways. Making Home Away builds on a nascent body of scholarship that examines lived experiences of migration, displacement and homemaking. It advances a nuanced analysis of the ways in which memories, identities and negotiations of displacement are integral to the pursuit of home. In this regard, the collection considers how static notions of home are unsettled by homemaking processes that cut across past, present and future, and that enact a diversity of places and scales. The chapters in this collection document the ways in which the spatial and temporal dimensions of homemaking are expanded through displacement, generating non-static, unstable and fluid conceptions of home. By considering the lifetime works of those who lose, pursue, and ultimately make and remake homes through displacement, the volume goes beyond assumptions regarding the loss of homes as being occasional and tragic, to explore the ongoing project of

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their re/making. Collectively we therefore point to the importance of a longer-term approach to the analysis of homemaking and displacement— not only in relation to displacement but also in relation to movement and arrival.

References Arvanitis, E., & Yelland, N. (2019). ‘Home means everything to me…’: A study of young Syrian refugees’ narratives constructing home in Greece. Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(1), 535–554. Boccagni, P. (2016). Migration and the search for home: Mapping domestic space in migrants’ everyday lives. Palgrave. Brun, C., & Fabos, A. (2015). Making homes in limbo? A conceptual framework. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 31(1), 5–17. Kim, K., & Smets, P. (2020). Home experiences and homemaking practices of single Syrian refugees in an innovative housing project in Amsterdam. Current Sociology, 68(5), 607–627. Murrani, S., Lloyd, H., & Popovici, I.-C. (2022). Mapping home, memory and spatial recovery in forced displacement. Social & Cultural Geography. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2022.2055777 Perez Murcia, L. (2019). Where the heart is and where it hurts: Conceptions of home for people fleeing conflict. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 38, 139–158. Wilkinson, E., & Ortega-Alcazar, I. (2017). A home of one’s own? Housing welfare for ‘Young Adults’ in times of austerity. Critical Social Policy, 37(3), 329–347.

CHAPTER 2

Watfa’ Speaks Dawn Chatty With contrib. by Jihad Darwaza With contrib. by Watfa’ Darwaza

Making home is both an architectural notion and a social one. Homes are constructed out of physical spaces and then ‘populated’ by people who are generally biologically related to some degree. Thus, the concepts of space are largely physical but can also be constructed so as to have special social meanings such as memorials, graveyards, or spaces with other embodied meanings. Physical spaces can also take on numerous and overlapping meanings when they are socially constructed; buildings can become socially constructed places for those who occupy them, with places sometimes overlapping in physical spaces (Gupta & Ferguson, 1992). An architectural space can be made ‘home’ by the actions and social ties of those who take up residence in it. A city, or urban neighbourhood or quarter is a defined physical space but can become a socially constructed home-like place for those who live and interact in it. So not only the buildings, but the streets, the parks, the schools, the places of worship, the orchards, the

D. Chatty (*) University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_2

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markets, the retail shops all take on a special sense of familiarity that makes individuals feel at home. In exile, and forced migration, homemaking goes through several stages. There is the initial, sometimes emergency phase, where individuals or family groups first find sanctuary. This may be a church, or a school providing temporary shelter, or a rented accommodation, generally too small for those who are housed in it (Katz, 2020). This initial stage of arrival often has an air of adventure and temporariness for children who are not aware of the nature of their migration, if physical conflict was not experienced by them. Then comes a transitional phase, where the unit moves to new spaces generally closer to the desires of the group in size and aspect. And finally, though some forced migrants never reach this last phase, there is the permanent homemaking in a physical space that feels familiar and is populated by the extended social and kin group network. Here, home becomes an idea and a practice: home as day-to-day practices; home as representing values, traditions, memories, and home as an affect, the feeling of home (Brun & Fábos, 2015). Exiles and forced migrants from Israel/Palestine have made home away from Palestine for decades. For many, making home away meant turning the refugee camp originally set up as an emergency shelter into something familiar and perhaps transitional, but not permanent. For others, the camps set up for them by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were regarded as permanently temporary. And efforts are made to make sure nothing permanent, like trees or plants, burst through the cement walkways of their camps so as to maintain the notion of its temporariness despite its long durée (Chatty & Lewando Hundt, 2005). Not all displaced Palestinians regarded themselves as refugees; nor did they always enter refugee camps. Many who came to Syria as exiles or forced migrants fleeing the British colonial powers that had taken over southern Syria (Palestine) after World War I felt they were taking sanctuary in a familiar place. By the mid-1930s as the Arab Uprising in the British Mandate of Palestine erupted, many Palestinian political leaders escaped incarceration by moving to Amman. But even there, the King of Transjordan, King Abdullah I, was under pressure to give up those  to whom  he was providing sanctuary. Rather than give up his ‘guests’, he advised them to leave for Damascus where they would come under French Mandatory rule. It is here that this chapter is placed, following the memories of a woman well into her 80s reflecting back on how home was

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gradually created in exile in Damascus, and situating this narrative in a historical appreciation of processes of homemaking in the region.

Contextualizing a Shared History The notion of belonging, of making home has attracted significant research interest in recent years, especially as displaced Syrians have sought refuge and asylum and struggled to develop a sense of belonging, of social inclusion, in neighbouring states as well as in far-flung places in Europe and Australia and North America (Dona, 2015; Korac, 2009; Mallett, 2004). There are many tropes regarding home and homemaking in many languages. In English we have ‘home is where the heart is’ or ‘home is carried on our backs’ as clichés that govern our conceptions of home. The argument I make in this chapter is that making home and creating a sense of belonging in the neighbouring states of Syria is contextually and historically linked to the common heritage of Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) during the 400 years of Ottoman rule. Belonging, in this sense, was deeply embedded in two institutions and norms that were developed and encouraged by the Ottoman state. The first was the self-governing religious millet system formally legislated in the nineteenth century, but in effect for many years before and which created a kind of imagined community (Anderson, 1991). The Ottoman millets were three: Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. The religious hierarchy of each millet established laws which governed family life; matters regarding births, marriages, divorce, death, and inheritance were all in the hands of the religious clergy. The second was the mobility of families and groups, sometimes legislated by the state to maintain its multicultural empire. This freedom of movement eventually resulted in the emergence of a local cosmopolitanism with various ethno-religious groups living side by side. Each recognized the other as different but tolerated. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the close of World War I, these norms and practices were tolerated, if not actually encouraged, by the successor colonial rule of France and Great Britain. Palestinians who fled from the British colonial administration of Palestine starting in the 1930s to find sanctuary in Damascus felt largely at home upon arrival as attested in the narrative of Watfa’, the niece of a well-off, prominent Palestinian intellectual and activist for Arab independence. Being Palestinian was little different from being Syrian and, as her testimony reveals, childish games did differentiate Palestinians from Syrians, but not

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for long. Eventually being Syrian meant being part of a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan entity that encompassed Palestinians, Circassians, Armenians and many other forced migrant groups who had sought sanctuary in Greater Syria (Rabo, 2008). Their integration was assured by Ottoman legacies of mobility and dispersal, making assimilation into a hegemonic notion of ‘Syrian-ness’ not only unlikely but impossible as no such unitary notion existed. Thus making ‘home’—creating a deterritorialized and imagined community of belonging, constructing biological and fictive kin relations and networks, and reshaping physical spaces into ‘remembered’ places—had many similar features throughout the former Ottoman region of ‘Greater Syria’. These particular elements of ‘home making’ help to explain the relative ease with which Syrians who were displaced post-2011 were initially able to make ‘home’ in the neighbouring states of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey.

Mass Influx and Asylum in the Ottoman Empire Contrary to much popular thinking, the organized response to mass influx of forced migrants was not a twentieth century invention, but rather emerged much earlier. The nineteenth century Ottoman empire, in the course of its six wars with Tsarist Russia between 1790s and 1880s witnessed wave after wave of mass influx of Muslim forced migrants entering its territory from its border lands. In most cases these forced migrants had travelled with little more than the clothes on their backs and whatever they could pile onto their oxcarts. Their survival on the road depended on the kindness of local people and municipal authorities as they made their way south. Many died on the road from starvation or disease. Over time, these expulsions were accompanied by local Ottoman civil society organizations set up to assist and resettle these forced migrants. Local towns and cities opened up their mosques and churches to shelter and feed these exiles. But as the sheer scale of the mass influx became clear, the needs for a centralized organization became necessary. At the close of the Crimean War of 1856, more than 500,000 Muslim Tatars were expelled from the Crimea and entered the Ottoman Empire. The following year, 1857, the Ottoman Sublime Porte promulgated a Refugee Code with guidelines as to how to respond to the urgent need to provide shelter and food for those expelled initially from the Crimea but also from other borderland regions with Russia. Its primary directive was to swiftly disperse and integrate its forced migrants. Those families and

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groups with only a minimum amount of capital were provided with plots of state land to start life anew in the Ottoman empire in agricultural activity. Families who applied for land in Anatolia and Greater Syria were exempted from taxation and military conscription for 12 years. Ottoman reformers were eager to see the largely depopulated Syrian provinces be revived by these new migrants after several centuries of misadministration, war, famine, and several pandemics of the plague (Shaw & Shaw, 1977:115). In 1860 as rising requests for plots of state land came in from forced migrants and potential immigrants, the Ottoman authorities transformed the Code into a Refugee Commission (the Ottoman Commission for the General Administration of Immigration) under the Ministry of Trade (Shaw & Shaw, 1977:115). The Commission was charged with integrating not only the Tatars and Circassians fleeing from lands conquered by the Russians north and west of the Black Sea but also the thousands of non-Muslim immigrant farmers and political leaders from Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland, Cossacks from Russia and Bulgarians from the Balkans seeking refuge (Shaw & Shaw, 1977:116). The Ottoman approach to these forced migrants was both instrumental—reviving agriculture and taxing farming—and politically astute, as it sought to manage local political conflicts along border regions and frontiers where Circassian and Chechnyan settlements were being promoted. Nowhere did it permit more than 10% of an incoming group to settle in one place. Particularly noticeable in urban centres, this policy created a local cosmopolitanism where the babble of different languages, assorted foods, and dress gave the notion of ‘otherness’ new meaning (Hannerz, 1996).

Deterritorialized Belonging and Social Duty of Hospitality What was remarkable about the Ottoman Empire was the way that its organizing ethos was not based on territorial rootedness but rather on religious affiliation; belonging was tied to social places rather than physical spaces. In other words, belonging in this region of the Eastern Mediterranean, until the end of World War I, was based on recognition of the superiority of Islam in the Empire, alongside a tolerance of the Ahl-il-­ Kitab—its Jewish and Christian communities. The latter was not just derived from religious tenets but emerged also from economic and

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political realism. European nineteenth century economic and political interests in the Christian and Jewish communities in the Middle East as well as Ottoman principles of self-governance for these ethno-religious groups resulted in the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman reforms which formally legislated the establishment of protected community, ‘millets’, whose religious and social affairs were organized from within the structure of the church or synagogue. Within the Ottoman millet system, Muslims, for example, might be ethnically and linguistically, Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Albanians, Bosnians, Circassians and others. Jews might be Sephardic, the descendants of those who had been expelled from Spain in the late 14th century and given refuge, European (Ashkenazi), or ‘native’ Mizrahi, or Oriental Jews. The Christians were mainly Orthodox and might identify as Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians (in the Balkans) and Arabs (in Palestine and Syria). The individual millet community self-governed its internal affairs. Intercommunity relations gave rise to a broad range of social networks far beyond the specific geographical territory of the immediate community, especially among the professional and commercial classes. It was the legacy of these ‘millets’ that shaped the way in which the migrants (forced and voluntary), exiles, and other dispossessed peoples of Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) would be successfully integrated without being assimilated into the fabric of the modern societies and cultures of the Levant; where social norms and concepts of duty were prioritized in providing refuge to those in need (Chatty, 2013). With the end of World War I, this largely successful multicultural and religiously plural Empire was rapidly dismantled. However, despite the forced migrations of millions of ethno-religious minorities (as well as Muslim majorities from the Balkans), which saw an entire empire on the move, the legacy of the deterritorialized aspects of belonging tied to the Ottoman ethno-religious millets laid the foundations for later elaborations of integration based on notions of social and religious duty. These were mainly circular and back and forth movements between relations, co-­ religionists, colleagues, customers, and creditors in the modern Arab successor states carved out of Greater Syria. The making of home became less tied to territory as it was to family and community dispersed throughout the region. With identity and security based on family, lineage, and ethno-­ religious millets, movement did not represent a decoupling, or deracination, but rather a widening of horizontal networks of support and solidarity that stretched throughout the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire. Relatives, close and distant, had already been spread over a wide

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region far beyond the confines of the modern Syrian nation-state and could be called on for support, shelter, and security when needed. Home and homemaking was, thus, simplified as the elements required to feel at ease, to feel at home, to share traditions, and memories were spread over broad horizontal spaces. Notions of hospitality, generosity, and the worthiness of the guest in augmenting individual and family honour are fundamental to an understanding of many societies and cultures. They are particularly redolent of the Arab world, where notions of modernity are mixed with those of custom and customary principles of behaviour and action. Hospitality and generosity encompass notions of dignity, respect, protection as well as security. The family, the lineage, the social group, and the nation’s reputation is in many ways hostage to correct behaviour with a guest/stranger; inappropriate behaviour might lead to disrespect, danger, and insecurity. Thus, in Syria, Palestinian, Kurds, Armenians, Iraqis, and other displaced peoples were welcomed—initially—as temporary guests, and as long as they behaved as was required of a guest, they were treated as nationals and allowed to go about their business of settling in, setting up a business, or engaging in circular migrations in and out of the country. Contrary to the dominant discourse on hospitality in the West and in humanitarian aid settings, where asylum seekers are placed in the middle ground between mere biological life and full social existence in detention centres and refugee camps (Agamben, 1998), the notions of hospitality and generosity in Syria and the neighbouring Arab states have made it nearly impossible for regional governments to adopt the ‘bureaucratic indifference’ to human needs and suffering’ so common in the international humanitarian aid regime. Syria, as with most countries of the Middle East, has no explicit domestic asylum laws largely because asylum is deeply rooted in implicit notions of individual, family, and group reputation. The nation is regarded as the home and the head of the family is sovereign of the state. The nation becomes a house in which hospitality can be offered and received. The collective memory of a number of forced displacements of the past few centuries means that yesterday’s guest is readily acknowledged as today’s neighbour (Zaman, 2016:131). In this sense the host is thus someone who has the power to give to the stranger [generosity] but remains in control (Derrida, 2000). Providing hospitality (or asylum) in this region is seen as increasing the individual, the family and the nation’s reputation for generosity (Chatty, 2017). Thus, customary law, social norms, and a moral positioning to treat the stranger as guest does not

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require national legislation to be implemented; the stranger is accepted without being separated out and placed in an internment camp. The acceptance of these ‘others’ creates a local conviviality that makes belonging and the making of home easier (Rabo, 2011).

Interviewing Watfa’ The narrative which follows was created from a series of interviews, not unlike the method used by Jason de Leon in the early 2000s (De Leon, 2015). Whereas De Leon used numerous interviews with a number of informants to create a ‘composite’ of the migrant experience. Here we have used a number of interviews—some semi-informal, unstructured, other natural (sitting together sharing a coffee and allowing Watfa’ to muse about the past) to put together this narrative. The ordering of her thoughts is not always consecutive; later interviews often filled in blanks from earlier ones. My questions and some deep probing by Jihad, her younger sister and my long-term research associate in Syria, were removed so as to allow for a smooth flow of her recollections. The words are all her own, but sometimes the order has been changed to smooth the narrative out. In an effort to test the reliability and validity of her earlier statements, my research associate, Jihad, adopted the methodological tool of cognitive interviewing (Beatty & Willis, 2007). Engaging with Watfa’ in 2021, she revisited the earlier interviews and gently probed the same subjects of her earliest memories of Damascus as a young girl of ten to see if the questions and prompts were providing the same responses to the questions asked a decade or so before. The first set of interviews were conducted when Watfa’ was in her early 80s. These more recent cognitive interviews indicated that her long-term memory was embedded—the stories she first told were now, somehow, made permanent or frozen in her recall of the past. Watfa’, now in her early 90s, was finding it difficult to recall new memories. Her recollections of the past were clear, but once tapped, were hard to get beyond. A few new details of her early life in Damascus did emerge with cognitive interviewing, but these were fragments of events, like playing hopscotch at school, or recalling the shock of seeing her father after many months of absence. By and large the cognitive interviews confirmed and refreshed her earlier narratives.

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Watfa’ Remembers Damascus We came to Damascus from Palestine in the 1930s. My father and my uncle had already been here. They had come a year earlier following the 1936 Arab Revolt in Palestine; the British did not allow them to return to Palestine, and they had to stay in Damascus. They came in 1936, and we arrived in 1937. I was the eldest child, about ten years old. In fact, I can’t give you a true picture of the social life in the Sha’laan Quarter of Damascus at the time for what I recall is limited to what might attract a girl at my age. For example, one of the most fascinating scenes that magnetized me was the sight of loaded camels as they approached, with their ringing bells, the large oval shaped entrance of the Sha’laan House where some people were busy unloading the camels while others rushed to pay respect to and take care of an elderly man who seemed to enjoy a certain status. I would never miss that scene for anything in the world. That is why I can’t tell you much about the social life. What interested me was what might interest a ten-year-old naughty Palestinian girl. A Shami (Damascene) girl could perhaps tell you much more because a Shami girl of ten is almost a young lady. The quarter of Sha’laan was quite big. It branched off—forked into many lanes. Actually, the same ones you see today on the right and left starting from the Franciscan school. Through the lane where the Maysoon elementary school was (today [2008] it is the Women’s Union Headquarters), we could get to the famous Arch (a characterizing landmark of Shuhada quarter), where a famous and handsome pharmacist had his pharmacy. The guy was so handsome that many girls had a crush on him. Whenever they did not do well in the exam, they pretended to faint in order to be taken care of by the handsome pharmacist from the Qanqwati family. When we first arrived, my father and uncle were staying in a house located in the first lane on the right as you approach from the Franciscan School. The lane led to the present Ministry of Health. It [the house] was not new, but it was not of traditional Arabic style. It was a two-floor building. The Mashnouq family lived on the first floor. We lived up on the second floor. The apartment had a large hall surrounded by five or six rooms—the then typical style of floor plan. No L shapes. No corridor, just a spacious hall surrounded by rooms. In addition to the kitchen and the bathroom, there was a toilet close to the front door. That was also

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common in all houses at the time. They thought it was convenient in case a passer-by guest needed to use the toilet. My father, my uncle, my eldest cousin, who had come earlier with them, my mother, my two sisters, my two brothers, my grandmother, my aunt, and a cousin of my father whose parents were dead. We were 14 people altogether. There was a room for my parents, a room for my uncle and his wife (she fell sick, was taken to hospital and died the same year we arrived in Damascus), a room for my grandmother and aunt, a room for me and my sisters, a room for my brothers and one room for my girl cousins. I was told by my uncle that they were all under threat of arrest for being deeply involved in protests against the British occupation of Palestine that was supporting the Zionist movement. My father had already taken refuge in Damascus organizing supportive activities for the uprising in Palestine, and my activist uncle was forced by the British Trans-Jordanian authorities to leave Amman. King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan had bluntly told my uncle that he could no longer protect him from the British. On the first floor below were the Mashnouqs—a decent family from Hama. They were amazingly hospitable and friendly. As I have just mentioned, my uncle’s wife died soon after we arrived in Damascus. The Mashnouqs rushed to help out and offered their house to receive the men who came to pay condolences on the occasion. This tells a lot about the social relations at the time. The father, Abdul-Hamid, had three girls and six boys. The youngest was our age. The oldest outlived his brothers. Some of the families who chose to live in Shalaan were those who fled British oppression in Jordan or Palestine, such as the Abul-Labans, the Nabulsis, and the Kamala. Those families were forced to leave Palestine for political reasons. The narrow lanes in Sha’laan were occupied by such families or by French families. The houses were small with a small front garden and a rivulet/brooklet. You know, you would knock at the door and then be led through a corridor to a small courtyard with one or two rooms. The stairs took you up into an open square balcony, (the mashraka), which received the morning sun rays, a small hall, and two or more rooms. I’m not sure of the number of rooms because we didn’t live in any of those houses. All the houses had rivulets from the Barada River but not inside the house. Water of rivulets streamed with such strength that later on they had to be covered lest a child should fall and be carried away beneath the house to the next house. The house of Um Aida is typical of those houses, and we can go there to have an idea about the style. Our house was quite different. It had a spacious hall surrounded by many rooms. On the

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opposite side of our house lived a Russian girl called Nadia. She was tall with a red spot on her face. Her father was a huge man. Young boys used to fancy the girl, and there were rumours that French officers were entertained by Nadia and her mother. They were foreigners and would normally receive foreign visitors, which was misinterpreted by the local people. For us, we were Palestinians. We belonged to Bilad al-Sham, so coming to Damascus was not such a shock. We weren’t really different from Syrians. But I remember when we first were put into school, the Syrian girls used to stand aside and stare at us as though we were somehow not belonging. Then I decided to teach them a lesson. I drew a hopscotch on the ground with chalk, the way we used to play it in Palestine. I also was very aggressive in explaining the rules, the Palestinian rules. And so we would play like this during school breaks and after school. After a while the Syrian girls got curious and wanted to watch us. Finally, they asked if they could play with us. Of course, we said yes, they could. After that they stopped making fun of our Palestinian accents. I’m not sure about the Armenians. Many of them came to Damascus 10 or 20 years before. They probably lived mostly in Qassaa’ quarter in West Damascus. The Armenians who lived in Sha’laan were mainly in the narrow lanes that extended between Sha’laan and Salhiyyeh. At the southern end of Sha’laan there was a large square where horse-driven carriages were parked. When my mother or aunt needed to go somewhere, they would send me out to fetch a carriage back to the house. If a carriage happened to be going in the direction of the parking lot, I would secretly climb up the rod at the back of the carriage taking the risk of receiving a few hits of the driver’s whip. When I got to the square and picked a carriage properly, I would then enter the caleche and sit back inside and look proudly around. I still remember the restless horses at the parking square with feed bags hanging down their necks. They couldn’t have actually parked the carriages in Sha’laan at that time because there wasn’t a spacious square for that purpose. So, they waited for customers at Arnous Square, today’s March Eighth Square, enjoyed a very strategic central location for all people coming from nearby areas: Sha’laan, Ra’iees, Takreeti (where Adnan al-Malki lived) and Rawda. There were two markets at that time. One of them was run by a one-­ eyed man called Hasan. His shop was just next to the mosque. You know the often-smelly mosque in the middle of Sha’laan. There was another mosque. That was the Shanawani Mosque, which was built much later than the Sha’laan mosque after we arrived in Sha’laan. Actually, the house

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we lived in was owned by the Shanawanis. Let me show you something. This here was an old notebook where my father kept a journal. It says that Homam (my brother) was born in January 1939  in Damascus in the Shanawani house across from the Franciscan School. Jihad, my sister, was born on March 6, 1940 in Halbouni in the Tarabishi House. Waddah was born.… That brother died. Mujahed was born in 1936 in Amman, Hakam was born in 1933, Shafaq was born in 1930 in Nablus as was I [Watfa’] in 1926, and Laila in 1928. So, all of my siblings and I were born in different places. Four of us were born in Palestine, one in Jordan, and the rest in Syria. The first house we lived in Damascus was too small for us—we were 14 people altogether. We lived there for a couple of months only. A new building was recently built across the road from the Franciscan school. The famous political figure and leader, Abdurrahman al-Shah Bandar, lived there. On the first floor there were two apartments. We pulled down the dividing walls to have one large apartment with ten bedrooms, two bathrooms and two kitchens. In those days we often had to accommodate political refugees, revolutionary men, coming from Palestine to give or receive arms. I will never forget the day when I opened the front door and got scared at the sight of the beggar standing there. I slammed the door and rushed inside telling my family that there was a frightening beggar at the door. My uncle jumped up, opened the door and, to my great surprise, took the beggar into his arms and started kissing him with tears running down his cheek. The beggar turned out to be my father whom my uncle had sent a few months earlier with others to Iraq to get arms. They were lost somewhere in the desert and there was no news of them. His beard was long, his dirty clothes were worn out, his heels were badly slit, and he had a rough dirty overcoat—‘abaayeh’—on. My mom, of course, recognized him. A barber was called for, and while giving him a bath, it was found that there were strange skin insects that had dug deep in the skin. He later told us that they had really suffered in the desert and had had to drink their own urine for lack of water. I attended the Dawhat al Adab School. It was recognized as the best non-French school in Syria. The director, Madam Loris Qandalfat, a Christian, well-educated and knowledgeable Syrian woman was a friend of my father’s friend—Akram Z’eiter [a leading Palestinian political figure]. My cousin, Salma, having first gone to an English school in Jerusalem, was sent to the American school in Saida, in what is now Lebanon. The rest of us went to Dawhet al-Adab. Jihad and Homam [youngest sister and

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brother] were not yet born. I was put into grade four and had a letter of reference from my previous school in Jerusalem saying that I was a good and well-­disciplined student. I walked to school. It was very close to our house at that time. It was located just at the near end of Salhiyyeh Street along which the tram coming from Muhajireen passed on its way to al-Marjeh. In Damascus at that time there were cars, but not many. When you looked out on the street you might see a car or two. We, ourselves, came to Damascus through Safad Palestine in two luxurious Oldsmobile cars. So, there were cars about, but they were used only for long distance trips. My aunt used to take a car to Himmeh or to Jiser al-Shughour near Aleppo to bathe in the mineral water. As for short distances or picnics, horse drawn carriages or caleches were exclusively used. I never felt alone or ‘out of place’; we were a big family. We were many. We played together, we went to school together, we ate together. Even then, when you move to a new place, you are looked upon as strangers. I remember that there were always two men at our door. They did the shopping. Coming to think of it now, they were probably there for security reasons. I rarely did any shopping. However, I still remember the grandfather of the owners of a present shop in the middle of Sha’laan. He was called Halfoun, and he used to sit at the door of Dawhat al-Adab to sell fresh almonds and green prunes piled on a huge round tray. Actually, Halfoun who died only a few years ago was a landmark in Sha’laan. There was also Nayeeni, the well-known Jewish man who ran a textile shop nearby in Shuhada and the Jewish Madam Shalhoob who sold exclusive women’s shoes in Shuhada as well. We knew all the merchants in the Sha’laan Quarter. It was like a big home to us. There were many important Syrian families who sent their children to Dawhat al-Adab School. The children of Shukri al-Quwatli, the Diabs, the Malkis, the Halbounis, the Hajjars, the Azems, the Abeds…. They were the children of the notable families in Damascus. It is worth mentioning now that most of the women whose children or grandchildren attended the school were active members in various societies and charitable associations. One of these women even started a project to create embroidered tablecloths for poor women to sell. This was called aghabani and since has become an important cultural feature of the country. Every middle class and upper middle-class family has numerous sets of aghabani tablecloths. It is also widely exported.

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After school we had to go straight back home. We were not allowed to fool around in the streets. However, we were encouraged to have Syrian and Palestinian friends coming after school for a visit which often ended by having an afternoon meal of roasted white goat cheese before going home. Walking home with friends was allowed when we were a bit older and had moved to Arnous—at the other end from Arnous square. That house was not 100% of traditional Arabic style. It had a big courtyard and a roof attic. However, unlike the traditional Arabic style houses, the second floor had a spacious hall—almost as big as Arnous Square with eight bedrooms around it. Except for the room where the house helper and her daughter slept, all rooms were quite large. In addition, the middle floor had a kind of balcony and a square open space ‘mashraka’ that received morning sun rays and was shadowed by vine leaves. Corridors with coloured glass walls led to the ‘mashraka’ on one side and the balcony on the other. I liked the corridor that led to the balcony very much, and being the eldest child, I took the liberty of keeping it for myself for privacy purposes. I closed the door to the corridor and kept only the one that opened to the balcony open. It was my favourite game to leave the lights of my room on all night to give the neighbouring boys the illusion of being awake and so they might see me appear in the balcony anytime, while I was in fact sound asleep in my comfortable bed. We spent time in the summer with Syrian and Palestinian friends, went on picnics with the family or, when older, went to one of the movie theatres in Damascus, the Roxy on Fardos St. or Ampere at the upper end of Salhiyyeh. Close to Hijaz train station, there was a modest movie theatre that used to show very good films about historical figures such as Chopin or George Sand. We had a large library at that house [but not all books were on display], as my father and uncle had had to flee from French mandatory authorities to Turkey. There was probably some sort of deal with the British colonial authority in Palestine to capture them. So, some of the books in the house were banned; these books were not displayed on shelves but stuffed into wall cabinets. That was where I stole the book of One Thousand Nights. It was not considered proper reading for my age, so I had to read it secretly. I still remember the frequent phrase “He fell unconscious”. It was used whenever a young man met his beloved. He was dazzled by her beauty and fell unconscious. I often use the phrase today when asked after a long day, “What did you do in the evening?” I answer: “I just fell unconscious”.

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Our house in Arnous was very big. It had a huge dining area with a door that led to the courtyard. On the right, there was a big room for my grandmother—as she couldn’t climb upstairs—and a reception hall. A corridor led to the courtyard which had a fountain fed by a rivulet. There was a huge kitchen with a small fountain used for all cleaning purposes. The kitchen floor had no tiles, just a smooth cement floor where washing water could be swept easily into the drains. No mopping was ever needed. There was a church close to Sha’laan. I just remembered. We could see it on our way to a park near the Parliament called the ‘Family Park’. I still remember us—all my siblings—holding hands and walking to the park. We were given a ‘franc’ or two each. There, we would buy sweets or lupines from the street sellers who used to wait outside the entrance of the park for they were not allowed in. We were not supposed to step on the grass. However, once we heard the whistle announcing the closing time of the park, we often took the chance and took three or four circuits on the grass and ran away before the park guard could catch us. Yes, God bless those days. We could buy a handful of sweets, lupines, or roasted chickpeas for a ‘Nickel [five cents]’—half a piaster. Kids from all neighbouring quarters used to come to that park: from Sibki, Muhajireen, or Mazra’a. They were Syrian, Palestinian, Circassian. Some were Christian, some were Muslim, Druze. It was a very mixed group. Much of the present Mazra’a quarter was still agricultural fields which the family of Mustafa (Watfa’s husband) owned. But they had to sell off a good part of it to pay for the mortgage of Watfa’s and Mustafa’s house. So, you see, people from all neighbouring areas that lacked entertainment facilities near their home used to come to the ‘Family Park’ (Jneinet al-Aa’ilaat). The end of the line, the final tram final stop—in Muhajireen was another area that attracted a lot of people especially in Ramadan (the fasting month), the Feasts, and on the Prophet Day, when young horsemen, mainly from the family of Abu Abdo Al-Gawerdi, came to Muhajireen and Arnous squares to give dazzling horse dancing performances and do sword and shield shows. Accompanied by one of the two family security guards who used to be always around to help out whenever needed, we went to Muhajireen, Arnous, or the Family Park to watch those beautiful shows. (One of those attendants, Fadel, was later killed while fighting in Palestine.) Throughout the feasts, large swings were set up for children in Sha’laan near the Sha’laan House. Halfoun, the owner of the small shop on the corner across from the Sha’laan House used to set up a long table where he sold cooked beans and pickled turnip served with a kind of toast called

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‘Sharak’—favourite treats for kids in those days—we dipped the toast in the pickle sauce, ate a piece of pickle with toast and then followed the beans with cumin. Once my father caught us sitting there and got mad at me. He held me by the ear and asked how I could be so thoughtless to take my sisters and brothers to have that dirty food that might cause typhoid. That was Halfoun the father. Halfoun, the son, was my age. I remember the father coming to our school al-Dawha carrying two large trays: one full with violets picked from the Sibki field and the other full of green plum and green almond. We loved to buy a small bunch of violets to give to our favourite teachers and, of course, we loved the green plums and almonds. Once he came when the school door was closed. The girls were desperate to get some of the green plums. I was often the one who came up with solutions. I asked them to take off the cloth belts of our school uniforms and we tied them together to make a rope that ended with a small basket. We lowered it to Halfoun who filled it with green plums. As we were pulling it up, the headmistress saw it from a window on the second floor and got hold of it. I thought it was a student and started swearing at her, calling her names, and asking her to immediately let go. Suddenly we saw Madam Hababo, the director, approaching us with the basket in her hand. Halfoon, the father was a fat man who wore the traditional wide trousers—the ‘sirwal’. He watched as we were scolded, but we were allowed to keep the almonds and green plums. So, it was worth it. We knew that in Sha’laan there were Bedouin princes who stayed and received the Sha’laan House whenever they came to Damascus from the desert. They wore ‘abaayeh’, (traditional Arabic overcoat), with golden rims over a long mostly solid gray ‘qumbaz’ (traditional men’s long dress). How fine the abaayeh was depended on the status of the person. I have only a very vague picture of the women. We didn’t see much of them. There was always a group of 10 to 12 people at the door which was always kept open when they were in residence. And there was always some hay outside the house where the camels used to wait while being unloaded. I am not sure where they were kept after that. It seems that most newcomers to Damascus preferred the Sha’laan quarter and neighbouring areas to Muhajireen or the Old Damascus. There was the Asri Club at the back of Sha’laan. It was more of a gathering place where Syrian and Palestinian politically oriented people used to meet, discuss political issues, exchange opinions, and play cards. There, my father and uncle used to meet with Adel al Azmeh, Nabih al-Azmeh,

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and Rashad Jabri. It was similar to the more recent ‘Havana Café’, where intellectuals continued to meet to discuss political and literary issues. By the time I got married in 1947, I no longer thought about whether I was Palestinian or Syrian. We were all from Bilad al Sham. It was one large society. We all spoke the same language. Although there were different dialects. We had similar foods too, although Palestinians generally kept the secret mixes of spices from their region for their own za’atar. By now the 1948 Nakba had happened and Palestinian identity became politicized. I was no longer interested. I was a Syrian citizen. Syria had just become a modern nation-state after kicking out the French in 1946. I was proud to be Syrian then.

Conclusion: Pursuing Home Watfa’s testimony brings to light the deeply contextualized, historically grounded, significance of homemaking. The expression ‘we carry our homes on our backs’ does indeed apply in the case of social groups making home in Syria, where a multicultural understanding of place and space has long held prominence. Watfa’ arrives in Damascus knowing it is a place where her parents, relatives, and neighbours from ‘back home’ in Jerusalem and Nablus are already emplaced. It is as though she has moved in a large bubble with 14 members of her well-off family rehoused in the newly emerging modern quarter of Sha’laan. Two guards stand at duty at their front door, protecting her father and uncle and giving the family unit a sense of security in this French colonial city. The family, politically active in Palestine, had fled the British colonial powers in Palestine under the threat of imprisonment or execution. Crossing the recently imposed border between the French mandated territory and the British mandated territory was not enough to make home secure without added security. In Watfa’s exploration of this new ‘home-like’ place, she identifies different regions around Sha’laan, such as Muhajireen, Shuhada, Arnoos, Salhiyyeh, Mazra’a. These are just blocks away from the building in which her family has made home, but they are important to Watfa’ as they define the contours of her world, her sense of belonging to it, and her identity as a young girl in this modern locally cosmopolitan quarter. The multicultural nature of this quarter and its surrounding neighbourhoods, with its Armenian and Jewish merchants, its Christian, Druze, French, and Russian residents, does not disturb her equanimity of belonging, but rather contributes to it. It is as though she is telling us ‘we are all strangers, others,

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living side by side’. Her sense of being Palestinian is pronounced at first, as she recognizes she is being bullied and teased at school for her accent and the way she plays outdoor street games. But within a matter of months, she wins over the Syrian girls, and they become best friends. It is possible to be Palestinian in Syria. She has made her home in Damascus as an idea and as a practice, and she knows she belongs. By the time Watfa’ marries a Syrian from the Kurdish community in 1947 while the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) is brewing, she no longer considers herself just Palestinian, but also Syrian. So many other Syrians from diverse ethno-religious traditions were to do the same. Belonging and making home in the former Ottoman region of Bilad al Sham were based less on rootedness to territory, than on acceptance of the ‘other’, a local conviviality that tolerated, if not celebrated, difference among social groups. These social attitudes and norms were found throughout Greater Syria, but began to be challenged after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire at the close of World War I. That challenge has grown with the post-World War II establishment of the modern nation-states in the Levant. However the prolongation of the Syrian armed conflict has seen temporary guesthood and homemaking in exile in the neighbouring states of Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey seriously undermined. Grants from the Leverhulme Foundation (2005–2007), the British Academy (2006–2007) and from the Council for British Research in the Levant (2008–2009) supported the research project from which Watfa’s narratives are drawn.

References Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign power and bare life (D.  Herrer-­ Roazen, Trans.). Stanford University Press. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Beatty, P., & Willis, G. (2007). The practice of cognitive interviewing. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 71(2), 287–311. Brun, C., & Fábos, A. (2015). Making homes in Limbo? A conceptual framework. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 31(1), 5–17. Chatty, D. (2013). Guests and hosts. Cairo Review, 9, 76–85. Chatty, D. (2017). The duty to be generous (karam): Alternatives to rights-based asylum in the Middle East. Journal of the British Academy, 5, 177–199. Chatty, D., & Lewando Hundt, G. (Eds.). (2005). Children of Palestine: Experiencing forced migration in the Middle East. Berghahn Books.

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De Leon, J. (2015). Land of open graves: Living and dying on the migrant trail. University of California Press. Derrida, J. (2000). Hospitality. Agnelaki, 5(3), 3–18. Dona, G. (2015). Making homes in Limbo: Embodied virtual “Homes” in prolonged conditions of displacement. Refuge, 31(1), 67–73. Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1992). Beyond “culture”: Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7, 6–23. Hannerz, U. (1996). Transnational connections: Cultures, people, places. Routledge. Katz, I. (2020). Adhocism, agency, and emergency shelter: On architectural nuclei of life in displacement. In T. Scott-Smith & M. E. Breeze (Eds.), Structures of protection: Rethinking refugee shelter. Berghahn Books. Korac, M. (2009). Remaking home: Reconstructing life, place, and identity in Rome and Amsterdam. Berghahn. Mallett, S. (2004). Understandings of home: A critical review of the literature. Sociological Review, 52(1), 62–89. Rabo, A. (2008). Narrating ethnic and religious heterogeneity in contemporary Aleppo. In 9th Mediterranean research meeting. Robert Shuman Centre Montecatini. European University Institute. Rabo, A. (2011) Conviviality and conflict in contemporary Aleppo. In: Longva, A R (ed) Religious minorities in the Middle East: Domination, self-­empowerment, accommodation. Brill, . Shaw, S J, Shaw, E K (1977) History of the Ottoman empire and modern Turkey, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, . Zaman, T. (2016). Islamic traditions of refuge in the crises of Iraq and Syria. Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 3

Refugee-Refugee Hosting as Home in Protracted Urban Displacement: Sudanese Refugee Men in Amman, Jordan Zoë Jordan

Introduction Zoë: Is there a place in the city where you feel at home, or like where you feel comfortable? More than other places, you know? Samir: Here. Jabal Hussein. This last one.

The lingering presence of home pervades many discussions of forced migration, from being forced from home, to making new homes, and returning home (Black, 2002; Brun & Fabos, 2015; Doná, 2015; Grabska, 2014; Long, 2010; Malkki, 1992; Taylor, 2013). However, as yet little work has considered men’s practices of giving and receiving care in the context of home in displacement (Grabska, 2014; Locke, 2017; Serra Mingot, 2019). In this chapter, I focus on the extent to which

Z. Jordan (*) Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_3

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refugee-­refugee hosting, as a relation of care, provides for the possibility of home for Sudanese refugee men living in protracted displacement in Amman, Jordan. For the men I spoke to, home was an ambiguous concept and their lives in Jordan, characterised by hostility and exclusion, bore little resemblance to their idealised homes. Yet, in hosting, the men also recounted finding a place of safety, care, and community. This chapter draws on doctoral research conducted in Amman between 2017 and 2018 seeking to understand refugee-refugee hosting in interaction with humanitarianism. In the first stage of the research, I spoke with 37 individuals from a wide cross-section of the refugee population1 in Amman to produce a ‘snapshot’ of the diversity of hosting practices existing in the city at that time. These individuals were contacted through the networks of two research assistants with existing ties to different refugee communities in Amman, and subsequent snowballing. In the second phase of the research, from March–May 2018 and September 2018, I worked with a smaller group of nine Sudanese men living in group hosting arrangements, conducting multiple iterative semi-structured interviews with each man, as well as observation and spending time together. With the exception of one man, all participants preferred to communicate in English, rather than through a translator. I have chosen to focus on Samir’s story, as it shares common features with the experiences of the other men who participated in my research. However, Samir also most explicitly discussed his ambivalence towards the exchange of care within hosting. As such, his narrative allows me to better interrogate the dynamics of care and home among the men. The points of similarity and difference between Samir and the other men in their accounts of their hosting experiences are highlighted throughout the text. As a white British female academic working with black Sudanese men, our different positions cannot be overlooked. The men emphasised the salience of their gender and race in their accounts and analysis of their lives in Amman, contrasting the assumed greater economic and physical security often associated with men in humanitarian contexts with the pervasive racial discrimination and violence that they frequently experienced (Davis

1  Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Syrian, Somali, Sudanese, and Iraqi refugees. Alongside nationality, the non-representative sample took into consideration gender, age, marital status, presence of children, and physical disability.

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et al., 2016; Johnston et al., 2019; MMP, 2017).2 In my work, I only had limited access to observe the men’s daily domestic practices, in part due to my gender. In this chapter I therefore draw on our discussions of their experiences of participating in hosting relationships, rather than extensive observation. This has also guided my focus on the outwards-facing ‘politics’ of home, inhabitation, and presence, rather than the intimate practices of domestic home-making. I first briefly conceptualise hosting as an act of care, before describing the situation of Sudanese refugee men living in Amman. I elaborate a framework for understanding the relationship between care and home in displacement, drawing on Antonsich’s (2010) notions of ‘place-­belonging’ and ‘politics of belonging’. I then analyse the different forms of care received and provided in hosting, followed by an assessment of the extent to which the relation of care inherent in hosting enabled the creation of home. In concluding, I argue that acts of care enacted through hosting can hold some potential for home, yet the limitations of belonging in displacement and the uncertain and difficult realities of many refugees’ lives persist.

Refugee Hosting as an Act of Care Refugee-refugee hosting, the interdependent sharing of accommodation between refugees, is a widespread and common practice in displacement and humanitarian contexts around the globe (Caron, 2019; Davies, 2012; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016a). Such arrangements are not necessarily unique to refugees, and can be seen elsewhere (Kathiravelu, 2012; Landau, 2018). However, thus far such practices have largely been overlooked among refugees (Boano & Astolfo, 2020; Caron, 2019; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016b; Leer & Van Komter, 2012; Yassine et al., 2019). Where considered by humanitarian actors, hosting is often presented as a short-term and dependent arrangement between distant family members that provides for shelter and basic needs. However, depictions fail to account for the diversity of hosting practices that exist and their potential longevity (Caron, 2019; Jordan, 2020). Hosting is often conceptualised through the notion of hospitality (Darling, 2020; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2016b), but it can also be understood through an ethics of care (Yassine et  al., 2019). Hosting relationships 2  For further discussion of race and gender in the Jordanian humanitarian context, see Turner (2018)

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between refugees do not always entail vertical host-guest relations and, for the Sudanese men I worked with who lived in shared group hosting arrangements, the roles of host and guest were frequently rotated, and at times indistinguishable. Indeed, the men I worked with rarely referred to notions of hospitality, but rather to sharing and taking care of each other. While recognising the challenges of using the term ‘hosting’ outside of the conceptualisation of hospitality, I nonetheless retain this terminology as it is how such relationships are most commonly referred to within humanitarian practice and studies of forced migration. Diffused reciprocity is central within the men’s hosting relationships, with the gift-like obligation to give, to receive, and to return (Mauss, 1954). I, however, forefront an ethics of care. Partly, this reflects the terms the men used to describe their own practices. Yet, it also speaks to the continuous exchange of acts of care and, through these acts, the co-­ construction of a liminal space of security. A conceptualisation of the act of hosting as an act of care emphasises that hosting is relational, a response to situated and recognised need, and relies on accepted interdependence between participants. Lawson (2007) argues for the importance of care ethics in bringing our focus to the specific sites, relationships, and contexts that produce the need for care, and as argued by Milligan and Wiles (2010, p. 736) ‘care and care relationships are located in, shaped by, and shape particular spaces and places that stretch from the local to the global’. Notions of care and home are also closely intertwined (Milligan & Wiles, 2010), with Young (2005, p. 125) drawing attention to ‘protection, preserving, and caring for’ as a crucial, yet undervalued element of dwelling and home. In focusing on Sudanese men’s refugee-refugee hosting practices in Amman, I add an as yet overlooked site to discussions of home in displacement, and show the importance of recognising such relations of care for understanding experiences of and responses to forced migration.

Context Jordan is host to over one  million refugees,3 not including the long-­ standing Palestinian and Palestinian-origin population. This includes 664,414 Syrians, 66,760 Iraqis, 13,902 Yemenis, 6024 Sudanese, and 718 3  This figure includes asylum seekers, refugees, and people of concern registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Jordan is a non-signatory to the Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol. However, UNHCR is well-established in the country, with the refugee response governed by the 1998 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Government of Jordan and UNHCR.

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Somalis (United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 2021a), resulting in Jordan being one of the largest refugee hosting countries per capita in the world (UNHCR, 2021b). While Jordan hosts refugees from over 57 nationalities (UNHCR, 2021a), the majority of academic research and humanitarian funding has focused on the larger groups (Davis et al., 2016). As such, Sudanese refugees were an under-­ research group (Omata, 2019). At the time of my research, the majority of Sudanese refugees in Jordan were young men, a demographic that is often missing from humanitarian conceptualisations of vulnerability (Turner, 2019). I therefore chose to pay attention to the particular experiences of this group. Darfur, in the west of Sudan, has been subject to prolonged and repeated conflict over much of the last 20 years (at least). The young men I worked with had fled this violent conflict, the state-sanctioned persecution that accompanied it and the risk of forced conscription into the conflict. One young man explained his experience, saying In Sudan, if you are under 50 you cannot get a passport. Or, if you have a passport the government of Sudan will ask you “which state are you from?” If you come from West Darfur, you cannot do anything…If a Darfurian is inside Darfur or Sudan, they cannot cry out.

Though the conflict in Darfur is not purely a religious, racial, or ethnic conflict (de Waal, 2005; De Waal & Flint, 2008; Jok, 2015; Mamdani, 2009; Sharkey, 2008), the men’s identification (by themselves and others) as black Africans (not Arabs) is salient in understanding their experience of conflict in Darfur, and in their widely reported experiences of racism and exclusion in Jordan. Overall, Sudanese refugees in Jordan confront a hostile displacement environment. Many avenues for humanitarian support are closed off to them,4 yet they are unable to access formal work permits, and risk detention and deportation if caught working informally. Work in the informal sector is highly dangerous and poorly paid (when salaries are paid at all). In late 2015 over 500 Sudanese nationals, some of whom held UNHCR documentation were deported (Human Rights Watch, 2015), following 4  This has changed quite considerably in the years since I completed my interviews in 2018. A number of key donors now prioritise a One Refugee Approach and there is much greater awareness of the specific needs of Sudanese and other non-Syrian refugee groups in Jordan.

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weeks of protest outside UNHCR calling for improved protection and access to services. At the time of my research, the deportation continued to reverberate through the Sudanese refugee community. The vast majority of refugees in Jordan live in protracted displacement, having been displaced for more than five years. They are caught between a national response that does not provide for the integration of refugees, nor routes to citizenship; and an international reality that rarely allows for onward movement or return. Building on literature that challenges the notion of displacement as passive and ‘on-hold’, and instead highlights the active lives of displaced populations and their interactions with the people and environments around them (Brun, 2015; Grabska, 2006), this chapter recognises the interaction of prolonged displacement, hostile environments, and everyday interactions in configuring the men’s creation and experiences of home.

Care and Home in Displacement While displacement implies a rupture from home (Blunt & Dowling, 2006; Grabska, 2014; Long, 2013), many people who have been displaced hold substantial claims and feelings of belonging to their place(s) of displacement, as well as their places of origin. More recent work has moved away from the dominance of territorial and state-centric ideas of home, instead demonstrating the multiple relationships and social, symbolic, and material ties that refugees hold to different locations, refugees’ shifting understandings and expectations of home as displacement becomes more protracted, and the practices undertaken by refugees in rendering the ‘unhomely’ spaces of refuge as home (Brun, 2001; Brun & Fabos, 2015; Doná, 2015; Grabska, 2014; Malkki, 1992; Omata, 2013; Verdasco, 2019). Home is much more than a house (Boccagni, 2017; Mallett, 2004). Home is a familiar space where particular activities and relationships take place, created through sharing the everyday practices of living in them, and the meaningful value assigned to material objects and the things that people do (Blunt & Dowling, 2006; Grabska, 2014; Mallett, 2004; Young, 2005). This relational approach to home helps to highlight how care creates and maintains home. Fisher and Tronto (1990, p. 40) define care as the effort to ‘maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’’centring our relationships with one-another, the recognition of other’s needs, and the acknowledgement of our interdependence. Young (2005) builds on this definition in relation to dwelling and home, pointing to valuable and

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irreplaceable ways in which the work of preservation—‘making and remaking of home as a support for personal identity without accumulation, certainty, or fixity’ (pp.  124–125)—gives meaning to individual lives and maintains our world. In doing so, she highlights how relations of care are fundamental to our dwelling in the world and the creation and maintenance of home. This connection has already been remarked upon in the literature, both in the role of housing in creating possibilities for care, and the exchange of care in producing experiences of home (Atkinson et  al., 2011; Dyck, 1995; Milligan & Wiles, 2010; Power & Mee, 2020; Wiles, 2003). Brownlie and Spandler (2018) consider the ‘mundane’ acts of care that take place in shared spaces, identifying the importance of routine and repeated situations and interactions that create the potential to recognise one-another’s needs. As explained by Ali (a Sudanese man in his mid-20s) in his decision to live with other men, ‘It needs time. If we sit with you one month, two months, three months, I know you, and you know me, and then we can move together’. Similarly, Kathiravelu (2012) and Boano and Astolfo (2020) point to the interaction between material spaces and social interactions in engendering care and maintaining life through facilitating interactions, and by making people feel known and looked out for. However, Brownlie and Spandler (2018) also note that such care may be unwelcome, and that people may seek to avoid such exchanges. These dynamics of care-avoidance have similarly been noted in migration contexts by Serra Mingot (2019) and Landau (2018). I return to these ambivalences in my discussion below. Home is one of the most important sites of belonging, so much so that the two concepts are often used together, with ‘feeling at home’ being one of the ultimate signifiers of belonging (Antonsich, 2010). Belonging deals with the attachments people feel to the material and social worlds they inhabit and experience, and the yearning we feel to belong (Bell, 1999; Wood & Waite, 2011). Antonsich’s (2010) distinction between ‘place-­ belongingness’ and the ‘politics of belonging’ is useful in understanding the simultaneously deeply personal and intimate senses of belonging, and the production, reaffirmation, or refusal of such belongings through societal interactions. He identifies ‘place-belongingness’ as the personal and intimate feelings of being at home, a ‘symbolic space of familiarity, comfort, security, and emotional attachment’, dependent on auto-­biographical, relational, cultural, economic, and legal factors (Antonsich, 2010, p. 6). Belonging, however, is not just personal, it is social. ‘Politics of belonging’

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relates to the construction of collectives, and the more public-oriented structures of membership, otherwise expressed as belonging to a group of people (Antonsich, 2010). Belonging in this sense requires that people are able to express identity, to be recognised as an integral part of a community, and are valued and listened to. As with home, belonging may be conceptualised as a narrow, territorialised construct. Yet, others have recognised that people belong to a situation, through everyday life encounters (interpersonal, material, and virtual), rather than only to a territory or cultural or ethnic group (Amin, 2010; Grabska, 2014; Verdasco, 2019; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Place belongingness and politics of belonging are both relations, and hence it is valuable to consider the role of care in those relations, and the role of hosting in providing this care.

Living in Hosting Relationships If I live with someone for a long time, like here with Ali, he is like my brother. All the guys here are like my brother because I live with them for a long time. I know him, I know his mind. I know how he thinks I know how he, if I fall down, he will pick me up. I know him well. (Samir, April 2018)

This was my third interview with Samir, a Sudanese man in his mid-20s. We had first met about six weeks earlier, a quick introduction from one of his housemates during another interview, as Samir returned home. While he had known some of his housemates for several years, and previously lived or worked with some of them, others were less familiar when he joined the house a few months previously. When asked, he told me that this is his favourite arrangement since arriving in Jordan five years earlier, in 2013. He recollects living in 13 different houses since arriving, sometimes with a subset of the men he currently lives with, at other times alone or with only one other person.5 In this time, he has been both ‘host’ and ‘guest’. Most often, Samir has been both host and guest simultaneously, living in a reciprocal and mutually assured arrangement with a small group of men (usually at least three, rarely more than nine). Like many of the men, his living situation was disrupted by the 2015 deportation, when all 5  This is the highest number of different housing arrangements reported by any of the Sudanese men in my study, all of whom, with the exception of one more recent arrival, had lived in Amman for approximately five years.

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of the men he lived with were deported. Following this, he moved into a hosting arrangement with a large number of men, but after one month the group split into smaller units. In most cases, his accommodation was rented in a purely financial arrangement with the landlord, but he has also lived in his employer’s property, and in a home with rent supported by an NGO. Although the detailed specifics of each of his arrangements varied, in general Samir’s hosting arrangements followed a similar pattern to those of the other men I interviewed. For many men, the most immediate and obvious benefit of sharing housing was access to shelter. Without sharing, it would be impossible for many to afford even the most basic of accommodation, and shared accommodation is particularly common among Sudanese and Somali refugees in Amman (MMP, 2017). Samir explained his financial situation, saying, ‘You see, I’m a guy, so I need to pay for rent first, food, and after I need simple things like clothes, internet on my phone, transportation. If you’re going to go out with your friends or hanging out or something like this, you can’t go’. Shared contributions towards rent are one approach to deal with this precarious and limited financial situation. Hosting arrangements for the men I worked with also included sharing food and cooking responsibilities, ensuring that everyone ate at least one meal each day. Though it was a common experience for men who lived together to work together, the men did not explicitly expect their housemates to connect them to employment. Rather, as in Samir’s experience, they often lived with people they already worked with or who they already knew as friends. Living together reinforced and strengthened these friendships, which in part was connected to people telling their housemates of job opportunities before others. Living together was also explicitly mentioned as a strategy to cope with uncertainty around detention and deportation linked to informal working practices, and to be able to communicate information and warnings. Ali, another Sudanese man in his 20s, described his group’s communication to stay safe, saying, ‘We tell each other ‘there are police’ so people have to remain in their homes and don’t go out, because they will get them’. The role of hosting as a mechanism for improving personal security against threats from individuals attacking the home or individual men was mentioned across all of my interviews, something that surprised me, as I had not considered the risks of young men living alone. As demonstrated in Samir’s accounts, there is a tendency for the men to live repeatedly with the same men, even after periods in different houses, because they are familiar with their personalities, habits, and preferences,

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for better or for worse. Personal recommendation or ‘vouching’ for potential new members was important when the new member was unknown to others in the hosting arrangement. The men often put careful consideration into the type of person they wanted to live with. They preferred to live with people with whom they felt comfortable, had a shared interest, and held a shared perspective on the world, as in other forms of collective housing (Holton, 2016; Mahieu & Van Caudenberg, 2020). Several men spoke about wanting to live with people who would support them in their studies, not financially, but by having similar aims and ambitions. Their concern that housemates have similar preferences regarding noise, privacy, partying, and household chores shows that they did expect their shelter to act as a comfortable and (at least) semi-private space. Hosting therefore provides much more than access to housing, including other basic needs, connecting people to employment, education, and other supports, and more intangible social and emotional benefits. All the men spoke of the safety net that was provided by hosting, and the expectation that others would support you if you became unemployed, were injured or unwell. It was not unusual for each household to be supporting at least one non-contributing member each month, as the men found and lost work. As people spent longer in hosting arrangements or experienced a greater number, they came to appreciate the value of sharing beyond the economic benefits and safety net provided. As Samir summarised, ‘We must help each other to make things better…I won’t discriminate, anyone Sudanese if I found them, I will help them. Even if they hate us, even if they say they don’t care, I will give them a hand. This is something I’ve learned from life, I must do it’. While the men spoke positively about their hosting arrangements, at the same time they were clear that hosting was not their preferred housing arrangement (largely due to the frequent changes, instability, and the number of people sharing), and accepted that they were unlikely to find the ‘perfect’ living situation in a hosting arrangement.

Exchanges and Ambivalences of Care in Refugee-Refugee Hosting The men’s hosting relationships involve multiple acts of care from the financial, such as supporting others during unemployment, to personal care, such as providing meals and helping with the physical movement of members with mobility issues; the sharing of information about jobs and security; and emotional acts of care, through strategies to deal with

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uncertainty, providing advice, or support for studying and other goals. As explained by Samir, ‘I respect the people. If I meet a Sudanese, I love him. You are Sudanese, you need help, I will help you if I can. I will try to help, and if I cannot, I’ll tell you ‘Allah ma’ik’ you know, God with you’. Later in our conversation, he continued ‘And I try to help people by talking, through emotions and talking. By sharing. I try to make him down, make him patient…to share…if I have money, I’m really not someone who won’t give his money…we must be with people kindly’. This multifaceted understanding of how to care about and for others, more than the circulation of money, was echoed by all the men in my research. As such, hosting encompasses all four phases of care as identified by Joan Tronto (1998): perceiving the needs of others (caring about), assuming a responsibility to meet others’ needs (caring for), action to meet the needs of others (caregiving), and receiving and responding to the receipt of care (care receiving). The provision and receipt of acts of care within hosting are to a certain extent determined by the men’s social and economic position within the household, though this is tempered by a recognition that economic standing is volatile and uncertain. The frequent shifts in the men’s economic position also meant that each was aware of their potential instability, and the possibility for them to become dependent on those they previously helped. Hosting relationships also had an important influence on the men’s positions within wider Sudanese society in Jordan. Appropriate participation in hosting arrangements and being known as a ‘good guy’ was also a signifier of acceptance into Sudanese society and of doing one’s part in supporting others in the face of difficult circumstances. The men who participated in my research do not consider themselves to be among the most vulnerable. Those who lived in shared group hosting arrangements were typically single (or unaccompanied by their wives), young, and did not have any children. These positions limited other demands for care that may otherwise have been placed on them. However, the men were still enmeshed in expected relationships of care. For example, when relations arrived in Jordan, the men were often obliged to support them and to incorporate them into their hosting arrangements. In some cases, the arrival of ‘real’ brothers supplanted caring arrangements with ‘fictive’ brothers. Though they frequently have unmet needs and rarely earn enough to remit money to relatives in Sudan, they recognise that their independence and low responsibility for others—particularly a wife or children—gives them a certain level of freedom. This has implications for how they perceive and describe their provision of care, and how

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they describe receiving care, and it should be noted that the men were much more forthcoming in describing the care that they provided for others, rather than their own personal experiences of receiving care. Samir was one of the few men who openly and explicitly discussed his feelings around asking for and receiving help from others. Expressing his discomfort, he told me: You know, they help you. I got help from my friends, sure, and they accept everything you say to them. If you need help, they help. But I told you, I have, like, pride. I never ask. It is very difficult for me. If I move to the guys, I feel like I’m weak.

Samir’s reflections speak to a desire to balance the need for help with maintaining one’s own dignity. In other contexts, the avoidance of enmeshment in such reciprocal arrangements has been noted as a strategy to avoid excessive demands, the imposition of controls over behaviour, or the expectation of support beyond current capacity (Landau, 2018; Serra Mingot, 2019; Stevens, 2016). This, however, was not remarked upon by the men with whom I spoke.6 More often, this balance was managed by recognising their interdependence and the high likelihood of the roles of carer and cared for to be reversed in the future. This emphasis on exchange and instability was highly prevalent across the men’s accounts. In a very few cases, the men noted instances of conflict within the home, or the forced eviction of one member from a household. They reported this to be very rare, partly because the men all share a recognition of the hardship that single Sudanese refugee men confront in living in Amman, and partly because hosting has become an intrinsic part of acting as a ‘good’ member of their society. On the other hand, day-to-day frustrations were common. Samir, for example, said It’s not a reason to go, but sometimes I meet friends, they come and play computer games here and we can’t play because they make noise, and the others are studying, or sometimes some people have come from work and they need to take a rest…I don’t want to disturb them or interrupt them, so this makes a problem…each one has different ideas. 6  Given my focus on speaking to men currently living in hosting relationships this is not surprising. It would be interesting to spend more time with those who had chosen not to engage in hosting relationships to understand their motivations and alternative strategies for living in the city.

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In addition to the external constraints on the extent to which hosting can provide home in displacement, these frustrations of sharing accommodation such as differing routines, limited privacy, or preferences around how to spend leisure time, also impact on the extent to which hosting is experienced as home by the men. The following section returns to my contention that hosting holds the potential for home, before addressing these limitations more fully.

Being and Feeling at Home Place Belonging Antonsich (2010) identifies five components to ‘place-belongingness’, the intimate feeling of belonging somewhere: relational, economic, cultural, auto-biographical, and legal. Refugee hosting relationships strongly contribute to relational and economic components of home, through being key sites for the development and maintenance of significant and caring social ties, and a primary mechanism for assuring (some degree) of economic stability while in displacement and mitigating some of the consequences of the men’s economic instability. Hosting arrangements also contribute, to a degree, to cultural indicators of home. This is particularly true in hosting relationships between those who identify as part of the same group, and for whom hosting can reinforce these identities. However, hosting rarely lives up to cultural ideals of home. Two of the men directly addressed the inadequacies of their current living situation with regards to their sense of home. Ali, for example, told me how home for him was (in addition to his family) his cattle, showing me a picture of them grazing in green farmland. He said, ‘That’s my farm. That’s it, that’s the life that we’re supposed to live. Passing some knowledge or information, helping students, small things, My wife also, she’s still in Sudan’. The sprawling concrete city of Amman does not resemble his idealised farming home and does not allow him to re-create the activities that he had previously associated with home and his future. Similarly, Isaac spoke about being unable to perform hospitality, because he did not have a separate ‘living room’ to welcome guests. Though he went on to describe hosting Sudanese people visiting from Aqaba, who stayed in his living room in Amman, it did not resemble the concept of a living room that he was familiar with from Sudan, and he did not view it in the same

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way, despite it fulfilling a similar function. From his point of view, he did not have a proper home from which to be hospitable. Some hosting relationships may contribute to the auto-biographical component of place-belongingness, relating to personal experiences and memories. During my work, this was only discussed by a small number of the men, for whom hosting arrangements had become their preferred living arrangements. It is important to note here though that this was only discussed as desirable in displacement and after resettlement. None of the men spoke about return as an option, nor how their experiences of hosting impacted on what they thought home might look like if and when they returned to Darfur. Hosting relationships could not impact on the legal aspect of the men’s belonging, though they are an important aspect of managing their legal precarity and the discomfort produced by their legal position. Uncertainty about time in displacement necessarily influenced how the men perceived their hosting arrangements, particularly with regards to the length of time they think they will be living in such arrangements. The men are aware that they will likely be in Jordan for many years, and yet at the same time maintain hope that they will be resettled and are prepared for this movement at any time. The tension between rational expectation and hopeful aspirations is a key part of their attitudes towards their homes. A lack of home (as place-belongingness) does not necessarily result in exclusion, but rather a sense of loneliness and alienation (Antonsich, 2010). As Ali explained, Sometimes I feel good. I am with my friends, I am still alive, and things are going well. And sometimes it turns around and I feel bad and restricted by rules, regulation, and government…the only thing that we can do is to gather ourselves…we talk, they say ‘I am feeling in the same situation’. We’ll talk and find a way to share.

Hosting both mitigates some of this alienation, to some degree, and finds its foundations in a shared understanding and solidarity with others’ shared experiences. Politics of Belonging An ethics of care depends on recognised interdependence with others. In the case of the men I worked with, recognising these interdependencies stemmed in part from a sense of shared identity and experience as young,

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black, Sudanese, refugee men living in Amman. In talking about their sense of belonging and connection the men at various times raised multiple forms of belonging, from a house, a friendship group, a community centre, to their tribal group, to the Sudanese community in Jordan, to the refugee community of Jordan, to Amman, to their hometown, to Darfur, to Sudan, to Africa, or to humankind. As this list shows, their belongings ranged from the highly intimate and local to more global conceptions of belonging. These belongings were enacted, not in abstract conception or idealised notions, but through everyday actions, and in particular through attitudes towards and explanations of hosting and the ways in which these were put into practice. Shared group hosting primarily occurred between those who had a sense of familiarity, shared belonging, and a common cause or experience. The men hosted others due to a desire to help friends and family; an understanding of what they have been through; meeting an identifiable need; a sense of obligation, and encouragement from others such as peers and community leaders; alongside the economic need to share financial costs. In doing so, they not only embodied what it means to be part of a particular group, but in caring for others, also reaffirmed their belonging (Milligan & Wiles, 2010; Williams, 2001). Hosting is therefore both a result of group belonging, and a claim to it. In the hosting relationships discussed here, where the men are simultaneously hosts and hosted, these processes are often concurrent and two-way. The connection between hosting and personal identity was particularly strong in cases where the men had made a more active choice to live with friends who had something in common with them, whether a commitment to studies or a keen social life. The frequency with which harmony at home was linked to living with people who ‘think and act like you’ suggests that for some groups of men living together reinforces those aspects of their identity and forms a group house identity around those traits or interests. Others represented living with others in terms of their sense of community obligation and assistance, basing relations on a common knowledge of what it is like to be a male Darfurian refugee in Jordan. In these cases, hosting was talked about as a connection to a refugee identity, a male identity, and a Sudanese identity. In more in-depth talks, it often became apparent that there was a preference for people with the same tribal background or place of origin, based on the idea that people with a shared background would have a shared understanding of how to act in ways that were acceptable to each other. Hosting can reinforce a

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self-­identified group identity, as when the Sudanese men told me they host because ‘this is what we do, we are Sudanese’. At the same time, it can also re-create or reconstitute familiar cultural identifiers and practices from before displacement while under very different circumstances. ‘Being one of the guys’ was also provided as an explanation for why Sudanese men lived together, rather than with families. Unlike earlier explanations I’d heard, about discomfort with young men sharing homes with unrelated women, Adam felt that young men could have remained with unrelated families, but that moving in with other young men represented a freedom, consolidating membership in the group of young men, and taking charge of your own behaviour. Despite this, the men were closely networked with others, particularly Darfurian refugees, though also refugees of other nationalities and non-refugees, through community groups and events, work, and volunteering. My work focused on those currently living in hosting arrangements, rather than those who had been excluded from such arrangements, but it would be valuable to understand these processes of inclusion/exclusion and the building of shared identity further. In a context where the men report feeling invisible, ignored, and undesirable, it is evident that hosting develops and reinforces a sense of belonging. However, this is still a belonging that is largely framed by a common experience of marginalisation and an inability to belong to the larger political community. Samir summed up many of the men’s feelings: Some Sudanese, I give them suggestions, I imagine. I ask them ‘If they gave you a Jordanian passport, and they gave you house, and a good job. Would you stay here?’. ‘No, I wouldn’t!’ They don’t like it, because of the [negative Jordanian] community.

As argued by Rowe (2005) not every form of belonging is possible, and people are not free to choose their belongings outside the bounds of power. The home provided by hosting is a limited home. While the day-­ to-­day life of hosting arrangements can make important contributions to relational and economic notions of belonging, their contribution to the cultural and auto-biographical factors are more limited, and their impact on legal status near negligible. Feminist critiques of home have shown that the concept of home as a haven is incomplete, neglecting the experiences of those for whom home is not a private place of refuge, but rather a negative, alienating, and hazardous environment and presenting home as

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insulated from wider political and societal positions (Manzo, 2003; Young, 2005). Given the on-going marginalisation and uncertainty of the men’s lives, such a home can be changing, transient, and uncertain. Hosting does provide some degree of protection from these concerns. Conceptualisations of home as a space of retreat (but not withdrawal) echoes with the elements of the men’s accounts that portray their hosting arrangements as ways to resist their marginalisation and precarity. This may be in the active sharing of information to access employment, assistance, and understand their legal situation, as well as to avoid detention and potential deportation. However, hosting also provides an important site of resistance in allowing the men to be in the city. In enabling the men’s inhabitation and relations to each other and their environment, hosting provides openings to contestations of belonging (Boano & Astolfo, 2020; Ortiz & Camillo, 2020). It is by paying attention to the everyday ways in which these men created and experienced relations of care that we can re-focus our attention on how refugees inhabit and negotiate protracted urban displacement and, in doing so, present claims to home.

Conclusion Young describes refugees as part of a group who do not have ‘the time or space to preserve much of the history and culture of their family and community’ (2005, p.  151). While agreeing that minimal shelter, material deprivation, and legal exclusion do not constitute home, I instead join those scholars that have paid attention to how displaced people build and preserve limited, partial, and transient homes in displacement (Brun, 2016; Doná, 2015; Fábos, 2015; Grabska, 2014). In this chapter, I have shown how relations of care in household-level hosting contribute to an experience of home in displacement for single Sudanese refugee men in Amman. I identify the financial, intimate, informational, and emotional acts of care exchanged within hosting relationships in response to identified needs among the men. I argue that acts of care within hosting influenced the men’s sense of feeling at home. To some extent, hosting mitigates the economic instability caused due to precarious legal status and restrictions, and augments auto-biographical, relational, and cultural components of home. The reduction of hosting relations to economic calculations of cost-benefit misses these vital components.

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I also argue that hosting contributes to the politics of belonging and participants’ positions in wider society. Recognition of each other’s situations and needs are crucial in understanding how hosting relationships are formed and experienced. Identities and belongings are shaped by the uncertainty of displacement, used to claim access to hosting, and reinforced and re-shaped through participation in hosting. This emphasises the dynamic nature of care and identities, and the broader importance of paying attention to changing social and political relations in displacement. As such, I build on existing literature on men’s caring practices to further confirm that men do care, offering insight into the exchange of care within a group and relationship often overlooked in the literature (Arber & Gilbert, 1989; Brownlie & Spandler, 2018; Fisher, 1994; Fresnoza-Flot, 2014; Kershaw et al., 2008; Locke, 2017; McKay, 2007; Serra Mingot, 2019; Sinatti, 2014). In paying attention to acts of care occurring between (mainly) unrelated men living in hosting relationships, I also draw attention to the formation of new relationships of care in displacement. While family connections may continue to dominate in such contexts, as shown in the alteration of hosting arrangements when ‘real’ brothers arrived in Jordan, other bases of care can be seen in the men’s hosting arrangements and there is a value in paying further attention to relationships of care beyond the family in displacement contexts. Paying attention to how day-to-day experiences of care constitute experiences of home and displacement contributes to our understanding of refugees’ belongings and relationships to places of protracted displacement. However, hosting is not a panacea. While the men recognised and valued their hosting relationships as sites of care and locations in which they could be themselves, their hosting relationships—and the care that underpins them—are not isolated from the hostile external realities. Indeed, their relationships and needs are intricately shaped by the landscapes of their displacement. While hosting can offer a connection to others, allow for the maintenance and expression of identity, and a respite from the political, economic, and social realities of their lives in Amman, these realities also mean that such a home is transient. The men continue to dream and plan for alternative future homes, and the way life is ‘meant to be’. Acknowledgements  I would like to thank those who participated in my research, for their initial involvement and for their continued engagement with my work, as well as Dina Baslan and Israa Sadder, without whom I would not have met these

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men. I would also like to thank Cathrine Brun for her guidance during the doctoral research that informs this paper. Finally, I thank the reviewers for their helpful feedback, and the editors for guiding this work to publication. All errors and omissions remain my own. Funding was provided by an Oxford Brookes University 150th Anniversary Studentship, and an ISA Charity Trust travel grant.

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Stevens, M. R. (2016). The collapse of social networks among Syrian refugees in urban Jordan. Contemporary Levant, 1, 51–63. https://doi.org/10.108 0/20581831.2016.1153358 Taylor, H. (2013). Refugees, the state, and the concept of home. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 32, 130–152. https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdt004 Tronto, J. (1998). An ethic of care. Generations, 22, 15–21. Turner, L. E. (2018). Challenging refugee men: Humanitarianism and masculinities in Za ‘ tari Refugee Camp, 1–304. Turner, L. E. (2019). The politics of labeling refugee men as “Vulnerable”. Social Politics, 28, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxz033 UNHCR. (2021a). UNHCR fact sheet: Jordan February 2021. UNHCR. (2021b). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2020. Verdasco, A. (2019). Communities of belonging in the temporariness of the Danish Asylum System: Shalini’s anchoring points. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 1439–1457. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1369183X.2018.1443393 Wiles, J. (2003). Daily geographies of caregivers: Mobility, routine, scale. Social Science & Medicine, 57, 1307–1325. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0277-­9536(02)00508-­7 Williams, F. (2001). In and beyond New Labour: Towards a new political ethics of care. Critical Social Policy, 21, 467–493. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 026101830102100405 Wood, N., & Waite, L. (2011). Editorial: Scales of belonging. Emotion, Space and Society, 4, 201–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2011.06.005 Yassine, B., Al-Harithy, H., & Boano, C. (2019). Refugees hosting other refugees: Endurance and maintenance of care in Ouzaii (Lebanon). Journal of Refugee Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez098 Young, I. M. (2005). House and home: Feminist variations on a theme. In On female body experience: Throwing like a girl and other essays. Oxford University Press. Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns Prejudice, 40, 197–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220600769331

CHAPTER 4

Archiving Displacement and Identities: Recording Struggles of the Displaced Re/making Home in Britain Rumana Hashem, Paul Vernon Dudman, and Thomas Shaw

Rumana Hashem was a key researcher of the pilot Civic Engagement Project who collected the oral histories with the displaced speakers. Paul Dudman was the Archivist at the Refugee Council Archive, and co-designed the project, and established the digitalised Living Refugee Archive. Thomas Shaw was the Head of Digitalisation of Library and Learning Services at the University of East London and has acted as overseer of the pilot project in 2015. R. Hashem (*) University of East London, London, UK Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] P. V. Dudman University of East London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_4

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Introduction Archiving oral histories and documenting life narratives through digitalising archives are essential for preserving and making accessible the original stories of displacement and the struggles of the displaced. Until recently, the concept of history of the displaced was slow to gain power in Britain within the wider discourse of refugee and forced migration studies (Gatrell, 2017).1 There has been a dearth of archives of oral histories of the displaced (Dudman, 2017, 2019). The archiving and digitalising of oral histories of those facing border struggles should inform policy, and oral history is a compelling approach to document the powerful and collective memories of the displaced (Hashem & Dudman, 2016).2 This chapter draws on oral histories to present evidence of how displaced people with undocumented or irregular status have experienced identity crises and hostility when attempting to re/make “home” in London, Oxford, Bristol, and Glasgow. The extracts are drawn from stories preserved in a digitalised “Refugee Archive”, called the “Living Refugee Archive”

1  This is an outcome of a pilot project funded by the University of East London’s internal fund under the Grant of Civic Engagement Fund 2015 (number: 1214). 2  The term “race” is used to indicate racial hierarchy and people struck by unjust race relations. Race plays an important role in the discriminatory experiences of the displaced people we spoke to. The discussion in this chapter includes many examples of these. We used inverted comma for the term “race” (rather than race per se) to appreciate race relations and racialisation of the displaced. All other mentions of race without inverted commas refer to race generally. Our mention of the term “race” is informed by the deconstructive notion of social categories which suggests that race could mean many different things, and that race in academic research should not be randomly used as this enables legitimisation of racialisation of non-white people. For a theoretical discussion on racialisation, racism, and race relations, see also Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992).

T. Shaw University of East London, London, UK Lancaster University Library, Bailrigg, UK e-mail: [email protected]

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(LRA), piloted through community collaboration.3 They substantiate that “in an era of global movement and global conflict the meaning of home to the displaced is complex and multiple, while an aspired home is often denied, and that the displaced identities are being constructed as ‘Other’” (Hashem & Dudman, 2016, p. 1). The word “displaced” here refers to an individual who has fled and is on the move because of their circumstances in their country of origin. The displaced have moved to the UK because of their circumstances, not by choice. Displacement is either a consequence of forced displacement or other circumstances such as religious persecution or gender-based violence that led the person to flee home (see Marfleet, 2021). Displacement refers to moving away from one’s original home and place being forced to leave or self-exiled under persecution and circumstances. This definition is grasped from co-working with displaced participants in LRA. The LRA represented an innovative new approach as the portal would act as a digital library documenting the lived experience of displacement, simultaneously presenting a collaborative tool for active engagement with living histories of displacement through community outreach. Some of these excerpts of the life histories were disseminated through a launch event of the “Democratic Access or Privileged Exclusion?” project in 2015 and on the website of LRA. The discussion at the workshop highlighted the concern in relation to the “refugee voice” within the archive, and the ethics of how we should ensure these voices be heard in a genuine form, without prejudice or censor. This discussion, later, generated interest in how we, as an archival repository, determine what we mean by “the archive” and how we can move beyond established definitions to document the experiences of the displaced. The chapter investigates five questions: how do documented and undocumented women and men of different ages, races, genders, and nationalities experience belonging and identity crisis? What makes it harder 3  In early 2015 we were awarded a civic engagement community outreach fund from the University of East London to conduct a small exploratory research project through community collaboration and for developing a digitalised “Refugee Archive” for the preservation of and access to the displaced people and all interested in this field. The pilot project, called “Democratic Access or Privileged Exclusion? Civic Engagement through the Preservation of and Access to Refugee Archives” was undertaken in collaboration with the Refugee Council Archive and the Centre for Migration, Refugees, and Belonging by focusing on the documentation and preservation of displaced life histories and authentic narrative of lived experiences of the displaced in Britain.

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for participants in large cities to re/make home? What are the specific challenges that displaced men and women face in London and Glasgow, and how do they navigate them in their daily life? How do we challenge the official narratives of displaced experiences within the established archival space? The discussion shows that meanings and experiences of home to the displaced vary based on their social categories and that there are considerable differences in the ways that individuals experience the process of re/ making home. As the discussion below reveals London as a complex home, Black displaced men and Syrian displaced women are attempting to reconstruct their lives in the city and looking for a safe home; yet they are not allowed to rent a home and are reconstructed as “Other” within the restrictive immigration policies and multi-layered power relations in British society. Conversely, other displaced women and men, who have brighter skin colour, high English proficiency, and the same immigration status, may be able to access better support services and a safer home. Making home for irregular migrants from the Global South is not only difficult but often unattainable within the current climate in Britain (Hashem & Dudman, 2019). Through analysing these extracts, we put forward four key arguments: first, the meaning of home to the displaced is relational, complex, and multiple, and displaced peoples’ experiences of home are affected by their everyday life struggles over identities and politics of belonging in the host country. Second, struggles of the displaced over re/making home must be understood within the effect of power relations and political structures and their implications. Third, the different experiences of individual irregular migrants should be analysed by the use of a bottom-up oral history method combined with experience-centred narratology. Finally, recording life stories associated with loss, cultural and political memories, and archiving oral histories about lived experiences, struggles over identities and home for the displaced who simultaneously negotiate uncertainties and hostility in their host countries, is important for documenting and establishing a counter-narrative led by the displaced and their history of displacement.

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Recording Life Histories Through Civic Engagement in the Archive: Methods and Methodology We worked directly with displaced individuals and community groups from the Global South, and researchers, practitioners, oral historians, scholars, students, and archivists who were then living in London and other large cities in Britain. Participants include both documented and undocumented adults. The project engaged with women and men from Bangladesh, Colombia, Morocco, Iran, Kuwait, Latin America, North Sudan, Somalia, and Syria. This chapter draws on ten narratives from the latter seven countries which focused on issues of home, identity, belonging, and work. The speakers here include one Latin American born Irish-­ Jewish Scottish woman, one Iranian Shia’ Muslim man, one Iranian Sunni Muslim woman, one Moroccan-indigenous Muslim born atheist man, one Latin American born Catholic woman, one Sudanese Sunni Muslim man, one Suni Muslim man from Kuwait, one Somalian Sunni Muslim woman, one Syrian (Shia’) Muslim man, and one Syrian woman. All of them self-­ identified as passionate about secularism and transnationalism. Their ages range between 20 and 50  years. The meetings lasted between one and three hours. All participants spoke in English, and none required an interpreter. We listened to the stories, and recorded, preserved, and made available some of these stories in anonymous form through a launch event. We wanted to publish all stories on the website of LRA, but the publication was put on hold after a long discussion on ethical considerations about research with the displaced and irregular migrants. The oral histories are placed within University of East London’s Data Repository for secure storage until all participants experience safety in terms of refuge. Since the displaced are marginalised communities in any society, research with the displaced involves important ethical considerations. We used a critical anti-oppressive methodology (Dominguez, 2008 cited in Hashem, 2014) to reach out to the participants, for networking, consultations, interviews and to balance power relations between researcher and the participants.4 Life history interviews were used as a primary method of 4  The first author, as a displaced (self-exiled) international immigrant activist-researcher, conducted outreach with displaced participants, arranged and conducted one to one interviews. She coded and analysed these oral histories, which were then edited and further analysed by the second authors using the archival research framework.

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data collection. A shared empathy with the participants was established in the meetings as the lead researcher was an immigrant without a work permit (who was working pro-bono at that time), which helped facilitate trust as the researcher was seen as “a displaced person of colour rather than an established scholar” (to quote Shahosh, 12 June 2015). For recording life histories, we relied on decolonised and oral study methodology which enabled us to document the narratives without distortion, and to engage communities with trust. We engaged pre-established oral history methods (Smith, 2002) but took a bottom-up approach by combining this method with an experience-centred narrative method (Squire, 2008 cited in Hashem, 2014) where participants led the discussions. This methodology allowed us to draw on knowledge from below. Our participants are the speakers in the research and the co-producers of knowledge. The interviews were open-ended and semi-structured, and we followed an anti-oppressive approach in the meetings in which participants were able to speak about anything they like, for as long as they like, and could withdraw at any time. For example, one participant suggested changing the topic and refused to answer a question regarding her work status. This means that power was two way and communication was reciprocal. Conversations took place in dialogical format rather than an interview setting. The dialogical aspect is important to ensure that the research is accountable and the process of data collection and analysis are reflexive and situated in the context—such as the Brexit vote in 2015 and 2016, hostile environment in post-Brexit Britain (2017–2019), ISIS, and the “refugee crisis” in Europe. The research was co-conducted, and interview questions were co-designed with participants during the first civic engagement project. For the sake of safeguarding participants’ anonymity, we use pseudonyms—although most participants emphasised that they would like to be named in the research. The narratives were archived and digitalised to preserve the narrative of displacement within the wider historical record. Of the ten, five accounts demonstrate that experiences of the displaced vary based on their ethnicity, race, gender, nationality, cultural heritage, specific disability, and geo-­ political context. All of them talked about belonging, home (former homes associated with trauma), loss, right to work, and collective and political memories of place, and subversion and struggles over identity and home under restrictive immigration regulations and border policies in Britain. The launch event of LRA was attended by some participants

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(anonymously) who actively contributed to the discussions on ethics and risks in archiving oral history.

Archiving “moving memories” of Home to the Displaced At the beginning of our civic engagement project in 2015, we considered how traditional archival paradigms could be re-conceptualised to better document and represent the narratives and knowledge of displaced persons.5 When describing memories of home and identity, our first irregular displaced speaker, Shahosh, emphasised that: “These are ‘moving memories’. They are ‘moving’ because I am moving from one place to another, I am on the move, and my memories are also moving as I am moving for very long time. Some of my memories have faded away, and new memories are coming in mind as I am talking to you, and these memories are not fixed. These will also change as time will pass and I will move, grow, and learn new things about the world. So my memories are constantly moving, the memories about my home and the past life are not exactly the same as some years ago when I was in Morocco. My journey is complex. And it has changed the meaning of my homeland, home, and the landscape that I left behind”.

The speaker from Morocco is an indigenous-Black young man who moved away from home under religious persecution and sought asylum in the UK when he was 24 years old. He was fluent in English, eloquent in describing his lived experience, and we were moved by his life story. He had no formal education after primary school and moved to the UK in 2014 for safety and “in search of enlightenment” but was not allowed to study until 2018. He was forced to go to Madrassa in Morocco, which he could not cope with. In his words: “I escaped home when I was teenage. I starved many days, there was no safety, there was nowhere to go in heat and wave. The Empire is highly discriminatory. The resources are controlled by the Empire. I come from a family where everybody submitted to Islamic dictatorship and Madrassah education. […] I would run away from Madrasah and they would complain to my parents, and my family would torture and send me back to that harm5

 For a discussion on traditional archives, see, for example, Schwartz and Cook (2002).

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ful educational institution where they taught nothing but Arabic holy texts that made no sense to me. I read and re-read, recited and rehearsed the Quran so many times. I memorised the whole Noble Quran perfectly. Then they wanted me to read books full of many types of Hadith every day, for months. The rules in Madrasah was impossible. I got really sick at one point. The Imam and other religious teachers had known that I was not their ideal student, I would not be an ideal Imam in the future, but they would not let me go. When they realised that I was not convinced by the Holy texts, they imposed harsher rules on me to control me. I told them that they can’t keep me in that prison. My parents did not understand. My family was blind to Islamic education. They wanted me to continue anyway. They became brutal and let the state torture me. […] I love Morocco. But I could not have stayed there. […] I spent days, weeks and months under open sky, hiding in the Mountains. The Mountains know my sufferings. […] Morocco is full of Mountains. The country has beautiful stunning landscape. The Mountains witnessed my pain, the torture I had been ­ through in my homeland. I love the Mountain and I love my homeland but I could not go back. I had to flee to this United Kingdom, the country which is controlling the politico and economic leadership of Morocco and sub-Saharan Afrika, forcing many aboriginals from the region to move in the UK. I miss Morocco. Morocco has rich cultural history. I don’t miss my family home. It makes me so angry”.

Such narratives are powerful or “moving”. They are powerful because of their essence. This story provides a glimpse of Shahosh’s youth life back home, his deprivation, and struggles as a Black and indigenous man in Morocco. It reveals many contradictions and tensions with his family, religion, and Islamic education, and the cruelty that he faced, while simultaneously describing his attachment, political positioning, and pride and love for Morocco (as a landscape) and its political history. It also shows how his move to Britain is complex. He doesn’t miss his family home but misses his home country, Morocco. He is aware of the colonial history of Morocco and stressed that he was exiled in the country that controlled Moroccan political economy which makes him angry. Such “moving” narrative of what Shahosh called, “moving memories” need little analysis for readers to understand why their preservation is important. The narrative partially substantiates Taylor’s (2015, p. 3) suggestion that the displaced are likely to maintain “a deep emotional attachment to the lost home” that they left behind—simultaneously making a new and safer home in the new place, that is, their country of exile. The loss of “home” that Shahosh

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describes, however, is the loss of Morocco—his homeland and home. His understanding of home is not fixed. He refers to a collective home of a collectivity—indigenous black Moroccans who are conquered by the Islamic dictatorship in Morocco—that he lost. Shahosh’s two-hour long-life narrative reconstructs the social history of Morocco, showing the division created by European colonisation in a sub-­ Saharan region, and the politics of international development which Shahosh believes had “facilitated the establishment of Islamic dictatorship in Morocco”. His life history reveals many contradictions related to the sense of belonging to home, spatiality, attachment and complexities, cultural identities and the intersectionality between class, language, “race”, religion, and nationality. For example, one contradiction related to belonging to the lost home is obvious in his saying that: “I love Morocco. But I could not have stayed there. […] I love the Mountain and I love my homeland but I could not go back”. Another key contradiction to belonging to home in exile is clear in his statement that “I had to flee to this United Kingdom, the country which is controlling the politico and economic leadership of Morocco and sub-Saharan Afrika, forcing many aboriginals from the region to move in the UK. I miss Morocco”. Shahosh’s first language is Arabic, and he has a Madrasa education, but he does not want to be an Imam. He believes in transnationalism, humanity, and enlightenment, and wants to resist colonisation in sub-Saharan Afrika.6 His loss is not merely personal; the loss of home in his narrative is more of a collective loss. He mentioned homeland many times throughout the two hours. His account is powerful and at the same time shifting. In recording and archiving this and other collective and “moving” memories about their home and life, we preserve the words of our displaced speakers in the archive. The term “moving memories” is used here for appreciating the displaced home in their country of origin, and the term “moving narrative” (powerful and shifting narrative) is to understand and contextualise their lived experiences in the host country, Britain. The term “moving 6  Shahosh’s narrative is moving as it is full of struggles, tensions, and contradictions. His emphasis on “enlightenment” makes it clear that these contradictions are meaningful. He migrated because he rejects Madrassa education, which for him is too religious, yet simultaneously blind to Islamic education. He faced brutality when he rejected the Islamic education offered in Morocco. He loves the Arabic language but refuses to submit to a Madrassa education. At the same time, he rejects the colonial history and practices of the West, but he moved to the UK in search of freedom of speech and human rights (as he explains above).

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memories” is a metaphor, representing both the powerful resonance of these narratives to emote the feelings of displacement, but also the very memories themselves represent the movement and mobility of the narrator reflecting the transient nature of their experiences. The word “moving” is used interchangeably as it was first used by Shahosh to indicate the two together—memories and narrative of the displaced are constantly shifting and are powerful. For Shahosh, the word “moving” refers to “powerful” and at the same time “shifting”. As he explains, it is shifting because his “memories move, meanings change” as he moves places and as time passes by, and he remembers “different things” and makes “different meanings of these memories and new experiences”. Memories are not fixed for Shahosh but are powerful and constantly shifting. In considering the metaphor “moving”, this chapter analyses moving narratives and moving memories as critical in informing the policies and conversations around “refugee and migrants” in the hostile environment. Our notion of knowledge from below “considers the knowledge of the displaced is more important than the knowledge produced by researchers and experts who reinterpret data following a pre-existing paradigm” (Hashem & Dudman, 2016, p. 3). Meanings of home to most of our respondents are, however, paradoxical, multiple, often complex, relational and “in constant process” (Taylor, 2015, p.  7). Individual irregular migrants of colour and undocumented women’s experiences of the process of re/making home in Britain vary, however, based on their identities. For instance, Neela, a 37-year-old undocumented displaced woman from Latin America, left home in the face of domestic violence and sexual violence when she was 19. She escaped her father’s home, her hometown, and the entire home country, and moved to England via Lebanon and Scotland in 1997 after her mum died at “home”. When talking about “home” in America, Neela stated: “I could never do this [walk alone at night] in my home town in America. […] It was very violent to women. You have to carry a knife when you go to date…hmm […]. I don’t want to go back. I don’t have any reason to look back. The place is violent. There was no safety. My mum died. I could die there. […] My father is a scientist, but he was brutal to me. I don’t miss that home. But I miss the landscape and nature. The nature across the border of my homeland is beautiful. I miss the environmental attachment to the whole place where I grew up”.

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These risks and attachment—the sense of belonging to Neela’s home— are paradoxical which make the meaning of home to the displaced complex, and “moving”. Neela does not want to remember her family home in South America, in particular, because of violence. She was suffering from epilepsy but received no support from the family and school at home in the absence of her mother. Neela’s account of home shows that home is a gendered construct and is the place where the socialisation of children usually occurs and causes isolation for some. “It is also contradictory, capable of being a place of nurture, safety and security as well as having the potential to be the location of oppression, subjugation and violence, especially for women” (Korac, 2009, p. 26; Tolia-Kelly 2010, p. 28 cited in Taylor, 2015, p. 4). For those who have been forced to move away, this contradiction is often writ large, as the lost home is the setting for the good experiences of the past and memories of family and friends, but it is also a place where bad things happened, where the protection of the state failed, and neighbours could no longer be trusted. The home in exile is similarly capable of being a place of refuge, at the same time as being a place of alienation and discrimination. Moving away from a violent home implies embracing uncertainty. Whether we embrace the displacement through self-exile or being forcefully evicted from home, displacement is always alienating and isolating. Neela and Shahosh’s isolation led to both vulnerability and emancipation, which affects their identities.

Remembering “Home”: Which Home? Two common questions that the London based displaced speakers were asked in interviews for this research are: Do you live in London? Where is your home? The answer to the second question was misunderstood by most participants. They often asked, “which home?”—as they were negotiating hostility here in Britain where they are unwelcomed, and still feeling emotional attachment to the lost home and a strong sense of belonging to the family home they left behind. Except two, others have responded in detail that home to them is a place of safety and it is the spatial home that they remember in their home country which they left behind. Most of them have talked proudly about the home in home country and talked less about the home they inhabit in Britain, which also substantiates home is “intimately connected to our identity and an emotional sense of belonging” (Sirriyeh, 2013, p. 5, cited in Taylor, 2015, p. 3). When they described

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their home, there was often a pride, an affection, and a strong sense of belonging in that description. For example, when historians have written all about conflict in Morocco Shahosh as an exiled young indigenous man of Moroccan heritage narrates his collective memories about political struggles of Morocco with pride, that: “My original home country Morocco has a rich history about which I am proud. The dictatorship and empire today ruined the country. But the Moroccan past political history is rich. […] I’m proud to be a Moroccan because they have refused to accept western domination and refused the colonisers …”

Shahosh described the political history of his original home for 25 minutes, despite his personal life struggle and religious persecution that he faced at home and that led him to flee his home. He challenged the history and research done by the western and white Moroccan scholars, which he called is “distorted and colonial knowledge that denies the existence of indigenous Moroccans and resources”. Here, home to Shahosh is complex but also it substantiates Taylor’s (2015) concept of a relational home. The relational home is the one where home to people means other people rather than a place or a location. His collective memory about home is resourceful—although brutal in terms of politics of human rights and development. While his individual memory of home is painful and forced him to flee home and embrace uncertainty, a strong sense of belonging and ownership is still noticeable in his assertion that “Morocco has a rich history”. This rich history is upheld by Shahosh and it influences his identity and belonging, even though he is distant from “home”. Similar attachments and collective memories of home were highlighted by Sazia, Ahammad, and Snafa about their lost “home” in countries of origin. Ahammad is from Sudanese heritage and is proud of his home in North Sudan too but he is also happy in Glasgow. Home for Ahammad is fluid because he could not be sure where his permanent home can be. But Jishan, one 28-year-old man coming from a background of secular middle-­ class journalist and Syrian heritage, who crossed the sea by boat for four months to come to the British shore via Greece, Turkey, Germany, and France saw home as “the diverse city London”. He used the word “diverse city of London” and “human rights” several times in his account. It seems that diversity in connection with home for Jishan is about a place/space

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that “many groups of people” from different social and ethnic backgrounds can “inhabit with dignity”. Jishan stated that he “craved for a diverse home” and he was happy to be here. He stated: “I came here because UK has a reputation for diversity and multiculturalism. There was no security in Syria. It was too unsafe for me. I could have stayed in Turkey as I was offered good accommodation, but I am an atheist. I decided to move on and come to [the] UK because this is an open, multicultural and diverse society, at least from what I have heard. I hope, I am right. I would like to belong to British society. I have no prejudice”.

In his construction of home, Jishan was clear about a possible spatial home and he already built a temporal home in the same form that Taylor (2015) discussed in the context of Cypriot people’s narratives in London. The temporal home was also expressed by Humira, 27-year-old woman from Somalian heritage who was granted asylum before we met in 2016 and was allowed to take (General Certificate of Secondary Education) GCSE exam. For Humira, home means her current home in Britain. She explains: “I am an immigrant from Somalia who has the wish to develop a higher educational profile. I have completed GCSE math in the UK. I am currently studying English functional skills level 2, and I have also completed my accounting AAT level 1 and level 2. I am also attending the University’s Open Learning Initiative course for refugees and asylum seekers. I have a permanent residence permit in the UK. I am still uncertain about where and how I can access Higher Education”.

Humira aspires to a better home and recognises her position in society in relation to education and higher studies. Her narrative is “moving” as she expresses possessiveness in her temporal home at the same time as conveying her feelings of an uncertain and unpredictable future in the new place. The temporal home for Humira means Bristol where she celebrates birthdays, educational achievements, and religious events, goes to the mosque, and aspires to prospects in life. Despite Humira’s aspiration and resilience, her anxiety and uncertainty about a suitable job and long-term home were noticeable.

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The Displaced and “Crisis of Reception” The moving narrative of the displaced speakers substantiates that a sense of belonging to home—whether in the host country or country of origin—cannot always be attainable. Even if belonging is something intrinsic to being human, the displaced can have attachments to a place only if they are allowed to hold onto that sense of belonging. For example, Shahosh stated that: “I’m Proud to be a Moroccan […] but I am too black to be a Moroccan. The Moroccan people that you see and hear speaking about Morocco in academic seminar in the UK are all white Muslims. The indigenous Moroccan are not invited to any western conference since the Empire took over the state power”.

This statement suggests that the right to belong for an indigenous Moroccan has been brought into question more harshly than the experiences of other Moroccans. Shahosh is seen as “out of place” because of his race. He had been denied access to education, healthcare, and work for two years since he arrived in Britain. Unlike Jishan, who received warm clothes, medicine, and a blanket on arrival, Shahosh did not receive a warm welcome when he arrived in Britain in his Jillaba. “Nobody has asked how are you” when he went to Home Office in Croydon, although he mentioned to the officers that he has a condition. Shahosh described how he has been forced to practice “so called British values” of what he calls “a name of a joke”.7 Shahosh’s experience in British society points to the “crisis of reception”, not of migration, as discussed in theories of transnationalism (Yuval-Davis, 2007 cited in Yuval-Davis, 2010). Shahosh could not belong to a society that requires him to prove “how to hold a knife and a fork”, “what clothes to wear to suit British multicultural society”, and “what jokes to make when someone is upset by the Home Office’s maltreatment”. Arguably more than a sense of belonging, it is the politics of belonging and the policies of the host country that influence the meaning of “home” and redefine the identity of the displaced. For Shahosh, there is no space to grow a sense of belonging in his host country. Most of our respondents, except Zeba and Jishan, reported that during the process of seeking sanctuary they were living on social welfare. Their 7

 See, for a detailed discussion on this, Hashem and Dudman (2016).

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legal status within the immigration framework in Britain was influenced by race and ethnicity and made them easy targets of the exclusionary practices and direct discrimination of the Home Office. Shahosh explained: “I don’t receive any health service in this country. As an asylum seeker I am not allowed to have free medical service. There’s no surgery in London that I could register to. When I went to give interview for asylum at the UKBA office, the officer had asked me about my health and fitness. I said that I don’t know how fit I am because I didn’t see a doctor for over eleven months. I don’t know if any disease is spreading into my body. Guess what he said: ‘it’s okay. I didn’t go to doctor for months also. You are okay’. Ha ha, he compared his status with me. You know what he actually meant? He meant that you cannot complain about anything as an asylum seeker. A refugee does not need any health service”.

Likewise, Ahammad explained that during his asylum process he underwent incredible hardship, anxiety, and depression. He was made homeless soon after asylum was granted: “The uncertainty is depressing. The asylum process is impossible. The Home Office does not give me any clue about a possible date. If I had known about a date or a month when it [refuge] will be granted, I could plan something. I could not plan anything. I could not hope for anything”.

Ahammad moved to London in 2016 and was awaiting asylum when we first met. He studied Software Development and Wireless Communications and had obtained a Master’s degree at a Kuwaiti University before coming to the UK. The uncertainty about Ahammad’s refuge eventually ended as he was granted asylum in summer 2017. Yet his uncertainty about home was not over. Soon after he received the letter from Home Office about his asylum, Ahammad was told to leave the refugee home on the day after he was granted asylum: “I will have no place to live from the day after tomorrow. Yesterday the Refugee Home [sic] told me that I will be kicked out of the Home if I didn’t leave in three days. It is because my asylum was granted two days ago, and I must find a place to move out now. But I don’t have an income, I don’t have a job. I don’t have a relative go to. Where would I go. There is no home for me in London”.

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Ahammad’s experience shows that making home in London becomes impossible “within conditions of restrictive immigration practices framed within the Hostile Environment” (to use Wilkins, 2019, p.  18 cited in Dudman, 2021). The positive news of a grant of asylum became a dilemma for the Black Afrikan Muslim man who moved for safety in Britain from North Sudan. The hostility to the displaced after asylum in the host country created a new problem for him. The Home Office restricted the space for belonging by evicting him from the temporary home. He was prevented from remaking home and creating a sense of belonging. A “crisis of reception” is noticeable here, too. Making home for a “refugee” in London in particular is almost impossible within the hostile immigration policies and the framework for resettlement and housing for “refugees”. Despite holding a Master’s degree and having good English language proficiency, remaking home for Ahammad in London became unattainable. He was forced to unbelong and move to Scotland where this interview took place. Ahammad’s experience is not unique. Others have also spoken about the housing crisis for refugees and the Home Office’s reluctance to support additional housing. The home of the displaced can also be conceptualised as a “displaced home”. The displaced home refers to both the home there that they have lost and a home here that the displaced are trying to re/make. The displaced home is always complex and in process. Snafa, a 50-year-old who fled Iran, is trying to remake home in the Midlands: “I was an entrepreneur. I left my business and home behind. My husband and children are still there. Part of myself is here, the other part is there. I am displaced. My home is displaced. I am anxious. Always in anxiety. The home in the countryside where I am living here [East Midlands] is not like my home. I go there, the Refugee Home [sic] to rest. I am sort of in between here and there. I sleep here but think about the home in my country. It is difficult to feel at home here. It is difficult to think about the home there. I wait [sic] asylum and hope to see my husband and children one day. Who knows if you [sic] we can remake home”.

Snafa has no real sense of attachment to her home in Oxfordshire. She thinks about her lost home but does not want to go home because that home is displaced. In addition to her displacement and separation from the rest of her family, the reception she received under the hostile environment in Britain has made her reflect on home as an unsettled or displaced

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home. It may be that the living conditions in her current residence (the Reception Centre) contributed to her disorientation and lack of belonging in Britain. She also finds herself “awkward in the UK” because “people don’t understand” her language. This was a discussion point that came up in conversations with other speakers who felt the same, despite having a settled position after asylum was granted. They could neither feel at home, settled, nor think of going back to the home from where they had been displaced. It is important to acknowledge the sense of loss and isolation, alongside the achievements, that displaced people encounter in their new home and in a new place, within hostile immigration policies in particular.

London as a Complex Home: Identities of Sudanese, Syrian, and Moroccan Displaced Men Remaking home for the displaced means reconstructing life, place, and identity (Korac, 2009). It means negotiating many challenges posed by the policies and framework of the host countries, moving away from their original home to embrace uncertainty, and coping with policies about displacement and “refugee” identities in the host country, when they are also negotiating uncertainties and hostility in their host countries. Reconstructing life, identity and home in a hostile environment has become impossible for some of these speakers, including Sazia and Ahammad, in London. Ahammad argues: “London is busy, rushing, expensive and there was no job and study support for me. Making home for me in London would be difficult. I moved over to Scotland for house rent and education. It’s cheaper and nice here. People are friendly. I like it. I feel welcome and happy person”.

Home is also an intersection of space, time, and social relations (Korac, 2009, p. 26) which is evident in the story of Ahammad, Neela, Snafa, and Jishan. There are others who are still trying to make home in London and faced with differential acculturation and direct prejudice. Shahosh mentioned that people on the streets of London asked him if they can touch his curly hair which made him feel embarrassed. He stated that he feels like: “A monkey in the zoo. Curiosity or fantasy of people in London is incredible. Why would anybody want to touch my hair? Could you imagine what would happen if I asked the same question to them: ‘can I touch your hair’?”

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This curiosity and expectation about the Other is familiar to other participants too. While it is done almost without an intention to harass the person, it causes embarrassment and hurt. Such intrusiveness in a developed society is an irony, and a familiar form of orientalism and stereotyping, if not hostility, prevails in London which undermines transnational social values and diversity. Similar experiences were recounted by an irregular migrant respondent from Kuwait who arrived in the UK during the Brexit vote campaign. He explains: “It is hard to feel at home in London. People look at me like I am a stranger. On tube people don’t like me, I think because of my dress. I don’t have many clothes. I wear the same shirts and trousers. I don’t look smart. My accent is another trouble. When I speak people always ask me: where are you from. It is embarrassing”.

Zakaria is a 34-year-old man. The extra curiosity of people on London’s underground and streets led him to believe that he lacks something. He is isolated and deprived of a sense of belonging to these streets where he would be embarrassed by unexpected scrutiny over his outfit and gestures. Re/making home in such conditions is almost impossible. Sazia, a single mother of three female children from Syrian heritage who was a wealthy business entrepreneur before ISIS launched war in Syria, explained: “I got refused to let a house with four kids. I have three daughters who just arrived from Germany after two months separation since we fled home. My husband is still stuck in Syria. I need a safe home for my beautiful daughters. One is 8 years old, one 12 years old, and the eldest one is 16 years old. I am going from door to door for them to rent a house in London, but no one let me in. I am carrying £40K cash in my handbag as you can see. I went to view several properties and the landlords are all fine at the start. As soon as they heard that I am a refugee, awaiting asylum, they said: ‘We do not let home to refugees. I am sorry. You got to find somewhere else.’ I don’t believe this. I could not believe it that a normal person here in a developed country who speaks big about human rights won’t let me rent a flat for my daughters just because I am a refugee. I even told them that I am a lone parent and new in this country. My daughters are not well, the little one has got high fever, I need to take them to a healthy home urgently. I offered 12 months advance rent. But nobody listened to me. What do this British think of themselves? How could Home Office not find a safe home for my

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daughters. Where would I go with my three girls in a strange country? Is there no human rights in the UK?”

Arguably, Sazia’s narrative is informed by the discourse of the “good immigrant” and “bad immigrant” (see Shukla, 2016). The politics of who can and should belong here is obvious in this narrative. Sazia arrived in London four months before we met in 2018. She was awaiting asylum and has enrolled in the University’s Open Learning Programme. Her daughters joined her two months later. Sazia was offered initial housing in London by the Home Office which was unsuitable for the family. Under the current scheme, asylum seekers are not able to choose where they live. Sazia wanted to rent a better accommodation when her three daughters arrived in London because the initial housing is not suitable for her children. Sazia was concerned about her children’s education, physical and mental health and well-being, and safety as any other mother would have thought. She first requested for a safe and healthy family housing to the Home Office, which the Home Office failed to provide. Sazia believed that the Home Office was reluctant to grant her request for a healthy home for her daughters from a preconception that a Yazidi mother is not a good immigrant and would not have much to offer to the UK. In the absence of Sazia’s husband, she found it difficult to look for private housing and approached her teachers at the University, one of whom has volunteered to help search for properties in London. Sazia and her teacher looked for property for weeks, but the Landlords were not interested in letting a Syrian asylum-seeker and her daughters on their property. Sazia and her daughters were first neglected by the Home Office, and she was further denied the right to rent a property when she approached the landlords with the help of the University staff who volunteered to look for her accommodation. According to the staff who accompanied Sazia, the landlords shut their doors abruptly when they heard that she was undergoing asylum process. A material home was denied, making it impossible for Sazia and her daughters to develop a sense of belonging to this country. This assimilation of a displaced mother of colour and her three war-­ traumatised daughters in London marks London as a hostile place for Syrian refugee women. Making and remaking home in a second or third place is hard for anybody, as argues Korac (2009), but it seems more challenging in the hostile environment in Britain for those coming from the Global South. The displaced people from the Global South are targeted by a range of

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exclusionary policies on the one hand, and the populist anti-immigrant discourse on the other hand. Sazia, Shahosh, Ahammad, Humira, and Snafa negotiate the harsh reality, the structural power relations, and race relations in their everyday lives in Britain. Paradoxically, Shahosh also commented that London as a locality or a temporary home is safer and better than other parts of England: “A better place. It is better than my home country. London is better for its diversity, its political dimension, its democratic value”.

The relational aspect of “home” identified here is combined with the material home. Shahosh’s statement also validates Al-Ali and Koser’s suggestion that “concepts of home are not static but dynamic processes, involving the acts of imagining, creating, unmaking, changing, loosing and moving homes” (2002, p.  6 cited in Taylor, 2015, p.  4). Shahosh originally reported loss and hostility in London while simultaneously imagining and creating a safer home in the city. He did not try to move to other cities. Jishan, who works for the Guardian as a freelance journalist, also stated: “I never received anything but solidarity as a refugee in the UK. [….] So far UK is a good, friendly and hospitable country to me. When I arrived in the UK the first question that I was asked at Calais is: “Do you need a Doctor”? I was moved and compelled by the warmth of the question in a strange country that I came without knowing anybody, any connection, any dream or hope. I did not expect such warm welcome in a country where I didn’t have any relative. Everywhere everyone, all people, atheist, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, English and non-English people have given me support and love, showed solidarity, they came with some help […] I feel lucky to be here.”

Jishan’s account shows that Britain can be a good home to some people and can welcome some Syrian people. Hence, it is arguable that his experience is informed by the discourse of good immigrants. Jishan, as a freelance journalist, has social networks that he established through mainstream media, such as the Guardian and BBC for whom he worked before coming to Britain. His social networks have enabled him a special place in British society, which Sazia, Shahosh, Snafa, Zeba, and others could not access. However, London has been seen as a safer and better home than the original home of the displaced.

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Neela commented that “as a ‘home’, London is a much better place to live in”. Neela’s statement was supported by four others who suggested that the diversity, democracy, freedom of expression and multicultural aspects of the city of London is worthwhile to make a “home” for any refugee—regardless of Asian, Caribbean, White, Black, Muslim, or Jewish background. Shahosh emphasised that: “It is a politically diverse “place” which allows me to participate in activism, to share views openly and to express solidarity with others. London offers a politically diverse community which is what I needed to live”.

However, the identity of a Black Moroccan displaced man and Syrian women in London make them unwelcome and the place itself a complex and paradoxical home. We argue that re/making home is most challenging for irregular migrants from the Global South. The reality in Glasgow, Bristol, and Oxfordshire seems neither welcoming nor too harsh for the displaced who spoke to us. It was not clear whether London is the harshest place to remake home. The paradox of the city of London, its complexity, and rushing atmosphere have been emphasised and felt as “harsh” by all participants including those who travelled from Bristol, Glasgow, and Midlands for the purpose of study.

Conclusion Throughout this chapter we find that remaking home in Britain is particularly difficult for the Black displaced men and women from the Global South, and making home in London is harder than other cities. The differential experiences of the displaced and direct discriminations against displaced people from the Global South were key discussions in all the life narratives that we collected because they were denied access to home in the famously multicultural city of London. The hostile environment and immigration framework enables spaces for direct exclusions and the denial of fundamental human rights for the displaced in large cities, where they can experience rejection and homelessness in London. These stories must be archived and documented in their original format to challenge official narratives, and the inauthentic and distorted narratives about irregular migrants and their home countries. These narratives also substantiate that a one-dimensional appreciation of home is not adequate. Many paradoxical meanings and contradictory

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experiences of home become obvious in the discussion, suggesting the significance of the oral history approach to displacement and re/making home. Moving memories of home and displacement of the speakers above reflect both a sense of loss and memories of happiness and affection for some, and collective memories of cultural heritage, landscapes, and political struggles for others. These memories of home in displacement are significant and valuable, even though some of these are painful and associated with trauma and loss that many displaced people find hard to bear. Meanings of home to our respondents are, however, paradoxical, multiple, often complex, relational, and in a constant process. These meanings given by the speakers here relate in many ways to Taylor’s (2015) conceptualisation of meaning of home to Cypriots in London. At the same time, the testimonies shows that there are considerable differences between the definitions of home to different displaced individuals, such as Ahammad, Sazia, and Snafa, who struggle to re/make home in London. Individual irregular migrants of colour and undocumented women’s experiences of the process of re/making home in Britain vary based on their identities. Immigration policies, and transcultural encounters with English and Scottish British nationals, sanctuary and home in London, the right to work and study in a hostile environment in Britain affect their views of home in the host country and their countries of origin. The testimonies of Shahosh, Jishan, and Humira also relate to temporal home. However, the term “temporal home” is insufficient to grasp the depth and power of the narrative and memories of the displaced home. The narratives are moving and can be changed as life goes by and the person moves on. Certain aspects of the narrative told by a participant can become complicated in their later discussion or at some point when they would talk about a different incidence in the same “place” (such as London, Glasgow, or the Islamic state of Morocco). It is necessary, following Mbembe (2015), to refuse any pre-existing paradigm to avoid shaping and reshaping of data of the displaced identity and their narratives. In rejecting pre-existing paradigms, we can deconstruct narratives in the archives. The meaning given by the participants about their life histories helps us analyse the history genuinely. In drawing on knowledge from below, one can see that the oral history told by the participants themselves is a lived reality in a particular socio-political and historically specific cultural context, which should not be distorted or reinterpreted. There is much more recorded life histories and extracts that we could not discuss in this chapter, but which should be archived and preserved.

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“Archives—as records—wield power over the shape and direction of historical scholarship, collective memory, and national identity, over how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies” (Schwartz & Cook, 2002 cited in Dudman, 2019, p.  33). We should continue to archive and digitalise the authentic narrative and record complex meanings of re/making home. The Living Refugee Archive continues to develop, and our engagement with displaced authors, artists, activists, scholars, and practitioners continue to help us shape and adapt what is meant by a participatory, living archive documenting the lived experiences of displacement. This has led us to consider the role of the Refugee Archives as a counter-archive, challenging the traditional notions of archival management to provide a living archive which is respondent to displaced communities, documenting their stories in the way they wish them to be told. Acknowledgement  The writing of this narrative was made possible with the generous time and testimonies of the participants who not only gave testimonies but also supported the project through their direct engagement and participation in the project workshop and consultation meetings with the researchers. We are grateful to all participants who spoke in this chapter. The undertaking of the project was made possible through the Grant of Civic Engagement Fund 2015 by the University of East London. This funding is greatly appreciated. We also thank the editors of this volume for their helpful comments on this chapter and their editorial support.

References Anthias, F., & Yuval-Davis, N. (1992). Racialised Boundaries: Connecting race, nation, gender, colour, class and anti-racist struggles. Routledge. Dudman, P. V. (2017). Digital archives of refugee history: Resources, challenges and opportunities. Refugee History. http://refugeehistory.org/blog/2017/5/13/ digital-­archives-­of-­refugee-­history-­resources-­challenges-­and-­opportunities Dudman, P. V. (2019). Oral history and collective memory: Documenting refugee voices and the challenges of archival representation. Atlanti, 29(2), 33–43. Dudman, P. V. (2021). Review: Annabelle Wilkins, Migration, Work and HomeMaking in the City. Dwelling and Belonging among Vietnamese Communities in London. Displaced Voices: A Journal of Archives, Migration and Cultural Heritage, 2(1), 69–73. https://doi.org/10.15123/uel.898y5 Gatrell, P. (2017). Refugees  – What’s Wrong with history? Journal of Refugee Studies, 30(2), 170–189. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/few013

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Hashem, R. (2014). Empirical research on gender and armed Conflict: Applying narratology, intersectionality and anti-oppressive methods. In SAGE research methods and SAGE research methods cases, 2. SAGE Publications, Ltd. Hashem, R., & Dudman, P. (2016). Paradoxical narratives of transcultural encounters of the “Other”: Civic engagement with refugees and migrants in London. Transnational Social Review: A Social Work Journal, 6(1), 192–199. Hashem, R., & Dudman, P. (September 30, 2019). Documenting untold resilience and moving memories with displacement: Narratives of asylum-seekers and refugees in Britain. Living Refugee Archive [Online]. Accessed on 1 October 2019. Available from http://www.livingrefugeearchive.org/ documenting-untold-resilience-and-moving-memorieswithdisplacement-narratives-of-asylum-seekers-and-refugees-in-britain/ Korac, M. (2009). Remaking home: Reconstructing life, place and identity in Rome and Amsterdam. In Studies of forced migration (p. 26). Berghahn Books. Marfleet, P. (2021). Displacements of memory. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/ view/40379 Mbembe, A. (2015). Decolonizing knowledge and the question of archive. Unpublished Paper. Retrieved January 22, 2016, from http://wiser.wits.ac.za Schwartz, J. M., & Cook, T. (2002). Archives, records, and power: The making of modern memory. Archival Science, 2(1–2), 1–19. Shukla, N. (2016). The good immigrant. Unbound. Smith, R. C. (2002). Analytic strategies for oral history interview. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research (pp. 711–731). Thousand Oak, CA: Sage. Taylor, H. M. (2015). Refugees and the meaning of home: Cypriot narratives of loss, longing and the daily life in London. Palgrave Macmillan. Yuval-Davis, N. (2010). Theorizing identity: Beyond the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy. Patterns of Prejudice, 44(3), 261–280.

CHAPTER 5

Archival Home Making: Reference, Remixing and Reverence in Palestinian Visual Art Helen Underhill

Introduction This chapter addresses recent methodological and aesthetic invocations of the archive within contemporary visual art from Palestine. It considers the role of creative self-historicization in relation to the obligation to continually remake home under protracted displacement, dispossession, and military occupation. The chapter’s central claim is that the work of art making, and to be more specific, the work of archival art making, is home making work. As a form of collecting, it draws together what has been scattered or displaced, preserving both the material and the ephemeral in face of dispersal and destruction. Through processes of reflection and reference, this artwork draws together different concepts of home and homeland, and by reinterpretation it remakes these in reference to the changing circumstances of new generations. In the Palestinian context explored here, these

H. Underhill (*) School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_5

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references seed discussions around reverence, and what the past and its material, cultural and personal echoes mean for making home in the present, both on an individual basis, and collectively as a population subject to ongoing displacement. This chapter centres on empirical detail from the 2014 iteration of the Ramallah-based Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA), which incorporated an innovative, collaborative curation process around the theme of the archive.1 This exhibition (and the educational and curatorial process behind it) offers rich examples of how the visual and conceptual language of museums, art collections and archives can be used to propose both sincere and satirical perspectives on issues of national identity and culture. I engage with the winning artist’s ‘remixing’ of famous images, to reflect on intergenerational identity formation through the visual archive of Palestinian art historical references. This stands as an example of the relationship between visual art, art historical references, the concept and activity of archiving, and the (re)creation of home. Reflecting on artistic archival approaches from Palestine in light of this collection’s exploration of refugee home making pursuits, this chapter positions art as a way to imagine and negotiate home. The diversity of home making practices, and the multidimensionality of home itself, can be fruitfully revealed through archival and pseudo-archival practices, which enable reflection on the experience of loss of home, and the trajectories and life experiences of people seeking a home (both individually, and as a nation). The archival concerns of the artworks discussed here foreground home making as a long-term project with intergenerational dimensions.

The Archive, Art, and Home Archival artworks can function as documentation, testimony, or even critical response to the institutions that have ‘traditionally’ housed archival material. Crucially, as in the Palestinian case, they can also critique the denial and destruction of such official institutions, and the implications of 1  This ethnographic doctoral research project involved long term participant observation and semi-structured interviews with staff and students centred on the International Academy of Art, Palestine in Ramallah, and with a wider community of Palestinian artists both in the occupied West Bank and in Haifa, Israel. As part of this process, between August 2014 and December 2015, I attended arts events such as the exhibition described here, and engaged in a range of semi-structure and informal interviews in response, which inform this analysis. For further information, see Underhill (2018), 2022).

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this for homeland, and home making. The powerful tools offered by self-­ historicization and the archival approach can be said to make spaces for voices forgotten or excluded by those with the power to write official history, and hold the promise to create a personal, non-institutional history, with an emphasis on the inventive, philosophical, and mythological aspects of writing history (Simon, 2002). To propose such testimony as ‘archive’, as these artists do, is not merely to allude to an ‘official’ or ‘legitimate’ repository of indexed, searchable, reliable, and representative material, but—in light of the critical artistic practice exploration of the creative and created nature of the archive itself—also to position one’s work as part of a wider—ongoing—process of writing and rewriting of contested histories of migration, displacement, and resettlement. Artistic practice thus rehabilitates the archive from assumptions that it provides an objective evidential record of history, repositioning archives as constructed, positioned, gendered, raced, and classed. These reflexive and dynamic artworks echo definitions of home within this collection as hybrid, fluid, and negotiated. This chapter offers an example of the archive as methodology and aesthetic within contemporary visual art in a non-Western context in which postcolonial history is being reconsidered and renegotiated. This reconsideration of the nation is closely linked to the concept of home, and processes of home making. A further example is found in the work of Walid Raad, whose Atlas Group Archive (https://www.theatlasgroup1989.org/) documents the contemporary history of Lebanon, in particular the wars of 1975 to 1990, through documents and audio-visual artefacts. These artists address the language of museums and archives, national identities, issues of belonging, narrative, language, and power. This archivally inflected artwork challenges the power structures that inhere within the established archives hosted by museums and art galleries, which have historically housed the canonical story of a place and its people. The ‘archival turn’ noted by Simon (2002) arguably represents an art world trend or fixation, but one with reflexive resonance in the Palestinian context, in connection with wider arguments about the non-linear experience of past-present-future, and particularly in relation to return and reuse as ways of remaking home. Looking to the past for creative inspiration recalls home making as a long-term project. The urge to label collected materials or information as archive (in this case one loosely conceived, and not limited to technical definitions of functionality, searchability, and operability) suggests a Benjaminian drive to collect, and evokes histories of

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displacement, loss, and exile. This prompts reflection on the passage of time, and through space, of both objects and ideas, and the place of the artist (or audience) within both temporal and geographic structures. Although traditional conceptions of the archive aim to gather and fix information or material, artistic examples intervene in more static understandings of history, belonging, and home making. Significantly, contemporary visual arts engagement with the archive exposes the archive (as historical repository of collected materials and information) as dynamic (Lauzon, 2015; on the archive more broadly as a dynamic entity, and the implications of this for Social Sciences, see Tamboukou in Moore et al., 2017, p. 79). Within the Palestinian example discussed here, remaking is the key element, which gives creative form to the urge to rewrite history and reimagine home, in the sense of how the artists place themselves and their work within history, within the archive, in relation to the sweep of time and the weight of history—materially, spatially, conceptually, and in terms of personal identity (Photiou, 2015). Artistic reworking of symbols, artefacts, or stories, thus become acts of reworlding, remaking a sense of home through the creative process.

Reclaiming Home: Archival Sensibilities in Contemporary Visual Art from Palestine The 2014 iteration of the Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA), as a curatorial and educational process, physical exhibition of artwork, and prize award process, took place in Ramallah as part of the Palestinian biennale Qalandiya International (QI). The exhibition’s chosen theme of ‘the Archive’ is significant given its relationship to Palestinian histories of visual art, of individual identity and belonging after displacement, and of the national struggle in light of decades-long experiences of dispossession. Within the Palestinian context, displacement, resettlement, and dispossession are experienced in multidimensional and compound ways—through the loss of one’s history, artefacts, culture, language, knowledges, and places. The Palestinian predicament stands as an archetypal example of the loss and remaking of home; refugee memories, identities, experiences, and negotiations of home making (linking to broader themes of this collection); a history of division, dispossession, and national movements or state-building thwarted by settler colonialism. The creation of alternative and creative archives thus becomes a way to reclaim a sense of ‘home’ in

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the sense of individual belonging, and to negotiate with the concept of the desired nation as ‘homeland’. This exhibition process offers an opportunity to reflect on intergenerational identity formation through the visual archive of Palestinian art historical references, spatial division in the geography of occupied Palestine, and how the material practice of art making speaks to other forms of collection and display of historical and cultural artefacts that contribute to feelings of home. Palestinians have been denied ‘official’ types of history by the structural dispossession and programme of cultural destruction enacted by Israeli settler colonialism. Despite being divided legally, geographically, and socially into Palestinian citizens of Israel, occupied Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jerusalemites, and diaspora communities both in Arab countries and worldwide, the themes of loss, separation, and fractured nationhood are held in common. Within this context, the continual renegotiation of a sense of home, and a hoped-for homeland, are paramount. The division of the West Bank during the Oslo period into Areas A, B and C resulted in ‘fifty isolated enclaves,’ divided by Israeli barriers which induced a ‘cultural poverty’ with many people unable to access training or work opportunities in the main urban centres of Ramallah, Bethlehem, or Jerusalem (Arasoughly, 2013, p. 101). These fractures are a result of concerted Israeli policy, situated in the context of Israel’s settler-­ colonial project of displacing Palestinians. Ongoing processes of violence and dispossession enacted on Palestinians by the state of Israel are evidenced by recent court rulings and evictions in Sheikh Jarrah to make way for Israeli settlers, and the violent suppression of Palestinian resistance to Jewish National Fund tree planting in the Naqab.2 Meanwhile, Palestinian history—in terms of artefacts, documents, and the works that constitute art history—has been subject to ongoing violence, both material and symbolic. Cultural production, nonetheless, has been vitally upheld within the Palestinian struggle, often focusing on themes of the idealised homeland and reflection on loss and exile; narrative conventions and memories of the Nakba (Allan, 2014, p. 42; Laïïdi-­ Hanieh, 2006, p. 39). The Nakba and the wider history of the threatened homeland frame a Palestinian art history richly inflected with the imagery 2  For more on the contemporary condition of Palestinian life under occupation, see the JVC (Journal of Visual Culture) collection of ‘provocations by scholars, artists, designers, architects, urban planners, visual activists, and culture workers’ that gives an up-to-date picture of the destructive practices of ‘the occupation and its histories’ (2021).

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of local histories, traditional dress, foods, and crafts, as well as relationship to the land (Sherwell, 2003, p. 56). The looting of artwork during the Nakba in 1948 was followed by the destruction of Palestinian museums, artworks, and archives by bombing during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which was motivated by the desire to destroy the PLO and its institutions, and thus Palestinian nationalism in Lebanon (Said, 1984, p. 15). These events presaged the further destruction of art and cultural centres during the second Intifada when the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre (KSCC), Qasaba Theatre, Cinematheque, and Municipal Library were all ‘shelled and ransacked’ by the Israeli army (Laïïdi-Hanieh, 2006, p. 38). The adversity of this period is epitomized by the Israeli forces’ looting of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre (KSCC) in 2002 (Artists for Palestine UK, 2015, p. 14).3 Despite this, culture was deployed as a resistance activity, with exhibitions such as 100 Shaheed-100 Lives at the KSCC (Laïïdi-Hanieh & Salameh, 2001) presenting images and belongings of ‘martyrs’ (those killed during resistance activities or as a direct result of the occupation) and Eyewitness—an exhibition of equipment and possessions vandalized by the occupying forces, arranged by Khaled Hourani, Nabil Anani and Taysir Barakat. Vera Tamari’s noteworthy artwork Going for a Ride, composed of cars which had been damaged during an Israeli incursion in Ramallah, was subsequently re-destroyed by a second tank battalion; taking no chances this time, they crushed, shelled, and even urinated on the work (Laïïdi-­ Hanieh, 2006, p. 38). As the artist recalls: We had a big party to open the exhibit—le tout Ramallah—and went home at midnight. At four that morning, the Israelis invaded again… a whole cohort of Merkavas4 turned up… and ran over the exhibit, over and over again, backwards and forwards, crushing it to pieces. Then, for good measure, they shelled it. Finally they got out and pissed on the wreckage. I got

3  The former director of the centre described the senseless destruction: ‘(on) Saturday, 13 April 2002, when I was awakened by my distraught husband telling me that a friend had called with the news that the Sakakini Centre had been broken into (…) All four offices were broken into and vandalised. Drawers emptied on the floor, bookcases broken, books thrown on the floor, some artwork and an antique ornate iron door irreparably damaged, walls and ceilings pockmarked by the blasts (…) the main computer’s hard drive had been stolen and the heavy metal safe had been forced open, with all the cash inside, down to the small change, stolen’ (Laïïdi-Hanieh, 2006, p. 41). 4  The main battle tank used by the Israeli army.

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the whole thing on video, and was delighted—of course. I have always been a great admirer of Duchamp. (Artists for Palestine UK, 2015, p. 16)

The examples of exhibition practices above centre on materiality, the gathering and political deployment—or politically motivated destruction—of collected or archived artefacts. They highlight the impossibility of separating Palestinian contemporary art practices from the daily realities of life in Palestine. As I now go on to outline, the 2014 edition of YAYA explored these issues of identity and belonging, social and political complexity, and dynamic change through time and across divided geographies, based on an exploration of the theme of the archive. As well as materiality and the preservation or destruction of cultural artefacts, this theme prompted engagement with lives, locations and homes lost.

The Art Competition and the Archive as Theme Qalandiya International (hereafter QI) is the most prestigious and internationally prominent Palestinian art event, held biennially since 2012. I write here about the 2014 edition, with its events and exhibitions held in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Gaza (by Skype link-up, with mixed success). The major showpieces of this month-long event are the Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA)5 and the Jerusalem Show,6 both pre-existing events which have been incorporated within the programme of QI. Whilst it is no longer unusual for a biennale to take place across several cities, the particularities of the Palestinian art world are reflected in the extreme difficulty of moving between the exhibition locations. Many artists and potential audience members were unable to attend events in East Jerusalem or Haifa, while Gaza could only be linked in virtually, and even this was compromised by problems with electricity and telecommunications. The multi-local aspect of this art event is a response to the spatial reordering and division enforced by the Israeli occupation, as well as the political economy of uneven development between the cities in the occupied West

5  Run by the A. M. Qattan Foundation, which has held a biennial prize exhibition of work by emerging Palestinian artists in Ramallah since 2000. 6  Held annually by Al-Ma’amal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem since 2007.

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Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Haifa.7 These limits on the event’s practical organisation speak directly to the structural denial of homeland, and resulting barriers to making home, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This flagship Palestinian contemporary art event takes its moniker from a symbol of Israeli control; the name Qalandiya is most commonly used to refer to the checkpoint on the main road between Jerusalem and Ramallah. The experience of passing through Qalandiya as a first-time visitor to the West Bank is often a turning point for understanding and engagement with the politics of the occupation, as it is no longer possible to pretend that everything is normal here. More significantly, for those who live in the occupied West Bank this militarily enforced segregation is part of what constitutes the daily experience of their home. Though architecturally and aesthetically Israel attempts to promote, ‘the illusion of a mere border crossing between two sovereign states (…) everybody herded through its plethoric congestion of commuters knows that both sides of the checkpoint fall under Israel’s control’ (Boullata, 2012, p.  123). By drawing international attention to this location, QI reminds us that this is also the name of the original Palestinian village on this site, and the subsequent UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine in the Near East) refugee camp: ‘Qalandiya’ has other connotations that have been blurred or erased (…) A meeting place of contradictions, it is now a place, and symbol, of disconnection, isolation, segregation and fragmentation. Qalandiya International reclaims the name in a defiant and positive celebration of visual arts and culture across a fragmented and divided Palestine and its diaspora. (Qalandiya International, 2016, np)

The Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA) is an arts prize run by the A. M. Qattan Foundation, which involves a survey show in Ramallah and the award of a substantial prize to a Palestinian artist under thirty. This organisation is particularly significant within the Palestinian art world, as it can offer the necessary technical, linguistic, and financial support to these artists and their activities in this challenging place. Its name references Abdel Moshin al-Qattan, a Palestinian who moved to Kuwait in the 1960s, 7  As well as further divisions between locations such as Nazareth, Umm el Fahem and Tel Aviv that are significant art centres for Palestinian citizens of Israel. These divisions, which split ‘the land into a non-contiguous patchwork of territories’, condition Palestinian perceptions of both physical and psychological possibilities (Petti et al., 2013, p. 151).

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setting up a construction company that made the fortune with which he endowed the Foundation in 1994 (Beckles Willson, 2013, p.  216).8 Today, its activities include programmes for culture and the arts (spanning the visual arts, performing arts, music, and literature, and including scholarships for young artists), a children’s centre in Gaza, educational publications, and public arts events (A M Qattan Foundation, n.d., np). The YAYA show also travels to the Mosaic Rooms gallery in Kensington; as the London Qattan headquarters, this non-profit gallery aims to ‘promote Arabic culture internationally’ through the Qattan Foundation’s ‘direct access to arts and culture in Palestine’ (Mosaic Rooms, 2021, np). This organisation is a major cultural player, both within Palestine and for the promotion of Palestinian artists abroad. Its activities and focus on the arts highlight cultural expression as key elements of personal and political claims to home and homeland. A central concern in planning this prize process and exhibition was the positioning of the show within the QI framework and its overarching theme of ‘the Archive’. This theme relates to an art world meta-trend of the past decade for self-historicization and reclamation of archival methodologies and aesthetics; ‘the Archive’ has been a particularly popular theme for arts events and curatorial projects the world over since 2012s edition of Documenta13.9 This theme has a particular resonance in the Palestinian case, in the face of a disunited political scene and fragmented geography. The selection of this theme raises the issue of public desire for a unified national history that has been denied by Israeli destruction of cultural assets and archives.10 In this instance, the chosen archival prompt for the exhibition speaks to an urge to connect past, present, and future, 8  Aptly enough, this origin story contains multiple echoes of home in the sense of labour migration to the Gulf, the material business of construction, and the eventual return to finance culture in the ‘homeland’. 9  This seemingly worldwide trend has impacted art worlds across the region, including the Lebanese milieu documented by Toukan, in which, ‘the appearance of archival, video and performance aesthetics, which complemented the international art world’s preoccupation with engaging with conceptual approaches that refute the meta-narratives of history, (…) became the prime focus of funders of the arts’ (Toukan, 2011, p. 17). 10  ‘A major disappointment in the cultural history of the Palestinians is that despite our ultimately rich and challenging art and cultural production, we for a long time have failed to establish the accumulation, interpretation and critical engagement of this production. The Palestinian narrative, history, archive and identity have continuously been established and narrated by the Other, with the added irony that it has been Palestinians who have been cast as the Other by those so narrating’ (Sharaf, R., in Deebi, A., & Makhoul, B., 2013, p. 44).

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arguably an attempt to reinforce the continuity of Palestinian political and territorial claims. The homeland is grounded in history, rooted in the archive. This art making process reflects the creative ways in which displaced subjects expand the spatial and temporal dimensions of home making. As an art prize, YAYA draws together young artists from a range of locations; the self-conscious selection and inclusion of artists from each ‘Palestinian’ area evokes the importance of the ‘terrain’ in which these artists’ origins are seen to qualitatively affect their art. The 2014 edition included artists from Gaza, Jordan, Haifa, and the West Bank, and explored the loss, pursuit, and remaking of home through artistic engagement with the aesthetics and politics of the archive. The challenge of bringing artworks from Gaza foregrounds the spatial issues of the occupation, the deliberate fracturing of Palestine into an archipelago of noncontiguous places by Israeli restrictions on the movement of material and individuals. On a practical level, Palestinian artists continue to construct the spaces within which their creative work can be circulated, received, and critically analysed, despite restrictions on movement and expression enforced by Israel.11 The limitations imposed by the Israeli blockade on Gaza were seen in the necessity of having work shipped to Ramallah for installation by the curator, in order for a young artist from Gaza to participate remotely in the YAYA exhibition and prize. The further infrastructural complexities of the Gazan art scene, meanwhile, appeared in the observation of attempts to bring Gazan artists into the QI opening ceremony via Skype link-up, thwarted by the unreliability of both electricity and internet connectivity. These challenges highlight the Palestinian specificities of both art making and home making as creative acts of future- and world-making; long-term projects conducted across time and distance in which identity and belonging in individual, political, and national senses are at stake.

11  There is great scope for study of the interplay between the West Bank, ‘1948’ Palestine and Gazan art worlds, particularly as Palestinian art history embraces the archive (raising questions of whose archive, and where it should be housed), and especially in light of the 2016 inauguration of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, a location that remains inaccessible for many Palestinians.

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The Exhibition: Process, Practicality, and Materiality YAYA 2014 was held in a previously derelict space in the basement of the Ramallah Municipality,12 the exhibition space was partitioned with the ubiquitous art world whitewashed gypsum boards and organised as a tour, leading the viewer through themed zones. The three sections were labelled: (In)visible narratives—those ‘forgotten, excluded or forbidden by those engaged in the act of writing official history’; Self-historicization—a personal, non-institutional approach to history, with an emphasis on ‘art making, art history, art institutions and artistic practice as relevant tools for history making’; and finally, Imagination—showcasing the inventive, philosophical, and mythological aspects of writing history. Within these sections were works by nine shortlisted artists in a variety of media: paintings, charcoal drawings, installations, a sound piece, and several video works.13 Notably, Farah Saleh created a performance-installation (entitled A Fidayee Son in Moscow) using archival material from her family’s collection, reflecting on the experience of young Palestinian boys who were sent for a revolutionary education in Russia by their parents. Hamody Gannam recorded oral histories of resistance by residents of Wadi Nisnas, now the only remaining Palestinian neighbourhood in Haifa. This piece, titled Wadi Nisnas, presented a room stacked with brown archival boxes (notably emblazoned with Hebrew text), hidden speakers relayed a cacophony of voices from the past recalling their attempted erasure by the state of Israel. Meanwhile, Noor Abu Arafeh’s video installation, Observational Desire on a Memory that Remains, approached the institutional and personal 12  Originally intended as a theatre and funded by various EU nations, construction was halted (though the building above remained in continual use) when Japanese funding was secured for the building of the Ramallah Cultural Palace on the edge of town. The curator described her initial site visit to assess the appropriateness of the space, during which the party navigated by the light of phones, attempted not to fall down large holes left by some remedial piling work, and discovered the existence of heaps of clothes donated for Gaza; she was shocked to learn this was not in response to the most recent Israeli attack on the enclave, meaning the donations had been languishing there for several years, alongside the remains of a rather unfortunate, long-deceased cat. 13  For a full list of the participating artists and images of their works see: http:// qattanfoundation.org/en/qattan/media/news/announcement-selected-curatorand-finalist-artists-yaya-2014.

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histories of Palestinian artists, offering ‘an alternative archive of Palestinian art history—translating undocumented and imagined works (…) whilst questioning what remains in memory’ (Mosaic Rooms, 2016, np). Previous editions of the award had taken the format of a curated exhibition composed of ten works chosen by a jury, not necessarily related to one another thematically. The Italian curator, Viviana Checchia designed the 2014 programme to include a series of workshops and support for the strengthening and development of the young artists’ work. In order to experiment with the concept of curator as ‘process-maker’ she devised what she called an ‘educational platform’ for the artist participants. The artists iteratively discussed their proposals with the curator, and collectively with the group. They were then given information on previous archive-inspired projects to situate their ideas. Checchia spoke of this process as a ‘laboratory’ for their ideas and artworks. The next stage of the process involved an e-learning programme, consisting of a series of online workshops and discussions, between the artists and international lecturers, artists, and cultural practitioners. This was documented and made available to the public at the exhibition in Ramallah (Fig.  5.1). Significant within this marriage of theme and process is the communal construction of what an archive could mean in this context of home making after decades-long displacement and during ongoing dispossession. The process itself emphasizes the archive as relational—referential to other artists and artworks (both the process of working together through this process, and the references to other artworks that echo in the resulting works). The YAYA prize announcement took place on a freezing evening in the carpark of the Qattan Foundation Ramallah headquarters. This was a significant cultural event for the town: after what felt like hours of musical performance and speeches, the winners were announced in front of a large crowd. Bashar Khalaf won with a series of paintings entitled A Shadow of the Shadow. These large-scale paintings were executed in oils on canvas in a realist manner, but with a bold graphic twist. Each presented a reference to the ‘traditional’ icons of Palestinian identity familiar to arts audiences in Palestine from the work of Sliman Mansour, who to many is the Palestinian painter. In one, a donkey’s legs can be seen protruding from beneath an embroidered curtain, another focuses on the sneaker-clad feet of a young man, taking its title (‘Camel of Hardships’) from an iconic image by Mansour of a Palestinian peasant carrying the weight of Jerusalem, and the prominent golden roof of the Dome of the Rock, on his back. In the painting reproduced below, the ‘Jaffa orange’ is rendered in a vibrant grid,

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Fig. 5.1  The catalogue for the YAYA 2014 exhibition in Ramallah, published by the A. M. Qattan Foundation. (Author photo)

referencing its former status as a symbol of Palestinian export pride, and reminder of the loss of both orange groves and the city of Jaffa to Zionist forces in 1948 (Abufarha, 2008, p. 349). The winning work placed its emphasis on easel painting and exhibited reverence for Palestinian art history; Khalaf’s work acquires worth, locally, through the reflected pedigree of Mansour’s originals, self-consciously referencing Palestinian art history as a way to reconcile the demands of the

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Palestinian public and the more internationally positioned curatorial process and prize panel.14 Yet, despite the notably progressive curatorial process, the decision of the jury still upheld to the ‘tradition’ and nostalgia paradigm which frames the broad Palestinian public’s response to contemporary arts output. As the jury statement noted: ‘We were impressed by Bashar’s reverence and respect for the source of his inspiration, the work of the artist Sliman Mansour, and for the bold steps he took in bringing the senior artist’s narrative into the present time’ (Halaby et al., 2014, np).

Archival Art and the Intergenerational Relations of Home Making The winning artist’s echoing of Mansour’s paintings in his work prompts a consideration of complicated and multiple stances on Palestinian art history, particularly in relation to the previous generation of artists who are now revered for their participation in political struggles of the 1970s and 1980s (Halaby, 2006, np). In this sense, art history itself becomes an archive of source material for reworking concepts of the homeland. The creative process acts as a proxy for communication between generations through processes of reference, reverence, and ongoing relevance through reworking. Despite this, some young artists read this as stagnation, and felt frustrated that the Palestinian art world rewards the moribund, encouraging idealized symbolic representations of Palestine—the keys, doves, peasant women, views of Jerusalem, martyr portraits, and olive trees (Abufarha, 2008). For some, this allegation was borne out by the result of YAYA 2014 and what they saw as the winner’s re-hashing of Mansour’s paintings. This emerged in conversation with one artist, who had previously entered the prize in 2002. She asked me what I thought about the 2014 jury’s selection of a winner, before going on to explain her frustration about the attachment of the Ramallah contemporary art scene to venerating and repeating the work of a previous generation of oil painters. For her, this choice reflected only the saleability and market value of such work. She lamented the public lack of understanding of her own installation work: ‘even in Haifa’—a location which she positioned as significantly

14  The judging panel for YAYA 2014 was composed of both ‘local’ and ‘international’ artists but comprised a group from an internationally mobile cultural elite background.

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more progressive in terms of its Palestinian arts audience relative to Ramallah—‘they just want something they can buy and put on the wall’.15 The wider debate on the disputed value of symbols, and the location of an intergenerational sense of ‘home’ in Palestinian art, that followed the award of this prize raises the question of where, temporally as well as geographically, home is located; is home the past, present, or future? Does the preference to locate homes in different timescales lead to different aesthetic and thematic art historical preferences? These generational divisions are significant for understanding the local audience’s preference for seemingly unchanging paintings, styles, subjects, and symbols. At the Off Qalandiya Forum event, Sliman Mansour himself spoke of the public interest in the work of his generation (the older generation and their ‘collective thinking’), contrasting this with the current situation, in which alienation between art and the public has increased in line with greater tension in general society. In his opinion, there is ‘less hope than before, (we feel a) loss of direction (…) we don’t trust tomorrow’. He observed that, across his long experience of the Palestinian art world, the people have always asked the same questions of their art, only they do so now with a lack of hope. An aesthetic nostalgia16 which matches a broader cultural longing for return inspires the general Palestinian public’s demand for their artists to link back to these historical narratives through visual references. Thus, the archive can be thought of as a tool of communication through time, and by extension as a tool of collective home making. These artists approach the reworking of archival material as methodological and aesthetic intervention in the flow of time, and moreover in the story of Palestinian displacement and dispossession. Their artistic practices constitute acts of remaking home within the ongoing relations of their enforced dislocation. As such, their work evokes the rich potential of art and the archive in relation to home making: to expose liminality and temporariness (e.g., of an exhibition space, of ‘live’ artistic practice, or of thwarted attempts at home making). This is balanced with permanence and the desire for stable foundations, the continual renewal of a sense of home despite dislocation, seen here in the Palestinian cultural value of  Conversation with artist (anonymized)—2015.  This is nostalgia in the active sense, in which longing for the past identifies absences in the present and hence in turn makes demands for the future, evoked by Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish: ‘My nostalgia is a struggle over a present which has tomorrow by the balls’ (2007, np). 15 16

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Sumud.17 Debates around the practice of Sumud underscore the complexity of staying put, and by extension speak to what home means in these fraught circumstances. Within this discussion, engagement with art history via archival art making has implications for the present. Echoes of the past shape contemporary art practice and, significantly, the sense of professional belonging and security of future felt by these young artists. These feelings connect to decision making around mobility, given the necessity of international migration to pursue continued training, and a career as an artist.18 That this prize is restricted to ‘Young’ artists, specified as those under 30, introduces the issue of intergenerational issues and identities, and raises the question of tensions between “traditional” cultural or artistic expression, and the aims and objectives of contemporary visual artists. In this example, it is possible to read a discourse around the demands of creativity, and the goal of embodying the Palestinian concept of Sumud, by practising steadfastness and self-reliance. In Palestine, as elsewhere, it is impossible to escape the processes of continual return and the piling up of history that underlie both personal and collective politics; within visual arts this is manifested in comparison to previous moments and movements. But this urge is contested and one’s relationship to this weight of history is part of negotiation with the politics of navigating a career between Palestinian and international art worlds. This speaks to another idea of home in the sense of belonging as an artist and links to debates around desired levels of mobility in pursuit of a domestic or international career as an artist, and questions posed by young artists in Palestine as elsewhere: where will they find reference, relevance, and reverence for their own artwork? It evokes the complexity of a situation in which young artists attempt to square the significant Palestinian cultural value of Sumud, or emphatically staying put, and demands for the right of return for those expelled in 1948, with the desire to fulfil normative and desired life trajectories. This supports ongoing theoretical efforts to complicate understandings of the prized Palestinian value of steadfastness and endurance. Sumud can 17  Sumud translates as ‘steadfastness’ and is an important concept and value within the Palestinian national struggle (Rijke & van Teeffelen, 2014, p. 86). 18  Among Palestinian art student interlocutors, the two most common career trajectories were the pursuit of a scholarship in order to take up an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree abroad, or remaining in the West Bank and seeking representation by a local commercial gallery.

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be understood as a changing, dynamic concept for Palestinians either side of the Green Line: ‘In the 1970s, Sumud meant refusing to leave the land despite the hardships of occupation; now, it connotes something more proactive’, the idea that life must go on, as these artists demonstrate, and that opportunities must be created or taken (Hammami, 2004, p.  27). More recently, Feldman’s analysis of Sumud as a contested and dynamic concept that influences all areas of ‘the politics of life’ of Palestinians is significant (2018, p. 136). Feldman, writing on Palestinian diasporas and the humanitarian situation in the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region, juxtaposes the violence of political and economic structures to which Palestinians are subject on the one hand, and the ‘politics of life’ that refugees improvise in response: ‘Understanding Palestinian politics demands consideration of the multiple forms and domains in which it may be found. It calls attention precisely to the politics of living’ (2018, p. 134). In the context under discussion here, the complexity documented by Feldman is echoed in how these artists position and evaluate their work and its claims, and their awareness of the relationship between their creative practice and Palestinian political currents. This includes what it means to make home (to survive, endure and enjoy life day-to-day) as well as to strive towards a homeland. This latter term evokes the sense of what it is to be a ‘good’ Palestinian within the national movement. As Feldman notes, this is a heterogeneous category, subject to a great complexity of claims made within the political movement, depending on one’s place of residence and trajectory as a refugee or otherwise (2018, pp. 154–156). To quote from Feldman’s rich discussion of Sumud and its ongoing contestation: ‘The concept is a dynamic one, given different expression in different places and moments. And it is also a concept that compels people to call into question the significance of every aspect of their lives. Is living in suffering an example of sumud or its possible limit? And is living well proof of Palestinian persistence—thriving and not just surviving—or an indication they are forgetting the political significance of their lives? There is no single answer to these questions, but they trouble the field of sumud as lived by Palestinians across the Middle East.’ (2018, p. 156)

This prompts further reflection on the accusation of cynicism raised by some Palestinian artists: the YAYA-winning artist having taken the prompt

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of ‘the Archive’ as an opportunity to rework popular iconic imagery within a saleable format (the large-scale traditional oil painting, as something that people ‘can hang on their wall’). This can be read as cynical, or as a canny economic and career move. This art making work reminds us that home making is grounded by histories as much as present circumstances, just as Sumud can be expressed simultaneously in staying put and moving forward, it can also be practised within the wider ‘politics of life’ without losing its validity. For some artists, this entails moving on from references to previous canonical cultural and iconographic forms, just as for others it means re-engaging them. This example offers rich threads for the consideration of intergenerational discourses of home making, reflecting on subsequent generations’ experiences of displacement. In the discussion around Khalaf’s work, we see intergenerational links expressed through memory, attachment, care, and reverence—as well as obligations to ‘home’ both actual and imagined. The ‘politics of life’ is a core part of, and keenly influences, both art making and home making practices.

Concluding Thoughts This chapter has critically considered invocations of the archive within contemporary visual art from Palestine as expressions of home making practices at individual, local, and national levels. Drawing on the example of Palestinian artists’ diverse invocations and deployments of archival methodologies, aesthetics and references, I argue for a reading of art practice as a site of intergenerational dialogue and debate on symbolizing the homeland. The work of archival art making is home making work. This chapter has explored creativity and modes of survival through displacement, particularly practices of return and reuse as ways of remaking home. This holds, whether that which is remixed is an accepted whole, reclaimed, critiqued, or rejected entirely. I have critically considered how artists approach the creation of archives as methodology, exploring processes of remixing, reference, and reverence within visual art. Addressing the specific resonance of these practices in Palestine, I have read these as acts of (re)making home in light of both historical and ongoing displacement and dispossession. Artists have proposed alternative archives (whether in the sense of alternatively created, or alternative readings of existing material) as potential resources for empathy, solidarity, and social change, as well as vehicles for

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public recognition of the memories, testimony, and experiences of individuals and groups who have undergone displacement and dislocation. They encourage the recognition of these unique trajectories as part of the process of making home, in this case the renegotiation of a home in a place that is yet disputed, and under continual threat of dispossession. The aesthetics of the archive can be invoked for political aims (e.g., legitimation of the narratives of those who have been denied voice, representation, and ‘permanence’ through traditional archives), personal aims (such as self-­ historicization and the imagination of alternative futures), or through a desire to document the impossible magnitude of what has already been lost. As demonstrated here, artistic invocations of the archive represent attempts at reaching into the past to imagine a different future, from the standpoint of a complex and contested present. This connects to the overarching concern of this collection with understanding home and home making through diverse lived experiences of migration and displacement. My aim here has been to encourage a reading of the archive within Palestinian contemporary visual art as an imaginative project with implications for home making via creatively re-imagining the past, present, and future. The YAYA process, and the heterogenous artwork of the resulting exhibition, gestures towards the multidimensionality of (re)constructing both individual senses of home and the Palestinian homeland—in its attention to temporal aspects in which future generations are imagined accessing, reflecting on, and learning from these alternative archives, an expression of the desire for continuity and conversation between scattered generations and geographies. The specifics of the Palestinian artists’ work explored here suggest the potential for archival art to expose liminality and temporariness balanced with the desire for permanence and stable foundations (as in the discussion of Sumud). This chapter has located the resonance of archival art making as home making practice within the decades-long—and ongoing—context of displacement experienced by Palestinians. Exploring art as a home making practice in this context underscores how Palestinian artists are obliged to contest their own dismissal and dispossession continually and repeatedly. Moreover, the invocation of the archive—however loosely—in their work reflects home making as a necessarily dynamic process, incorporating change through time expressed through processes of reference and remixing. How displaced people—notably, those dispossessed of an ‘official’ history and geographical homeland in which to ground it, as in the case of Palestine—creatively remake the archive

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through processes of self-historicization also reveals aspects of creativity, storytelling, and other narrative practices inherent in all home making. Acknowledgements  I would like to thank the staff and students of the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah, who welcomed me during my doctoral research in 2014/2015, and Palestinian artists, curators and arts professionals who took time to talk to me in Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Haifa.

References A M Qattan Foundation. (n.d.). Programmes – A M Qattan Foundation. Retrieved January 17, 2018, from http://qattanfoundation.org/en/qattan/programmes Abufarha, N. (2008). Land of symbols: Cactus, Poppies, Orange and Olive trees in Palestine. Identities, 15(3), 343–368. Allan, D. (2014). Refugees of the revolution: Experiences of Palestinian exile. Stanford University Press. Arasoughly, A. (2013). Film education in Palestine post-Oslo. In A. Arasoughly (Ed.), The education of the filmmaker in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan. Artists for Palestine UK. (2015). The case for a cultural Boycott of Israel. Artists for Palestine UK. Boullata, K. (2012). Between exits: Paintings by Hani Zurob. Black Dog. Darwı ̄sh, M. (2007). Edward Said: A contrapuntal reading. Translated by Mona Anis. Cultural Critique, 67(1), 175–182. Deebi, A., & Makhoul, B. (Eds.). (2013). Otherwise occupied. Al-Hoash, Jerusalem and Venice. Feldman, I. (2018). Life lived in relief: Humanitarian predicaments and Palestinian refugee politics (1st ed.). University of California Press. Halaby, S., Molinos Gordo, A., Jafari, K., Rakowitz, M., & Sinnokrot, N. (2014). The Jury Statement of the Young Artist of the Year Award 2014. Available via: A M Qattan Foundation. Retrieved January 16, 2018, from http://qattanfoundation.org/en/qattan/media/news/jury-­statement-­young-­artist-­year-­ award-­2014 Hammami, R. (2004). On the importance of Thugs: The moral economy of a checkpoint. Middle East Report, 34(2), 26–34. Laïïdi-Hanieh, A. (2006). Arts, identity, and survival: Building cultural practices in Palestine. Journal of Palestine Studies, 35(4), 28–43. Lauzon, C. (2015). A home for loss: Doris Salcedo’s melancholic archives. Memory Studies, 8(2), 197–211. Moore, N., Salter, A., Stanley, L., & Tamboukou, M. (Eds.). (2017). The archive project: Archival research in the social sciences. Routledge.

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Mosaic Rooms. (2016). Suspended accounts  – The Young Artist of The Year Award 2014–15/1/16–27/2/16 [Exhibition catalogue]. Available via Mosaic Rooms. Retrieved January 18, 2022, from https://mosaicrooms.org/wp-­ content/uploads/YAYA_COMPILED.pdf Mosaic Rooms. (2021). About the mosaic rooms. Available via Mosaic Rooms. Retrieved December 3, 2021, from https://mosaicrooms.org/about-­mosaic-­ rooms-­2/ Petti, A., Hilal, S., & Weizman, E. (2013). Architecture after revolution. Sternberg Press. Photiou, M. (2015). Be/come closer to home: Narratives of contested lands in the visual practices of Katerina Attalidou and Alexandra Handal. Third Text, 29(4–5), 340–355. Qalandiya International. (2016). About – Qalandiya International. Available via Qalandiya International. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://www. qalandiyainternational.org/about Rijke, A., & van Teeffelen, T. (2014). To exist is to resist: Sumud, Heroism and the everyday. Jerusalem Quarterly, 59, 86–99. Said, E. (1984). Edward Said reviews “Israel in Lebanon” by Sean MacBride’. In London Review of Books, 16th February 1984. Available via London Review of Books. Retrieved September 2, 2016, from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/ n03/edward-­said/permission-­to-­narrate Sherwell, T. (2003). Imaging the homeland: Representations of Palestine in Palestinian art and popular culture. Ph.D. thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury. Retrieved March 26, 2021, from http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails. do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.269144 Simon, C. (2002). Introduction: Following the archival turn. Visual Resources, 18(2), 101–107. The JVC Palestine Portfolio. (2021). Journal of Visual Culture, 20(2), 127–394. Toukan, H. (2011). Art, aid, affect: Locating the political in post-civil war Lebanon’s contemporary cultural practices. Ph.D. thesis, SOAS, University of London. Underhill, H. (2018). Art School, Art World, Art Circuit: An ethnography of contemporary visual art education and production in two Palestinian locations. Ph.D. thesis, SOAS, University of London. Underhill, H. (2022). Art Education Under Development in Palestine: De- and re-politicization via universal values, institutional critique, and reflexive practice. Manuscript submitted for publication.

CHAPTER 6

Collecting: The Migrant’s Method for Home-Making Genevieve Guetemme

‘Migration’, from Lat. migrare ‘to go’, ‘to pass’, ‘to change one’s place of living’ comes with movement, separation, uncertainty. And most studies on migrants and immigrants, or respectively temporary residents or in the process of settling down in the host-country (The Migration Observatory, 2019), are clearly linked to their unsettled status. Many studies concentrate on the ‘camp’, the ‘jungle’ or to speak more generally like Beckett (2010, p.  464)—an exile himself—‘the inexistent centre of a formless place’. Exiles are indeed commonly seen in transit, in hotels, rentals or at someone else’s home (The Migration Observatory, 2020). Their life has to be transitional, transnational… generally ‘squalid, unsafe’ (Perraudin, 2017) and many images show them lacking the basic space and possessions that make a home. Even the more permanent home is generally, statistically, documented in terms of vulnerability (The Migration Observatory, 2019). For example, the Migration Observatory that collects data on migration and housing in the UK focuses on the legal,

G. Guetemme (*) University of Orleans, Orleans, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_6

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financial and administrative challenges of owning a home. A set of surveys shows a very low home ownership by Foreign-born migrants who are more likely to be in the private rental sector and in overcrowded housing. These studies focus on that ‘home-building’ to inform public policies, but say very little on ‘home making’—or the imaginary of home-making, during and following displacement. This chapter will not explore the housing associated with financial, security, education and healthcare issues—generally called ‘home-­building’ (Kim & Smets, 2020)—but will focus on home-making in its emotional elements. It will examine the migrant feeling of home, of belonging and of identity and present a home that is not only as a suspended space linked to its inhabitant’s social status, but a language aimed at expressing the migrant’s feelings on mobility. The idea is to consider the migrant home, however transient, as the epitome of a quest for stability, belonging and reassurance. The aim of what follows is to reframe the debate on home-making as a narrative process that prioritises regrouping before regrounding and rerooting. The analysis of the home of those who have to make and remake a home in exile will focus on the value of home at the crossroads of inclusion, exclusion and creativity. This study will concentrate on the migrant’s sense of home as an everyday practice. A photograph by Laure Delhomme, showing Syrian artist and activist Diala Brisly in her living-room in Valence (France), will present the migrant’s home as a special place—real and imagined—or, to put it differently, as a work in progress, addressing the themes of memory and survival. The aim is to see how the photograph captures Brisly’s home-making as a central and continuous issue, even after securing refugee status. A short presentation of Brisly’s circumstances, linked to many small objects that are visible in the picture will question the process of home-­ making as a negotiation—physical and mental—with the realities of exile. A special attention to the symbolics of collage as a narrative method to navigate through rupture and loss during identity reconstruction will explore the strategy of home-making in a diasporic space, by those experiencing a global citizenship that is intimate and uncertain or, to say it like Brisly, by the ones who have ‘no country and no room’ (D Brisly, personal communication).

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The Migrant Diala Brisly was born in Kuwait in 1980 and raised in Damascus (Syria), but she fled to Istanbul (Turkey) in 2013 with scant personal possessions, when her active support for the rebellion made her fear for her life. Then she went to Beirut (Lebanon) before obtaining refugee status in France in 2018. She lived in Paris for a year, before moving in 2019 to Valence in the South of France (Massena, 2016). She had made a career in Syria, working for cartoon companies and children’s magazines1 and volunteered with various NGOs in Lebanese refugee camps to help children who have very little physical and psychological protection (Save the Children, n.d.). Such engagement helped keep her from feeling ‘guilty and lonely not being in Syria’ (BBC News, 2016). It transformed her work, which became more aware of identity and culture. It also reinforced her belief that artists can bring people together and make change. She still works with children in need and uses bright colours to transport them into a world of hope and lightness; away from the death of parents, brothers and sisters, friends… Far from the destroyed houses, the harrowing journeys across borders. Brisly’s pictures are made to understand the present and see a future that is realistic but also (hopefully) happy. This flying bicycle for example addresses the issue of child labour that very often comes with camp-life: this boy is selling cotton candy to make a living. But like Perseus who flies away on Pegasus after confronting the terrible Gorgon, Brisly sees an escape route for the children who have seen the face of death. Art takes their mind away, high in the clouds and through the wind. The mythic memory of Perseus takes into account the weight of the world in which we must live, while the less distant reference to E.T.’s iconic bicycle flight in Spielberg’s film put the ‘right to dream’ at the heart of children’s life (Fig. 6.1). Brisly draws kites and balloons, clouds, birds, butterflies. She presents dream and intelligence as a worthy detour to reach a safer place, especially when there is no immediate end to the crisis. Brisly says: ‘I can’t find a solution for him but I want him to be happy anyway’ (BBC News, 2016). She pictures the realities of war, but also hopes for reconstruction with genuine smiles. She talks about human resilience and adaptation to forced mobility and uprooting (Fig. 6.2).

1

 Zayton and Zaytonah magazine.

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Fig. 6.1  Diala Brisly, Child Labour © Brisly (Zayton and Zaytonah magazine)

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Fig. 6.2  Children painting the school tent at Yahya, Bekaa, north Lebanon, Oct 2016 © Brisly

Now a refugee in France, Brisly still carries the terrible reality of Syria within herself and assumes it as a personal burden. At first, she didn’t think she was leaving her home country forever. The reality of exile struck her in Lebanon when she realised she had no photograph or any other trace from her childhood. She had to start a new life from scratch, like the children she met in the refugee camps. Like them, she had to overcome the dramatic memories of war, of the death of close ones—especially her brother— and the loss of hope. But against such emptiness, she says ‘art has become a safety-jacket’ (Université d’Orléans, n.d., my translation). She has been wearing it all the time to stay alive and thinks it has the power to help others to survive the harshness of exile. Art brings, according to her, the infinite potential of lightness. It is also a powerful tool for education. That’s why she started a collaboration with Zeltschule,2 a charity aimed at providing education in refugee camps. She designed canvases for the ‘school-tents’ and ran workshops to help the children create their own colourful corner in the grey and dusty 2

 Zeltschule https://www.zeltschule.org/ (director Jacqueline Flory).

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environment, because ‘there is no colour in the camps […]. Colour is unhoped for’ (Université d’Orléans, n.d., my translation). Her goal was to ‘make children feel human—not just meant to grow up, fight and die in a war that is beyond them’ (Syria Untold, 2016). The paintings made the place stand out and tempted the children into educational sessions. The idea was to provide a vision of life away from poverty and uncertainty as well as helping people work together, find hope and embrace diversity. Although now unable to get a visa to Lebanon, she still sends colourful contributions to the children via Zeltschule.

The Migrant at Home In Brisly’s pictures, the clouds and waves are not menacing, but stand as the natural accompaniment of mobility. The paintings also refer to symbolic items recalling Syria such as olive trees and poppies, mixed with recurrent themes such as the broken homes, the child-brides or the child-­ soldiers as a way to denounce the hopeless physical and mental situation of the refugees. But Brisly always adds balloons—a source of joy—as well as flowers, stars and butterflies—meaning energy and beauty. And when running a workshop with children, she says: ‘I try to explain to them that planes aren’t just for bombing, and ask them to imagine a place where they would fly to if they were like birds or butterflies or balloons or pilots and to draw their answers’ (Syria Untold, 2016). The ambivalent paintings mimic her own position: ‘My Hands on the Ground, My Feet in the Air’,3 in a place (a house in France) that is more comfortable than a tent in a camp, but does not suppress the trauma of war. She stands in a margin. In an interview, she says: ‘we don’t have a country, we don’t have a room’ (cf. BBC News, 2016). And she may never get one. Indeed, she does not belong to any place and neither does her art. Rejecting the ‘refugee art’ label, she refuses to be obsessed with explosions, dead bodies and blood. She prefers art that has gravity without gravity as a way to initiate the fragile process of accepting a life without a home. Indeed, she uses art to create a narrative that replicates her own life and her own living space with many small corners, filled with salvaged objects, homemade craft and drawings that interact with each other, combining memories, grief and hopes.

3

 Exhibition title, in collaboration with the United Nations, 2016.

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It shows clearly in Laure Delhomme’s picture of Brisly in Valence where she has lived since 2019, after a year in Paris. The cloth-curtain that brings some welcome shade for example, was bought for very little money in Syria and taken into exile. It is just a multipurpose piece of cloth that was used as a blanket and now a curtain and will continue to accompany the artist, wherever she goes, because it tells the story of a dilated space and time—there and here, past and present. It conveys memories and sits at the centre of a network of written and unwritten relationships between both East and West. It exposes the continuity of a life built on losses, adaptation and projects (Fig. 6.3). Every other object in the room is loaded with similar weight: suspended between lightness and heaviness, enjoyment and anxiety, it shows an openness that emphasises isolation. The big round brown wooden face in the back, on top of the cupboard for example, is in fact a testimony of the numerous experiences and contacts that are paving her transitional path. The African-like mask was found in the street in the Saint-Denis district in Paris (well known for its multicultural population). Brisly’s roommate, at

Fig. 6.3  Diala Brisly at home, Valence (France), 2019 © Laure Delhomme

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the time, didn’t like it: too big, too heavy, too scary, but Brisly has been keeping it with her ever since. The face may recall—again—the figure of Medusa that Brisly-as-Perseus is constantly trying to neutralise or escape from. It is a shield that is protecting her from what stands in front and behind, but also a self-portrait and a monster sign-post at a crossing point. This once-discarded object reminds of Foucault’s promise: The promise that all these things kept away by the difference can one day— in the form of historical consciousness—be appropriated again by the subject and therefore restore his control and find what may be called his home. (Foucault, 2008 [1969], p. 22)

The face-shield, as an ethnic figure, stands here for social segregation and marginality. Put aside, but still very present in the room, it is also a force that Brisly both cultivates and domesticates. It becomes an important asset in her migrant home that has the power to resist present hardships and bring back memories, but it also places the home on a threshold or to put it differently, it transforms the place into something that may become a home, but is not one yet. Around the window is another promise of finding a home: through friendship this time. A garland of photographs, attached to the window-­ frame, surrounds an X-ray of Brisly’s own lungs with a little heart made of cloth and filled with lavender flowers. This very luminous space that separates the kitchen and the living-room/art-studio area is connecting the inside and the outside of the apartment, the ‘now’ of sunny and fragrant Valence with the Parisian ‘past’, when Brisly’s body started to hurt out of loneliness and stress. Paris indeed, even with the official papers of a legal migrant, didn’t feel like home at all. She was so unhappy there that she could not sleep, was coughing blood. The X-ray is proof of her misery and a trophy reminding her of her strength in overcoming such a difficult time. On the contrary, the photographs recall happier times in Lebanon, where she started to recover from the brutal uprooting from Syria and from the realisation that she would never be able to go back. In Beirut, she reunited with friends who also managed to escape. And she found a purpose in helping refugee children. These pictures of friends and of their time together did not replace the lost pictures of her childhood but filled the void. And put together around the X-ray, they remind Brisly that she can rely on friends to go through the difficult times. Both pictures and X-rays show the wounds below the surface and the recovery that comes

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with friendship. They reveal the artist’s vulnerability (the psychosomatic throat/lungs-irritation and the erasure of her personal history), but present also the possibilities of repair for her lost self and her lost home. The window with the photos and the X-ray, completed by a collection of plants, also given by friends, delimits a special space within the home: an exhibition space intertwining both past and present while warning against anything fixed and permanent. It is a reflective space, at the heart of a reparative process that is not a restoration. Indeed, it does not bring back the past but exposes the double movement of ‘self-outwards’ affirmation: a movement, according to French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy in his book Identité: Fragments, franchises (2010), that sees ‘otherness’ in the self. This movement delimits a dramatic window space that transforms itself into a ‘monument’—from Lat. monere meaning ‘to warn’, ‘to prevent’, as well as ‘to remember’4—against any form of amnesia. The home, which revolves around such a space, has the ability to bring a sense of continuity. And the same process is palpable in other objects. The ink-drawings and other prints on the cupboard and on the wall, a pair of earrings… all gifts with strong emotional value from Syrian refugee artists and long-term friends, who have since settled in other places. One of them shared a studio with Brisly in Damascus and they worked together for the same animation company in 2003. These things resume the ancient tradition of the Greek Symbolon: the matching physical ‘tallies’ (two pieces of an object) shared by individuals as a reminder of their agreement or friendship and, ‘for those travelling abroad, […] [a] protection from syle ̄ (seizure of property) and other forms of harassment’ (Hopper & Millett, 2016). These tokens have been following her, supporting her and mirroring her difficulties, to the point of becoming part of her physical self: ‘the plant was not doing well in Paris—like me—she says’ (D Brisly, personal communication). Brisly also treasures all kinds of little things found on the ground: glass and wood chunks, stones… like her, all fragments are given a home, however temporary (she rents her apartment with a limited contract that needs renewing every year). Such focus on many broken bits transforms her into a ‘reparation artist’ who helps the ones who need rebuilding—like herself. All these things act as connectors: with the place and the whole local 4  The wish to preserve the ideal image of a society through its monuments gave birth to the idea of preserving old buildings, an idea which then transformed the monument into testimony or trace of the past.

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community—the locals, neighbours, shopkeepers. And the choice of the translucent aesthetically pleasing seedpods of lunaria annua as a ceiling lamp-shade, reminds of all these connections: it brings together a new (natural and cultural) environment. It also recalls the ancient promises to Abraham—and to all men on earth—of seeding the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. Also, your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; and you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Kohlenberger, 2005, p. 33)

Accumulation of little things is pivotal to Brisly’s home-making. It allows her to connect times, people and places, inserting one world to another, shifting borders and viewpoints or, to say it differently, providing a personal reading of existence that reinvents a way for wounded and lost objects. This initiates ‘curative’ changes—material and immaterial. The broken (the objects and herself) have a chance to be rebuilt, repaired, given a new place, a new shape, a new function, a new individual and collective value. According to Manthia Diawara, talking about Kader Attia— another ‘repair artist’ questioning his franco-algero-European identity—the repair comes through a Glissantian conjunction of forms who clash. It provides: […] inexhaustible energies, where relationships are continually generated between the ideas and poetics of one place and those of another […] It does not offer any immediate solution, but situates itself in a continuum of disorientation and reorientation. Like the Jacob’s ladder in the artist’s latest work, it is part of a dream promising the end of migrations. But like the top of the ladder, which is, according to Attia “beyond human knowledge”, it is forever unreachable. (Diawara, 2013, p. 5)

Brisly’s home-making is driven by similar conjunctions and connections, leading to a transition process that is intimately linked to creativity. Indeed, she creates impossible equivalences, juxtaposing the X-ray of her lungs, an African mask, a curtain-blanket and plants. Collecting and connecting introduce a poetic touch that situates Brisly in a continuum of disorientation and reorientation and reinterprets memory. It introduces an image of history that is malleable, impossible to fix with memorials and museums: a living history, made of violence and repairs.

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Boccagni introduces the concept of ‘homing’ to define the act of home-­ making as an open-ended and unaccomplished process. The concept of homing can be distinguished into three levels: cognitive moral (expectations of what home should be), emotional (feelings about being at home) and practical (relationships between home and place). (Kim & Smets, 2020, p. 610)

And ‘homing’ comes with a set of ‘micro-practices’ that reflect ‘one’s aspirations, expectations and concerns for the future’ (Boccagni, 2018, p. 40). The decoration of the house is one of them. It is ‘influenced by individual assets and circumstances’ (Boccagni, 2018, p. 40) such as social networks. According to Maja Korac (2009, p. 26), the house decoration reveals, ‘a process of openness and change’, as those who have left everything in their home country use different layers of material and immaterial elements to create a sense of home in their new place.

The Symbolics of Home Brisly tried in Paris and again in Valence. Living in a small French town with a holiday feel may look like a privileged situation but, as US writer Andrés Nicolás Ordorica (2021, p. 8) puts it: ‘I quickly learned how the immigrant journey is a fraught Escher climb towards belonging’. His family crossed the U.S-Mexico border in the 1960s and he is now living in Scotland. He knows that ‘nothing is ever fixed, and all things move on’. The challenges are of course more obvious in refugee camps—even long after the urgency of the escape—as in Bourj El Barajneh, for example, a camp in Lebanon that was created for Palestinians in 1948 and which has since become almost permanent. A study of how Palestinian women see life in the refugee camp has shown that home-making comes with the creation of a symbolic universe that is separated from the real, ‘dangerous environment that has no space, light and air’ (Caron and Damant, 2014, p. 270). Michel Agier (2014, pp. 19–20) calls the camp an ‘absolute place of banishment’ that imposes ‘extraterritoriality, exception and exclusion’.5 But, as anthropologists Roxane Caron and Dominique Damant

5  Estimate in 2015: 1500 camps in Europe, Africa and the Middle-East, hosting at least twelve million refugees and displaced people (Agier, 2014, p. 14).

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demonstrate (2014, p. 277), the camp has nevertheless become a home for the refugees: ‘I think that if I leave the camp, I will die … I like living in the camp, but the situation here is so difficult … so if I have the opportunity to improve my situation, I will. But all the same, I prefer the life of the camp … camp is like my life’. (Souheïla, 27 years old)

The camp has changed over the years, but it is a place where the memory of Palestine—of its people and of its culture—is kept alive. Photos, decorations and special objects are kept and transmitted from generation to generation as witnesses of history (Caron & Damant, 2014, p. 275). Both researchers insist on the importance of such a symbolic universe in a context of survival. According to them, the symbolic explains why the most terrible places—‘unlivable […] out of all places, although yet effectively locatable’ (Agier, 2002, p. 267)—become homes with a reassuring memory. Survival in exile is dependent on such symbolic construction. It helps to tolerate the present. It connects with the past, and relates people to the place. Brisly’s home-making relies on the same universal and unconscious apparatus with her collections connected to Syria (rug, drawings, photos), looking towards the past. These exhibits represent her attachment to her lost life and make the present bearable. They internalise her desire to return and anchor her. But other objects (the X-ray, the pictures from Lebanon) show both the physical impact of exile and the necessity of psychological support. They keep her going towards an uncertain future. Every little thing testifies to her former self and helps make the place—any place where these things will be taken—into a home. The heterogeneous collection of objects and images with the most diverse statuses brings together different aspects of her own suspended reality, detached from the discursive system. They multiply points of view and blur the boundaries between both private and collective experience, they mix document and fiction, art and life. They transform the living-­ room into a stage for collisions between intimacy and historicity, order and disorder, personal and general views and thoughts. They condense the many different worlds born out of Brisly’s personal journey: from her time as cartoonist in Syria, her activist role within the uprising, the death of her brother, her exile, her ‘camp-art’ as she calls it and her future as a female artist and activist (her last work is an illustrated novel on education under

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ISIS rule). Such a mixing process allows Brisly to stand on a line between the offscreen memories that condition most of her moves and the social, linguistic and cultural experience of exile. Her home is like an evolving homemade shrine staging her own life story: a common posture that British writer and curator Michael McMillan sees in diaspora culture. His book titled: The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home (2009) explores the idea of home in the 1960s in different migrant groups (Moroccan, Surinamese, Antillean and Indonesian) living in the UK, through the decoration of their interiors and the symbolic role of objects, upholstery, curtains, carpets, artificial flowers and other arrangements. The front room often provides an outlet to respond to the feelings of displacement, exile and alienation and the rebuilding of a home in a strange land. (McMillan, 2009, editor’s description)

In Brisly’s room, the decorations do not mimic the Caribbean migrant’s aspirations identified by McMillan ‘of becoming that idealised Victorian bourgeois tropes’ (McMillan, 2019, p. 186). She does not send photos back home with signs of respectability and modernity. But her ‘bric-a-­ brac’ and ‘museum of curiosities’, is nevertheless part of the same cultural self-making. All collected objects carry strong emotional attachments, although not romanticised symbols of a lost Syria (McMillan, 2019, p. 187). They bring some awareness of her own heritage and prepare for transition. They also present cultural identity as a dynamic process working on memory, fantasy, narrative (Franzenburg, 2013, p. 64)—a ‘positioning’ (Hall, 1994)—at the heart of a diasporic ambivalent and hybrid identity; although ‘diaspora’, according to Franzenburg (2013, p. 60): is in danger of becoming a promiscuously capacious category” (Tölölyan, 1996, 8) and home is seen as an “emotionally fraught terrain” (Moorti, 2003, 359), whose “mythical bond rooted in a lost past, a past that has already disintegrated”. (Morley & Robins, 1996, p. 459)

But claiming a diasporic culture with a global and symbolic citizenship overcomes the international dispersal and alienation experienced in the host country. It combines otherness with togetherness and provides a new home based on,

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‘encoded, segmented memories that associates everyday memory with a collective cultural self-image linked to history. […] Characterized by its distance from the everyday […] it does not change with the passing of time […] these fixed points are fateful events of the past […] We can refer to the structure of knowledge in this case as the “concretion of identity.” With this we mean that a group bases its consciousness of unity and specificity upon this knowledge and derives formative and normative impulses from it, which allows the group to reproduce its identity’ (Assmann, 1995, pp. 126–129).

Brisly knows that no cultural identity is ever complete, but as Edwin Morgan’s (1968) famous verse puts it, ‘we come alive / not once, but many times’. Her collection is therefore, all together, an act of preservation, appropriation and transformation. It makes her home stand as a negotiation ground that interprets, receives, stabilises and repairs her dismantled self.

The Language of Home Brisly’s collection of lost and abandoned objects shows some similarities with the practice of hypomnêmata (Rangos, n.d.). Collection of things read and heard, material for thought exercises […] obtained by appropriation, unification and subjectivation of a known, already said, chosen, fragmentary self. (Foucault, 1994 [1983], p. 430)

Such experimental thought exercise, according to Georges Didi Huberman, quoting Adorno, allows for an understanding of ‘the position of exile, somewhere between a ‘mutilated life’ […] and the very possibility of a life of thought’ (Didi-Huberman, 2009, p.  12, my translation). Linked to disorientation and reorientation, it is uncomfortable in terms of knowledge, language and aesthetics. It uses deconstruction as a method to reassemble a narrative-flow. The obliged position of the writer in exile, always in the process of folding up luggage, to set out again elsewhere: to do nothing which weighs down or which immobilizes too much, to reduce the formats and the tempos of writing, to lighten the sets, to assume the de-territorialised position of a poetry in war or a poetry of war. Abundant poetry, moreover, exploratory and prismatic: far from falling back on elegance, far from sacrificing any nostalgia whatsoever, the writer multiplies formal choices and points of view,

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never ceasing to summon all the lyrical memory—from Dante to Shakespeare, Kleist or Schiller—never ceasing to experiment with new ‘genres’. (Brecht quoted by Didi-Huberman, 2009, pp. 13–14, my translation)

Combining bits and pieces of memory and new discoveries does not create a matricidal refuge, but accompanies Brisly’s artistic experiments. It creates a universal language linked to the mental realities of exile and to the knowledge that she will be moving again. She indeed keeps her tubes and carrier bags ready for travelling around. A man in exile is always a man on the watch, his mode of observation giving him, when he has the imagination of the writer and the thinker, the ability to ‘foresee so many things’ beyond the news of the moment that he is living (Didi-Huberman, 2009, p. 33, my translation). Therefore, is it possible to say that associative thought is the more appropriate response for adjusting to such suspended reality. According to Didi-Huberman (2009, p.  133, my translation) the mixing process ‘of dust, shreds, fragments, residues, […] which never stops running, migrating from one temporality to another’, condenses and internalises the many different worlds and selves born out of the migrant personal journey. It introduces what Didi-Huberman (2009, p.  251, my translation) calls a ‘knowledge, which can alternately be revelation (clairvoyance) and overpowering (delusion)’. And such knowledge, according to the same author, is ‘epic and lyrical […] (differing from the dramatic narration that proceeds by continuities) […] and coincides with the nonsense of war’ (2009, p. 60, my translation). Brisly’s collections seem to follow a scheme described by Didi-­ Huberman (2009) as a move from a difficult reality (pathos) into a poetic one that transforms intelligibility into legibility (logos) aimed at facilitating reminiscences and memorisation. Such a scheme relies on a process theorised by Bergson, as the ‘memory-image’, linking knowledge of past and present times to a ‘reserve’, which, far from completely erasing the traces of the past, keeps them in a latent state and allows what Ricoeur (2006, p. 39)—rereading Bergson’s Matter and Memory—calls the ‘small miracle of recognition […] [which] is to coat with presence the otherness of that which is over and gone’. Here, the mechanisms of forgetting and recognising, at the foundation of human memory, transforms Brisly’s multifaceted collages into narratives, made out of reminiscences and ruins. It opens her home—and her art with concise, dense and memorable stories—to an imaginary world, open to infinity. A world in line with the

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tradition of the fairy-tale with a choice of objects—feathers, sun, birds, and so on—that gives magic powers to the heroes. Brisly’s pictures encourage the children to travel by air to reach a better place. They open up to utopian moments that have the heuristic power to help rediscover the pleasure of playing and living. Such moments are born out of the language of things. They expose the children’s/artist’s dreams, where things keep on happening and go beyond anything visible, with no consideration of duration, but persistent and surviving memory (Fig. 6.4). Far from naïve, this language keeps its distance from the pre-calibrated ‘migrant’s story’, but shows how to survive terrible experiences through dreamlike creativity. Likewise, the home filled with collected objects expresses the complex movement of continuously rearranging everything in connection with a precarious mental and physical daily life. Such a home filled with lots of different things offers an intermediary space where everything is welcome. It mixes the past with improbable, unorderly and unforeseen outcomes and becomes the true home of the impure present of exile. The transformation of small little things brings also the idea of a second chance, of forgiveness. It helps coping with faults, disappointments. It facilitates resilience. The collection hosts the process of becoming and exposes the place where identity is constructed. This comes close to the migrants’ front room, described by McMillan. A space in which there is no ‘essence of purity’ (Hall, 1994, p. 401) that embraces the idea of difference through heterogeneity and diversity, where diasporic black identities have been culturally, historically and politically constructed in the process of becoming (McMillan, 2019, p. 186). Such a space represents the plurality of cultures and may also illustrate, according to Jordan Amirkhani, ‘the increasingly slippery legalized frameworks of non-personhood and outsiderness; and the lived experiences of those who fall outside the warm embrace of citizenry’ (Amirkhani, 2016: np). In The Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt presented undocumented migrants, refugees, and other categories of precarious minorities as those who lack the ‘rights to rights’. In this context, art seems to be, as Amirkhani puts it, a ‘mode of resistance to the regressive forms of nation–state propaganda and racism that have thickened in the twenty-first century, or tread an ambiguous line between empathy and insensitivity in the effort to create aesthetic accounts of citizenry’ (Amirkhani, 2016, np). Brisly does not have the visibility and power of, for instance, Ai Weiwei to represent the entirety of the Syrian humanitarian crisis, although it has

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Fig. 6.4  Diala Brisly, Dream catcher copic marker and ink © Brisly (Zayton and Zaytonah magazine) 201

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been said that ‘Weiwei turns the spotlight toward himself rather than prioritizing and creating space for the suffering to speak for themselves’ (Amirkhani, 2016, np). But her art and her home, although acknowledging her vulnerability, help her to regain some power. It brings her to look beyond the concept of belonging in a way that is recognised by Spivak (1988, p. 436) as the view of the ‘subalterns’ or, rather, away from the ‘issues of power, inequality, and difference that open up rather than restrict personal imagination and socio-cultural imaginaries?’ Her mismatched but effective collections of objects, stories and images collapse the conditions of static, enclosed forms of representation. It creates a subjective, spontaneous and compassionate language that helps inhabit the liminal and indeterminate space of exile. This language, which has become Brisly’s home, gives her both voice and dignity.

Conclusion Talking about the migrant’s home goes beyond location and practicability, either within the dire conditions of the camp or in the more settled situation of the political refugee in France. As Syrian artist Diala Brisly’s art and everyday environment shows, her home may not be the place she will inhabit forever, but her continual questioning of space and time through a meli melo of things has become a companionable tool for negotiating her new diasporic and uncertain identity. Her pictures, as well as her living-room, are filled with light, suspended and found objects, all accepting and fighting dispersion. They present a complex and ambiguous reflexive image of displacement where lightness and happiness accompany the anxiety and the loneliness that come with exile. Brisly indeed did feel isolated in Istanbul and very lost in Paris, although Beirut and now Valence gave her some comfort. She knows that her home is gone for good and needs to find stability, belonging and reassurance in her new place. Such reassurance comes with collecting things. Her home is indeed a place where art, plants and photographs given by friends and many found objects come together to tell the story of her life and expectations. The happy stories cohabit with many difficult memories, like when she was so anxious that she had blood in her lungs. The home becomes the heart of hypomnêmata or thought exercises that mix dwelling and dispersion and question social interrelations, cultural adaptation and transnational self. It transforms itself into a symbolic interior filled with little things and broken bits that interact with each other, bring to light

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the plurality of cultures and help understanding mobility. The things live a life of their own and respond to her feelings. They transform the space into a dialogic environment that uses imagination to connect knowledge and history. They repair every broken hope with playful associations and magical juxtapositions. Such a home is alive and therapeutic. It is adaptable and lyrical. It shows that objects have magical powers that offer a safe place within the daily reality of exile: a place that has the ability to protect from the strangeness and the dangers of every new place and new situation. It shows the network that supports migrants while exposing the dislocation and vertigo of extreme mobility. Made out of a collection of found objects, Brisly’s home nourishes her creations of fairy-tale-like stories where places connect geographically, culturally and emotionally with each other. It exposes a life made of adjustments and accompanies the transition process from one life to another with the power of dreams. The collection as a method for home-making stands here as a universal language aimed at fighting the lack of direction. It helps remaking a home from all the losses with hybrid and fluid memories. Like the children in the camp who need the coloured tent to anchor themselves and escape from disorientation and separation, Brisly’s home stands as both a present and imagined place, a self-reflecting environment that addresses—with a collection of ruins—the theme of memory and survival. This home is more of a learning space, where she can reflect on her knowledge, her values and her feelings. It explores the idea of becoming this … of being that … or not being able to do that. … It is part of a long-term appreciation of migration that interrogates the definition as well as the structural pursuit and implications of ‘arrival’. Brisly’s art of collecting also reveals a method for taking control of transformations while bringing strong connections between people and places. It stands as a mode of resistance to the innumerable difficulties of leaving everything behind. Finally, it makes a home that combines Boccagni’s (2018) four spheres of home. The first and the last spheres, here-and-now and there-and-then, are associated with migrants’ current dwelling and their original home before migration, respectively. There-and-now still exists because migrants are connected to people and events and to their physical house in their country of origin. Home here-and-then refers to the friction between home experiences then,

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in the country of origin, and home experiences here, in a new area/country with its own history. (Boccagni, 2018, p. 320)

Brisly’s home shows the constant movement around the home that encompasses the life story of the migrant now and then, there and here. It reveals a home experience that comes from the margin and focuses on the attachments, desires, needs and dilemmas—physical and socio-­emotional— that are missing or incomplete. It shows a temporal and spatial distance from what used to be home.

References Agier, M. (2002). Aux bords du monde, les réfugiés. Éditions Flammarion. Agier, M. (2014). Un monde de camps. La Découverte. Amirkhani, J. (2016). Between citizenry and privilege: Ai Weiwei and Bouchra Khalili, Art practical, November 10. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https:// www.artpractical.com/feature/between-­citizenry-­and-­privilege/ Assmann, J. (1995). Collective memory and cultural identity. New German Critique, 65, 125–133. BBC News. (2016). Diala Brisly: Paintings of hope for Syria’s children, March 19. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-­ 35847632 Beckett, S. (2010). III Seen III said. In P. Auster (Ed.), The selected work of Samuel Beckett (Vol. IV). Grove Press. Boccagni, P. (2018). At the roots of home, away from it: Meanings, places and values of home through the biographic narratives of immigrant care workers in Italy. In Davis, Ghorashi, Smet (Ed.), Contested belonging: Spaces, practices, biographies. Emerald Publishing Limited. Caron, R., & Damant, D. (2014). Survivre dans un camp de réfugiés. Entre réel et symbolique (note de recherche). Anthropologie et société, 38(2), 265–284. Diawara, M. (2013). Kader Attia: A poetics of re-appropriation. In K. Attia (Ed.), The repair from occident to extra-occidental cultures. The Green Box. Didi-Huberman, G. (2009). Quand les images prennent position, l’œil de l’histoire I. Éditions de minuit. Foucault, M. (1994 [1983]). L’Écriture de soi. In Defert, D. & Ewald, F. (eds.), Dits et écrits IV, 1980–1988. Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2008 [1969]). L’Archéologie du savoir. Gallimard. Franzenburg, G. (2013). Displaced values, from remembrance to resilience. Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 56, 59–65. https://doi.org/ 10.33225/pec/13.56.59

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Hall, S. (1994). Cultural identity and diaspora. In P.  Williams & L.  Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader. Harvester Wheatsheaf. Hopper, R. J., & Millett, P. C. (2016). Symbolon. In Oxford classical dictionary. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/ acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-­9780199381135-­e-­6166 Kim, K., & Smets, P. (2020). Home experiences and homemaking practices of single Syrian refugees in an innovative housing project in Amsterdam. Current Sociology, 68(5), 607–627. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392120927744 Kohlenberger, J.  R. (2005). Strongest Tniv (today new international version), exhaustive concordance. Zondervan Publishing Company. Korac, M. (2009). Remaking home: Reconstructing life, place and identity in Rome and Amsterdam (Vol. 26). Berghahn Books. Massena, F. (2016). Au Liban, Diala Brisly met l’art au service des enfants réfugiés syriens, TV5 Monde, October 20. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https:// information.tv5monde.com/terriennes/au-­liban-­diala-­brisly-­met-­l-­art-­au­service-­des-­refugies-­syriens-­133428 McMillan, M. (2009). The front room: Migrant aesthetics in the home. Black Dog Publishing. McMillan, M. (2019). Dub in the front room: Migrant aesthetics of the sacred and the secular. Open Cultural Studies, 3, 184–194. Moorti, S. (2003). Desperately Seeking an Identity: Diasporic Cinema and the Articulation of Transnational Kinship. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(3), 355–376. Morley, D., & Robin, K. (1996). Space of identity: Global media, Electronic landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. Routledge. Morgan, E. (1968). The second life. Edinburgh University Press. Nancy, J.-L. (2010). Identité: Fragments, franchises. Galilée. Ordorica, A. N. (2021). I dream of a better future for the place I call home. The Guardian, Review Issue 180, July 3. Perraudin, F. (2017). UK asylum seekers living in ‘squalid, unsafe slum conditions’. The Guardian, October 27. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https:// www.theguardian.com/uk-­news/2017/oct/27/uk-­asylum-­seekers-­living­in-­squalid-­unsafe-­slum-­conditions Rangos, S. (n.d.). Ancient commentaries on Platonic dialogues, Encyclopaedia of Plato. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from http://n1.intelibility.com/ime/lyceum /?p=lemma&id=867&lang=2 Ricoeur, P. (2006). Memory, history, forgetting. University of Chicago Press. Save the Children. (n.d.). Syrian refugee Children’ stories: Life as a refuge. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.savethechildren.org/us/what-­ we-­do/emergency-­response/refugee-­children-­crisis/refugee-­stories

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Spivak, G.  C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C.  Nelson & L.  Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture. University of Illinois Press. Syria Untold. (2016). Diala Brisly dreams with Syrian children, March 2. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://syriauntold.com/2016/03/02/diala-­brisly­dreams-­with-­syrian-­children/ The Migration Observatory. (2019). Migrants and housing in the UK: Experiences and impacts. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://migrationobservatory. o x . a c . u k / r e s o u r c e s / b r i e f i n g s / m i g r a n t s -­a n d -­h o u s i n g -­i n -­t h e -­u k ­experiences-­and-­impacts/ The Migration Observatory. (2020). UK public opinion toward immigration: Overall attitudes and level of concern. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-­p ublic­opinion-­toward-­immigration-­overall-­attitudes-­and-­level-­of-­concern/ Tölölyan, K. (1996). Rethinking diaspora(s): stateless power in the transnational moment. Diaspora: a journal of transnational studies, 5(1), 3–36. Université d’Orléans. (n.d.). Collection “art et éducation”. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.univ-­orleans.fr/en/node/3155

CHAPTER 7

Syrian Experiences of Remaking Home: Migratory Journeys, State Refugee Policies, and Negotiated Belonging Suzan Ilcan and Vicki Squire

Introduction Around three decades ago, Liisa Malkki (1992) suggested that the link between refugees and their lost homes is not a simple relationship. Rather, the concept of home involves complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions; its meaning undergoes disruption and reconstruction as people acquire attachments to new people and places. Malkii argues that “people are chronically mobile and routinely displaced, and invent homes and

S. Ilcan (*) Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] V. Squire Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_7

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homelands in the absence of territorial, national bases—not in situ, but through memories of, and claims on, places they can or will no longer corporally inhabit” (1992, p. 24). Indeed, displaced people often group together around ‘imagined’ homelands (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997) and reinvent understandings of home across transnational contexts (e.g., see Antonsich, 2010; den Boer, 2015; Ralph & Staeheli, 2011). For example, Aravantis and Yelland (2019) explore the personal narratives of Syrian refugee children to highlight the fluidity, contradictory meanings, and different connotations of home in the “refugee imagination”. Such works are important, because they denaturalise the tie between people and territorial space (2019, p. 2; see also Bank, 2018; Chatty, 2014). In this chapter, we similarly explore how home is remade in the context of diverse experiences of displacement and resettlement. Drawing on scholarship that views home as continuously changing and therefore as always in a state of flux or becoming (Brun & Fábos, 2015), our analysis of remaking home resonates with Boccagni’s (2017b) conception of ‘homing’ as an ongoing process. The chapter explores how home is (re) constituted through situations of displacement and resettlement, which can result in positive outcomes for displaced people at the same time as (re)producing uneven, fragmentary, or social exclusionary relations. Recent studies on home and belonging highlight the entanglements of settlement and movement (e.g., Aravantis & Yelland, 2019; Boccagni, 2017a), of narratives of social inclusion and exclusion (e.g., Drolet & Moorthi, 2018; Rottmann & Nimer, 2021), of space and gendered experiences (e.g., Fathi, 2021; Massey, 1994), and of the formation of shifting identities and differing forms of belonging (e.g., Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020; Hart et  al., 2018; Ilcan, 2002; Kaplan, 1996; Waldinger, 2008). While these and other related bodies of scholarship raise crucial insights about homemaking in displacement, more scholarly attention is required to explore the conditions within which practices of remaking home are embedded. Here, our contribution is to highlight how home is remade through migratory journeys to access safety and protection, in the context of state policies and social conditions that can work against various aspects of belonging in the places that people move and resettle. Home involves multilayered meanings and attributes (Kim & Smets, 2020), a variety of social processes and relationships, significant labour in ongoing processes of construction (Dossa & Golubovic, 2019), as well as struggles and negotiations around belonging. Paying attention to these dimensions across the migratory journey and in the context of repressive policies and

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resettlement practices is crucial in advancing our understanding of homemaking and displacement. The chapter is divided into two main sections. The first draws on interviewees’ recollections of surviving the current Syrian conflict and of leaving homes in Syria to seek protection. Here, we show how practices of remaking home during temporary stays in nearby ‘host’ states co-exist alongside precarious living conditions, all of which form part of the trajectory of homing in situations of displacement. Such processes, we suggest, highlight the wider tensions between movement and belonging, which challenge sedentary notions of home and stimulate affective appeals to a ‘lost’ Syria. We then turn to a discussion of refugee and integration policies for Syrian refugees resettled to the West Midlands, UK (2014–2021) and London, Canada (2012–2019), in particular via the UK Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) and Canada’s Government-Assisted Refugee (GAR) and Privately Sponsored Refugee (PSR) programmes. While these initiatives provide various kinds of support to Syrians, we also show how they create barriers to homemaking. The second section goes on to focus more directly on everyday experiences of relocation to the UK and Canada. It draws attention to the creative dimensions of remaking home, while also showing how policy frames and wider social assumptions about home generate difficult encounters and additional labour for resettled Syrians. Our analysis is based on 20 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a total of 24 Syrians fleeing conflict via resettlement routes to the UK and Canada. The interviews took place in the West Midlands, UK1 and

1  The research in the UK was carried out with funding from the British Academy Tackling the UK’s International Challenges Fund project IC3/100107, Lost and Found? A Digital Archive of Migration, Displacement and Resettlement, led by Yasmine Shamma with Suzan Ilcan and Vicki Squire. Vicki Squire led this research with the support of Doha Samir and Kalwinder Sandhu, to whom she would like to extend thanks. Thanks also are extended to the organisations who supported us to access research participants for this project, and to the research participants themselves. Please see Squire (2020) for a full analysis of the interviews in the UK.

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London, Ontario, Canada2 in 2020 and 2019, respectively. They were digitally recorded with the participant’s consent and transcribed in full prior to being analysed. To protect people’s identity, all names in this chapter are pseudonyms. Ten interviews were carried out in the West Midlands with a total of eleven participants. One was conducted face-to-­ face and the others via Zoom, and all but one were carried out in Arabic (Syrian dialect). Six Syrian women and five Syrian men were interviewed, all of whom had been resettled directly to the West Midlands between 2016 and 2019 as part of the UK Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) and who had refugee status on this basis. The majority were married; one woman was single, and one was a widow. Most had spent significant periods of time in Lebanon before being resettled to the UK, with two having spent time in Jordan and one in Iraq. Usually, stays in nearby host states had lasted for a period of five to six years, though one woman had only stayed three years in Lebanon and one man was resettled to the UK after only one year and three months. Several had experienced the traumatic loss of family members in Syria, and all had resettled with children of various ages and/or with other family members. The single woman who we interviewed had resettled with her mother, sister and her sister’s children. Ten interviews were carried out in London, Canada, with a total of 13 participants as part of a project independent from yet affiliated with the research in the UK. All interviews were conducted in person and in the Arabic language, though discussions in English occurred with some. Eight Syrian women and five Syrian men were interviewed, all of whom had been resettled in London within the past nine years. At the time of the interview process, most held permanent residence status, while a few held Canadian citizenship status. Approximately 70 percent of all sponsored refugees were government-sponsored in Canada, and the remainder were privately sponsored, with our sample representing this balance. The majority we spoke to were married, with one woman widowed due to the loss of 2  The research in Canada was carried out with funding from the British Academy Tackling the UK’s International Challenges Fund project IC3/100107, Lost and Found? A Digital Archive of Migration, Displacement and Resettlement, led by Yasmine Shamma with Vicki Squire and Suzan Ilcan. Suzan Ilcan led this research with the assistance of Violette Khammad, to whom she would like to extend her thanks. A special thank you to the Syrian interlocutors for their valuable time, insights, and knowledge. Ilcan’s analysis of all project interviews conducted in London and Windsor, Ontario, Canada appears in her 2021 project report, entitled, Experiences of Leaving Syria and Re-making Home in Ontario, Canada.

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her husband in an accident. All had lived in Syria during and prior to the war and left Syria for nearby host states, including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, between 2012 and 2017. In the interviews, many highlighted their lived experiences during the civil conflict, decisions to move within Syria and to live and work in neighbouring countries, and processes of relocating to and remaking home in London. Both London in Canada and the West Midlands in the UK are well established sites of refugee resettlement and received significant numbers of Syrians since the outbreak of the conflict. This chapter analyses the narratives of both cohorts of interviewees alongside one another in order to draw attention to the shared experiences across each reception and integration context. This is not to refute the importance of contextually specific experiences of resettlement, but rather it is to highlight the connections between localised experiences of transnational homing in contexts with similar policy frameworks.

Remaking Home in Displacement and Resettlement The Syrian conflict commenced in early March 2011 on the heels of the ‘Arab Spring’, with a wave of pro-democracy uprisings in Syria demanding regime change and political reform. This situation transformed into a brutal conflict that displaced around 13.5 million people, or over 60 percent of the country’s pre-war population. At the time of writing, about half of these people, 6.8 million, are internally displaced and still living in Syria, while approximately 6.7 million people engaged in migratory journeys to seek protection. The latter are now asylum seekers or refugees residing in neighbouring Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, and elsewhere, including in Europe and North America (UNHCR, 2021; see also Valenta et al., 2020). Based on interviews with our research participants, the analysis in this section focuses on displaced Syrians’ journeys out of their homes and from Syria. It first explores experiences of homemaking in nearby host countries, where many lived, worked, raised children, and created temporary homes. We emphasise how displaced Syrians’ engagements in remaking home occurred under extremely insecure and precarious living conditions and often with little access to support from family and community members. While spending various periods in countries near to Syria, all those in our study relocated to the UK and Canada where they received a new legal status as refugees with residency rights, and where some now hold legal citizenship status. The second part of this section

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explores experiences of UN resettlement, before going on to set out the policy frames that shape experiences of loss and belonging. Migratory Journeys and Displacement Existing studies have already shown how displaced Syrians participate in homemaking practices during their temporary sojourns in the nearby states of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey (e.g., Carpi & Şenoğuz, 2019; Hart et al., 2018; Ilcan et al., 2018). Similarly, many of our interviewees describe how they engaged in practices of homing during their journeys out of Syria. As we highlight below, many Syrians undertake journeys that are long and fragmented and that involve multiple experiences of the loss of home. Such journeys also involve remaking home in difficult displacement situations and include participating in new social, cultural, or economic activities, recalling memories of home, and engaging in processes of struggle over rights and belonging. Such practices of homemaking occur despite the loss of family and community ties, and in the face of racism and precarious living conditions. By analysing the relationship between migratory journeys and experiences of loss and the remaking of home, broader tensions between movement and belonging become visible in terms that challenge sedentary notions of home (e.g., Boccagni, 2018; Brun & Fábos, 2015). The loss of home is described in poignant terms by a 46-year-old woman in the UK: “Syria was a heaven on Earth, but Syrians now cannot afford the bread. People stand in lines for four or five hours to get one bag of bread. There is no electricity or gas; life is very hard there” (Houda).3 A woman in Canada says: “After 6 pm, Syrians were not allowed to walk or go outside of their homes” (Iman). Her husband elaborates: “Even if we had an emergency situation, we could not go to the hospital or leave our homes after 6 pm, even if we were to die at home” (Jamal). A 34-year-old woman recalled peoples’ fear: “…people were afraid of the [war] situation and their main goal was to stay safe… [T]hey became less social and they preferred to stay at

3  As indicated in the introduction, we use pseudonyms throughout this chapter. We also do not distinguish between UK and Canadian based interviewees. For reference, interviewees in the UK include: Amira, Asmaa, Dina, Hassan, Houda, Menna, Nour, Saifeldeen, Salem, Yahia and Younis. Interviewees in Canada include: Fatima, Hallet, Hussein, Ibrahim, Iman, Jamal, Mahasen, Mamoun; Nabiha, Nairuz, Nemat, Safwan, and Wafa.

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home and take care of themselves only” (Nabiha). Even prior to displacement, the meaning and experience of home were thus in flux. Conflict and internal displacement left many research participants unable to work prior to leaving Syria, with key drivers of flight including the difficulty of accessing services, a lack of rights, and the fear of persecution. Despite this, many express a continued nostalgia for Syria and for their memories of childhood and youth: “I am still nostalgic for my days before the war in Syria” (Hassan); “I am still nostalgic for Syria” (Asmaa). “We still remember the land where we planted. We remember the parties, barbecues, and all the fun we had in Syria before the war” (Safwan). Others explain how the trauma of losing loved ones means they “do not have memories, except the bitter ones” (Salem). Such articulations of a continued nostalgia entail both an eradication of one’s previous home situations and a range of endeavours at retrieving them. This reflects Boccagni’s (2014, p. 279) reminder that leaving home often involves “ways of remembering and even tentatively reproducing home”. Nevertheless, homemaking is not only described in the language of nostalgia—it is also experienced as a process of struggle. Those who fled to nearby host countries, such as Lebanon, emphasise how difficult the living conditions had been there, with one 49-year-old man going so far as to describe it as a “failed state” (Salem). Many highlight the expense of living there, especially given the limited financial assistance provided by the UN Refugee Agency. Several point to the limited access to housing and paid work, and others explain how they had worked illegally in unskilled labour sectors due to the lack of recognition of their educational certificates. Stories of “awful racism” (Yahia) are widespread, including Syrians being “beaten by Lebanese people” (Hallat) and children being bullied in schools (Yahia). For instance, one 35-year-old woman describes how such racism even extended to the teachers: “…my daughter’s teacher used to tell her that: ‘Your face has wrinkles like an old woman’. Can you imagine a teacher telling a child something like that! My daughter is still having a problem at school because of that; she’s afraid of teachers and can easily cry. This is still affecting her in school” (Dina). Other participants stated that they could not access schooling for their children and certain participants, such as Iman and Nabiha, discussed problems in accessing additional services such as electricity, water, and medical care. Difficult homemaking and work situations in Iraq and Jordan were also highlighted by our research participants. One 30-year-old woman who had spent time in Iraq speaks about issues of gender and rights: “As a

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woman, I was not allowed to go out alone unless I was travelling in a car or with one of my family members. I was not feeling safe, and I had to rely on my family. This was very annoying for me. There were also no rights for refugees, and there was persecution, and inhumane treatment for us” (Nour). A 37-year-old woman and mother of four who had created a temporary home in Jordan recalls similar issues: “I did not feel comfortable because you cannot work. If the government catches you working, they will send you back to the camp and back to Syria. And women cannot work in Jordan or drive cars. Women do not have any rights there” (Mahasen). Homemaking in locations near to Syria prior to UN resettlement is thus described as an acutely fraught and challenging process, which involves efforts to participate in social, cultural, and economic activities that provoke complex emotional responses to a ‘lost’ Syria. UN Resettlement Experiences of resettlement by the UN are described in variable terms, with several interview participants finding the process relatively quick and others facing significant delays. A 34-year-old woman describes how: “The UN called us and asked if we would like to travel. We quickly accepted that because we were in miserable conditions. After only one week, they arranged for a meeting with us. Then after another week they made a second meeting. It took around one year and two months till they informed us with the time of departure” (Menna). Several participants discuss how the UN had contacted them to undertake interviews and assessments and had provided them with “an awareness workshop” before their departure (Nour). One woman, though reticent to leave, had been persuaded to do so by UN officials due to the continued risk to her life in Lebanon. The experience of resettlement in the context of the acute struggles highlighted in the last sub-section leads several to describe themselves as “lucky” (Dina). While for most the resettlement process was straightforward once the UN had identified them as qualifying on the grounds of vulnerability, others describe a more difficult process: “We were supposed to travel to the UK in 2018, but we were delayed for two unjustified problems… The doctor there, made an unrequired test for my throat…because of the result of this test we were about to get excluded. But I appealed against that and I explained the situation, so they added our name again. After we got accepted and we were about to leave, they said my son’s name was the same name as for another person who was politically active. That was insane because the family name is

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different, and even the village where he is born is different from the other man. I appealed against that, and then we managed to travel after this delay” (Salem). Describing himself, nevertheless, as “lucky” to have been chosen for resettlement, this 49-year-old man suggests that “there are two ways to be chosen to travel from Lebanon; the first one is corruption and nepotism, and the second is luck”. Other research participants who had been approved by the UN to resettle in Canada recall their experiences of waiting in host states under precarious living conditions. One 36-year-old woman who, like many others, had formed a temporary home for her and her family and worked illegally in Jordan, remembers her fear when the Jordanian government reduced work opportunities and banned work permits for Syrians. “We were very afraid because if they caught us working, they would send us back to Syria directly, without informing our family or his [her husband’s] parents” (Nemat). Even those whose resettlement process had been relatively smooth share feelings of ambivalence about the opportunity. As a 51-year-old man describes: “When they called us, I was thrilled, but deep inside my heart I was sad. Because I have a home. I was sad to leave my country that is only one hour away from me to go to Europe. But my future in Lebanon and the future of my kids were unknown there. We searched for peace and safety for our kids” (Yahia). A 34-year-old woman goes further to describe resettlement as a moment marked by doubt and emotion, specifically the day itself when they travelled to the UK: “We arrived here during Ramadan; we were fasting. The day was very long and it was hard on us. We did not speak the language and we did not know anyone here. There was even no internet connection. I remember on the first couple of days of our arrival, I was crying. We were asking ourselves why did we accept coming to here? And what did we do to ourselves? It was hard, but now we are much better” (Menna). These participants’ feelings of ambivalence about the UN resettlement process underline the struggles that emerge in creating home ‘away’ from home, and their connection to the diverse memories of home and belonging in Syria.

State Policies for Resettled Refugees Displaced peoples’ arrival and resettlement to the UK and Canada are shaped by refugee and integration policies that work against various aspects of belonging to which our interviewees refer. Although the legal status of refugee offers a level of ‘protection’ higher than that for asylum

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seekers or those with temporary residence, barriers still exist to secure housing, employment, educational training, and freedom of movement (e.g., Taylor, 2013; Veronis et al., 2018). Indeed, Brun and Fábos (2015, p. 14) emphasise how policies often rely on essentialist and static notions of home that “continue to fix forced migrants in both place and time, depriving them of agency and the opportunities to move on and make homes in displacement.” In this section, we suggest that state policies are grounded in conventional and static conceptions of home, which shape Syrian experiences of resettlement and contribute to the challenges of remaking home in similar ways in both the UK and Canada. The UK The UK Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) was announced in 2014 as a legal route that would provide protection to the most vulnerable Syrians. It was extended in 2015 with the aim of offering protection to a total of 20,000 refugees. The scheme closed in 2021, with the majority of Syrians having been government-assisted and a minority coming through the community sponsorship route. As well as arriving to the UK with UNHCR recognition as refugees and with a path to permanent residence and citizenship, those resettled via the scheme benefited from a safe means of travel, welcome and support on initial arrival, plus support with housing, English classes, finding work, healthcare, and other key services. Despite this, several of our research participants describe the initial experience of arriving to the UK as extremely difficult, which contributes to hindrances in remaking home. We suggest that this situation is due in part to the VPRS’s conventional view of home and belonging as well as wider social assumptions about who belongs, which are not expansive enough to effectively support Syrians in their efforts to remake home during resettlement. One way in which a conventional framing of home impacts on those who have resettled is in the splitting of families and the imposition of the nuclear family norm (Squire, 2017). Many Syrians are separated from family members who are living in Syria and elsewhere during resettlement and find it disconcerting to engage in homing activities in their absence (see also Taylor, 2013; Wang, 2016). For example, one man highlights how despite being happy that he and his wife and children have been resettled, he remains worried about family members who are left behind: “My brother is still suffering in Lebanon. I keep applying for him, but his

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application is not accepted yet” (Yahia). Another woman describes her reticence to leave Lebanon and how, having made a last-minute decision to go ahead with her resettlement, she literally had no food or clothes for herself or her children on arrival: “The day was Monday [when] we arrived here, six o’clock in the morning. When I come here, I see the manager… They bought for me sofa, not [a] TV, nothing, just sofa, fridge, washing dish, and beds… [because I had previously] cancel[led] my journey they [had] not brought for me food” (Amira). Wider social assumptions about who qualifies for ‘home’ also impact on resettled refugees. A 46-year-old woman describes how she was unable to leave the house initially, largely due to fear and the difficulty of communications: “At the beginning, when we arrived, I was afraid of the neighbours. How are they going to perceive or treat me? My next door neighbour was not trying to say hello to me at the first days, she was afraid of me I believe” (Houda). However, she continues to say: “After two or three weeks, she [my neighbour] became friendly, and her son is playing daily with my daughter. There is no racism in the neighbourhood where I live; people are not staring at me when I am going out. I feel normal. My daughter is in a school that has no Arabs at all, though the teachers are treating her very well” (Houda). There are also several stories of more difficult exchanges. A 35-year-old woman describes how her volunteer support worker was “not helpful or supportive” (Dina). She explains that the volunteer failed to provide information when asked, and even went so far as to say: “You, Syrians are greedy people. You are too demanding”. A 49-year-old man also describes a tense situation at his GP surgery due to “a very bad” interpreter. He says: “I believe the interpreter was racist, because she let the GP get very angry with me. She was not giving accurate translation…The GP threw me out of the room because of this” (Salem). Several other participants raised concerns about exclusion from key services, poor accommodation, and the limited support of volunteers on their arrival to the UK. Canada The type of protection offered through VPRS in the UK is similar to that which the Canadian government provides to Syrians resettling in Canada. In 2015, the Government of Canada announced two plans for Syrian resettlement in what became known as Operation Syrian Refugees. The first plan was “to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees” in Canada by February 2016. It was expected that there would be more government-assisted

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refugees than privately sponsored refugees (sponsored by non-governmental organisations, individuals, or groups of individuals). The second plan consisted of Canada collaborating with the UNHCR and the Turkish government to identify refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Specifically, Canada asked the UNHCR and the Turkish government to “prioritize vulnerable refugees who are a low security risk, such as women at risk and complete families” (Statistics Canada, 2019: np). These conditions applied to government-assisted refugees, but not to those who are privately sponsored. Approximately 50,000 Syrian refugees have resettled in Canada since November 2015. Syrian refugees who resettle in Canada can be sponsored by the Canadian government through the Government-Assisted Refugees (GAR) programme or by private groups, through the Privately Sponsored Refugees (PSR) programme. The GARs are referred to Canada by the UNHCR or the Turkish government. The GAR programme has historically placed an emphasis on selecting refugees based on their need for protection, which means that GARs often have higher needs than other refugee groups (Syrian Outcomes Report June 2019). Many research participants who had received the initial UNHCR interview experienced both short and long wait times prior to their resettlement to Canada. The PSRs are sponsored by permanent residents or Canadian citizens, and they receive social and economic support from private sponsors for up to one year. Although the PSR programme has been generally favoured as a more effective model of refugee resettlement than its government-assisted counterpart in Canada (Agrawal, 2019; IRCC, 2016), research suggests that it is more effective only in certain ways, such as ‘integrating’ newcomers into social networks more quickly (e.g., Agrawal, 2019; Hanley et al., 2018; Ilcan et  al., 2020; Reynolds & Clark-Kazak, 2019). It has been shown to be less effective when it comes to acquiring sufficient official-­ language competence, which in turn can lead to low paying and precarious employment (Hyndman & Hynie, 2016). After their arrival to Canada, Syrians receive support (shelter, food, language training, community, and employment services) to help meet their immediate needs through the Resettlement Assistance Program. In this regard, one government-sponsored man spoke about the importance of the language training centre: “When we arrived in London, the CCLC [Cross Cultural Learner Centre]… provided us with a special assistant like a family friend. She … taught us English and showed us how … to use public transportation and where to buy food and groceries” (Hussein). Yet although

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Syrians receive language and other kinds of government support, many experience the loss of and separation from family, the effects of which are not taken into serious consideration by the GAR and PSR programmes. Though well-meaning, these programmes only provide certain kinds of support to Syrians; they rarely involve a commitment to family reunification initiatives. As one privately sponsored man explains: “When the war started, of course all these people were separated. Some of them went to Lebanon, some went to Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Morocco. … Some went to Europe by sea and many of them died in the sea. And now I have one brother in the US, one brother in Libya, one sister in Canada, and another brother in the UAE. So, there are no more bonds in the family” (Ibrahim). All interview participants view family separation as a key issue related to the Canadian government’s narrow view of homemaking and its complexities. Syrians often understand their inability to be reunited with family members as contributing to their feelings of isolation or loneliness in Canada, which in turn creates obstacles to homing. In this sense, state policies for resettled refugees and privately sponsored refugee programmes are grounded in conventional conceptions of home and profoundly shape and create significant barriers to practices of remaking home.

Experiences of Loss and Belonging in Remaking Home In this section, we explore the creative dimensions of remaking home that emerge from our interviews with resettled Syrian refugees in the UK and Canada (see also Boccagni, 2018; Dossa & Golubovic, 2019; Hamilton et al., 2020; Kim & Smets, 2020; Perez Murcia, 2019). This enables us both to understand how the policy and wider social framing of home contributes to the complexities and ambiguities of homemaking, and to unpack the processes of struggle embedded in practices of homing. Specifically, we draw attention to experiences of homemaking that involve material, social and cultural losses, the labour of homing, and the challenges of belonging. We argue that some of these experiences contribute to a sense of exclusion, while others reflect expressive relationships, renewed memories of life in Syria, and mixed experiences of resettlement.

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Spatial and Temporal Experiences of Loss Though most of our research participants view their resettlement to the UK and Canada as fortunate for themselves and for their families, the accompanying loss of home evokes strong emotion. As a 51-year-old woman explains: “Every time I remember that I cry [weeps]. It was a hard feeling to leave everything behind me. I was living in a home; I was independent. I did not rely on anyone. I always feel I will be back one day” (Asmaa). Nevertheless, this expression of nostalgia for Syria stands in contrast to other expressions of loss. As one woman describes: “I lost my houses. I lost seeing my parents, brothers, and relatives. I lost my husband and even I could not participate in his funeral in Syria” (Mahasen). Experiences of loss are described in multiple ways by our research participants. As well as the grief of losing loved ones, these include a sense of social loss such as missing family and friends or missing the respect associated with a previous status; cultural loss such as missing religious affinities with those around them; and physical loss such as the destruction of homes, land, and entire cities. For example, a 30-year-old woman says: “At the social level, I do not have friends [in the UK] not even Syrians. Because most of the Syrians here are either mothers or older than me, so there are not many commonalities between us. I have a difficulty in meeting with friends” (Nour). Going further, a 43-year-old man says: “Cultural and religious differences make us strangers here” (Saifeldeen). The meaning and extent of loss are captured by a 38-year-old man: “We suffered in Syria; I do not have any feelings towards the idea of going back. There is even nothing left for me to visit again. There is no home or even cities” (Younis). It is, however, the loss of family that is often described in the most pained terms—including the loss of deceased family members. As one 46-year-old woman explains: “[I miss] my relationship with my Mum and my sisters who are still living in Syria. And the most important thing is my son’s grave. It is in Syria… [about to cry]. In Syria, I left the most precious thing I have. I left my son’s body. If I get the chance to go back, I will visit his grave” (Houda). Similarly, another woman describes the effects of family separation: “My son got married in the UAE. I did not see him, and he has a daughter that I haven’t seen either. Each one of my daughters in Syria has five children, most of them we did not see. They are growing up and they did not see their grandfather. Even our happiness feels different without the whole family” (Fatima).

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As well as the loss of individual family members, for some there is also a sense of the loss of the Syrian people as a whole: “My whole family, my whole relatives are out of the country. They were forced to leave their homes, and they cannot go back. Even if the current regime is ousted, I already lost over than thirty members of my big family. Moreover, Syrians lost their usual kindness, there are now feelings of hatred and grudge” (Salem). The lack of practical and emotional support that accompanies this is described by one 43-year-old man in the following terms: “I would say we are financially and economically better, but emotionally not yet” (Saifeldeen). The Labour of Homemaking Many of the activities that our research participants mention as important in helping them settle into their new life involve their engagement in social activities. Several mention the importance of going out to parks, on bike rides, for picnics, on hiking trips, and to visit local places or the seaside. As a 51-year-old woman says: “Those outings make us more familiar with the country” (Asmaa). Such activities also help ease feelings of loneliness. A 38-year-old man explains: “I meet my friends frequently and we do some family gatherings. Sometimes we make picnics or trips to the sea during the summer. Or we go for hiking. Those activities entertain us and ease the pressures of feeling lonely or stranger” (Younis). One Kurdish mother of seven states: “I have Kurdish friends … from Kobani and Afreen city and we meet on occasions and weekends at Springbank Park [London, Canada]. We eat together, play, and have fun and our children are connected with the Kurdish community and friends here” (Iman). In addition, activities such as studying or completing courses, participating in community events, learning the language, learning to drive or ride bikes are all highlighted as activities that have helped with the process of homemaking in the UK and Canada. Many of these activities contribute to feelings of comfort, familiarity, or a sense of inclusion, as other studies on remaking home also highlight (see, for e.g., Kim & Smets, 2020). Nevertheless, such activities also involve the rekindling of memories of life back in Syria. For example, a 34-year-old woman in the UK describes how: “Every weekend, I take my children and go for picnics. They take their bicycles, and I make food for them. We also meet with other friends so the children can play together. This helps my children remember how they were playing when they were young in Syria. The kids used to go every Friday for fishing with their dad in Al Asi river. They still have these memories, though my

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daughter was very young, she does not have memories about Syria” (Menna). Another, aged 35, says: “Going to the sea and how it was beautiful in Syria compared with the sea here is another thing that helps me remember home”. She continues: “The main thing that makes me remember home is when my kids ask me to play with them. Here, you cannot let children go out and play on their own. But in Syria we used to play freely in streets” (Dina). Another woman states: “Safwan [my husband] and I have great memories of Syria. I always think of visiting our relatives, missing visits to my parents’ graves. We lived and we grew up in Syria” (Nairuz). When participants were asked what home means to them, the most frequent response related to family, friendships, and neighbourly relations. One 51-year-old woman explains what reminds her of home: “Family gatherings during Eid times. I always keep the habit of buying new clothes for these occasions. Ramadan [the holy month for Muslims] is one of the important things that reminds me of home. Those objects remind me with the special and unique moments related to our culture and ways of celebration” (Asmaa). Others make efforts to recreate home through fostering friendships and connections with neighbours: “Every day at 7 pm we meet at the park… I cannot stay at home without interacting with the other [Syrian] women” (Wafa). “Sometimes, I make food and I invite my neighbours and my friends…. Some of these activities remind me of home and do not let me feel lonely here” (Menna). This is described by one 35-year-old man not only as a process of self-preservation, but also mutual support: “When we first arrived here, we used to organise a gathering for Syrian families who arrive to UK every Saturday, in order to help them in the settling process and to let them avoid some of the mistakes we had made before. We used to cook Syrian food … during Eid times. I was in charge of this weekly event. We had a gathering for around 20–30 families. But once I started work, and the kids were in schools, I got very busy. … Those gatherings were for keeping the sense of belonging and for helping other new families. To help them to settle and not to feel lonely, or bored” (Hassan). Another father of three describes his understanding of home as involving: “family, parents and relatives. My parents were alive before the war and we were happy together especially during Eid celebrations, spending time with the family and friends” (Hussein). From these and other similar accounts, home is understood not only as a material environment but also as a configuration of expressive moments, relationships, memories, and aspects of belonging, successful or not (see also: Boccagni, 2017a, p. xxiv; Brun & Fábos, 2015; Hart et al., 2018). Making new friendships is described by several as integral to the experience of feeling at home: “Home is where you are accepted regardless of who

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you are. It is where your neighbour says good morning to you. My next door neighbour was not replying when I told her good morning. Now, things are getting better between us. I asked her for help once and she helped me. Till now, we did not face any racism. I am trying to feel home here” (Dina). These new friendships are described as crucial in staving off loneliness and in breaking down feelings of being ‘a stranger’ As a 34-year-old woman explains: “I started to have friends here. I have Syrian friends, and friends from other nationalities. I have an Italian, a Yemeni, and an Egyptian friend. These friendships helped me because if I am having a problem or I need advice they help me. This also does not let me feel lonely” (Menna). In other words, the positive feelings of remaking home are not only associated with family relations (see Zuntz, 2021) but also with the kinship of friends and neighbours who provide support and a sense of belonging (see also Carsten, 2013; Perez Murcia, 2019). For some, these relations are sufficient to remake home. For others, however, displacement has led to an irreducible fracturing of the experience of home: “Home is where you are raised and where you have your family and social relations, unfortunately it is now for me where the future of my kids is” (Yahia). While the UK is home because it provides “security and safety” (Asmaa), “acceptance and tolerance” (Dina), it is also described as limited in the sense that home is a place “where the family lives”, which is “unfortunately missing now because of the war in Syria” (Younis). Nevertheless, experiences of home vary depending on the specific situations of research participants in question. As a 35-year-old man explains: “I feel home here in UK, because of the feelings of security, and respect. My mother’s grave is in Birmingham. I also feel I belong to this city because of that” (Hassan). Similarly, a woman comments on her experiences of home in relation to the well-being of her children and feeling safe: “Our life here in Canada is stable and ongoing. I see a bright future for my children in front of my eyes. I think of their education and what they are going to be in society and in Canada, and I know that here we would have a good future. Now, I already feel that Canada is my real home… . I feel safe here…” (Iman). Cultural and Linguistic Barriers The labour required to remake home is exacerbated by various challenges to belonging, including linguistic and cultural barriers and barriers to work and education. All our research participants highlighted the significance of the language barrier, which was seen as an immediate and a

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longer-­term issue on arrival to both the UK and Canada. As a 35-year-old man in the UK describes: “The main challenge we faced when we arrived here was the language. Even after spending five years, I am still learning. I always feel there is a gap and I am not learning enough. I learn something new every day. Given the fact that we did not study English in our home country, in the first two years, we had language courses. We had online courses as well which was really helpful. Afterwards, my mother got sick and she died. My wife became pregnant and got busy with the kids and I later started my bus driver’s training” (Hassan). A woman in Canada also refers to language difficulties, specifically in relation to her child-rearing responsibilities and time spent in the home: “It will take time for us [Syrian women] to know the language and to integrate in the society, because most of the time we stay at home with our children…” (Hallat). It is not language alone, however, but also cultural differences that create communication barriers. As a 30-year-old woman fluent in English explains: “When I arrived here, I knew a friend who is studying for his MA here. He was telling me you should read about the culture and the history of the country. I thought as long as I speak English, everything will be alright. But, for example, when I started work, a British colleague asked me if I like Greggs. I said: ‘What is Greggs?’ He said: ‘You do not know it?! Okay never mind.’ It is just a famous shop here, but I did not recognise it. I sometimes do not understand what they are taking about, because I do not share the same culture. So, it is not only about the language” (Nour). Only five of those who we interviewed in the UK had been able to start working, and this had often involved a notable deskilling in moving from one employment sector to another. For example, one 51-year-old man was a sports coach and sportswear salesperson previously and had only been able to continue coaching on a voluntary basis. He had instead taken up a job packing vegetables in the UK to make money, while planning to set up a football academy for Syrian and Arab children when the COVID situation improves (Yahia). Another was a teacher in Syria yet was working as a bus driver (Hassan). Several men in the UK had been unable to work on health grounds or due to language barriers, and three women were based at home as housewives. A 43-year-old man says: “I hate living on social benefits but until now I do not know how I can start work. I apply for jobs through a number of NGOs but every time I apply, they tell me: ‘Your language is very poor’. I applied for a simple job; I applied for a delivery driver, but they rejected me because of the language…” (Saifeldeen). Likewise, in Canada, a woman states: “The Canadian government has made it easy for

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newcomers to learn the language and they provide them with all that they need. But in my opinion, we have to communicate with the society, and we need job opportunities for newcomers” (Hallat). Others had been more successful in finding work. A 38-year-old man describes how he “opened a street food caravan” and is “doing well” (Younis). The importance of work—even if it is in a lower skilled sector than previously—is stressed by the 35-year-old bus driver introduced above: “I feel grateful for the UK, because this country helped me when I was weak. It gave me life, and a feeling of security for myself and for my children. I am currently working and I feel I am contributing to this country, not just a dependent on social benefits. I feel I am thanking them by this job.” The interviewee then narrated one of the Prophet Muhammed’s traditions: “Those who are not thankful/grateful for people are not thankful/grateful for God”. He also cited from the Quranic verse: “Is there any reward for good other than good? I frankly feel I belong here more than Syria” (Hassan). Many of the people we interviewed refer to the importance of the rights and freedoms that they experience in the UK and Canada: “There are more freedoms here [in the UK]; there are less pressures imposed on me as a female” (Nour); “There is a freedom of expression and freedom of belief. If you have a right and you ask for it, you will get it” (Younis). Another states: “…everyone has rights and here [in Canada]… There is diversity and lots of different cultures here, but all are under the same law” (Mamoun). At the same time, the difficulties of accessing these rights and freedoms are also palpable: One 37-year-old mother of four says: “In the first year when I arrived here [to London, Canada], I found difficulty communicating with people. And when I wanted to buy a car, it was difficult for me to search for a car and to buy one. The government provides twenty hours of personal assistance and in these twenty hours, the guide shows you how to use buses, how to shop at supermarkets and he shows some places in London. But that is not enough… I do not know how to go alone to a dentist and how to switch buses or how to use the map” (Mahasen). While some managed to make connections through volunteering or working, others remained relatively isolated with limited support. A 49-year-old man in the UK explains: “In Syria, I was an active independent man. I had my best days there, and I was successful in getting a job, a car, a land and secure a good life for the family. In every country I lived in, I used to have friends and social life, maybe less in Lebanon. But here I do not have a social life. I do not speak the language; I cannot communicate with neighbours… . I do not do much during the day. I am dependent on others.

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This is a big difference for me” (Salem). Others feel isolated and miss family members. As one woman in Canada says: “The country is beautiful, and people are nice here. They treated me well and took care of my health condition and provided medical surgeries for me. But it is difficult for me even when I do any activity or when I communicate with society here because I immediately remember my children, and I wish I could see my daughters and my son” (Fatima). The situation under various COVID lockdowns is often described by interviewees in the UK as perpetuating these problems.4 Several point to a lack of activities such as sports clubs during this period, although one mentions that they had attended some helpful online classes during lockdown. Others point to the ways in which the lockdowns prevented progress with their plans and raised further challenges in making new friendships. Yet also significant here is what several research participants describe as an alien individualistic culture. “Everyone is having his own life. There are not many family relations or strong relations with the neighbours. There is no intimacy here, in order to visit someone, you need to make an appointment” (Houda); “Everyone is just focusing on his life. There is nothing bonding them together. No one is having a relationship with his neighbour for instance. You should rely on yourself in solving all your problems, without getting help from anyone else” (Saifeldeen). Despite these various challenges, several of the research participants emphasise the main benefit of resettlement in the UK and Canada as having been the children’s education: “…my main motivation was the kids’ education” (Saifeldeen); “Here, it is much better because there is better education for the kids, and their future is secured” (Yahia); “…most important is children’s education. This was the most important thing for my nieces” (Nour). “We think of staying and living here [in London] for the education and future of our children” (Iman). While some parents describe their children as integrating well, others stress situations of bullying or of severe isolation from other students and social activities. Yet the stress on education is particularly important for those with older children who missed out on education due to conflict. As a 46-year-old mother of a 7-year-old daughter and 23-year-old son emphasises: “Education here is different from Syria. Here is much better with strong curriculums… . Everyone can continue his education even if he is getting old, this was not the case in Syria” (Houda). 4

 Interviews in Canada were conducted prior to the COVID pandemic.

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Conclusion This chapter has explored the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions involved in practices of remaking home, specifically by focusing on the experiences of people displaced by the current Syrian war who have resettled to the UK and Canada. We have shown how home is (re)constituted through multiple situations of displacement and resettlement, while emphasising the ways in which policy framings and wider social conditions shape experiences of remaking home. On the one hand, we have emphasized the barriers and significant labour that is created for resettled refugees in remaking home and, on the other, we have shown how homing generates new and shifting forms of belonging as part of struggles to overcome loss and make home ‘away’. Drawing on detailed interviews with Syrians during situations of displacement and resettlement, our analysis has focused on the remaking of home through migratory journeys out of Syria to nearby host states, which involves the creation of a home ‘away’ from home that is shaped by precarious living conditions. We have also shown how experiences of resettlement to the UK and Canada encompass state policies that operate on the basis of conventional notions of home and that provide Syrians with some protection while also imposing constraints on rights and belonging. By focusing on the creative aspects of remaking home as well as to the barriers and labour of homing, we have stressed the importance of analysing how the diverse meanings and practices of homemaking emerge in the context of wider social and political relations. We have also suggested the importance of analysing the relationship between migratory journeys and experiences of the loss and remaking of home as a way to draw attention to broader tensions between movement and belonging that challenge sedentary notions of home (cf. Boccagni, 2018; Brun & Fábos, 2015). Moreover, we have suggested that homemaking involves material and immaterial dimensions, fluid and multifaceted meanings, experiences of struggle and negotiated belonging, and significant labour in ongoing processes of construction, which exceed the view of home as tied to a fixed place or as simply marked by tensions between homemaking and belonging (see for e.g., Ralph & Staeheli, 2011; Waldinger, 2008). As such, this work contributes to assessing how policy framings and the broader web of social relations shape practices of homing through resettlement, as well as the struggles through which such practices are constituted.

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References Agrawal, S. (2019). Canadian refugee sponsorship programs: Experience of Syrian refugees in Alberta, Canada. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 20(4), 941–962. Antonsich, M. (2010). Searching for belonging  – An analytical framework. Geography Compass, 4(6), 644–659. Aravantis, E., & Yelland, N. (2019). ‘Home means everything to me…’: A study of young Syrian refugees’ narratives constructing home in Greece. Journal of Refugee Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez030 Bank, C. (2018). Remaking a world: Recently displaced artists from Syria in Berlin. Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal, 4, 171–182. Boccagni, P. (2014). What’s in a (migrant) house? Changing domestic spaces, the negotiation of belonging and homemaking in Ecuadorian migration. Housing, Theory and Society, 31(3), 277–293. Boccagni, P. (2017a). Migration and the search for home: Domestic space in migrants everyday lives. Palgrave Macmillan. Boccagni, P. (2017b). Saving home from the pitfalls of the home, through homing: Towards a ‘positive deconstruction’ of the social meanings, functions and moralities of home. HOMInG. Working Paper No. 1/2017. Boccagni, P. (2018). At the roots of home, away from it: Meanings, places, values of home through the biographic narratives of immigrant care workers in Italy. In K. Davis, H. Ghorashi, & P. Smets (Eds.), Contested belonging: Spaces, practices, biographies (pp. 313–332). Emerald Publishing Limited. Brun, C., & Fábos, A. (2015). Making homes in limbo? A conceptual framework. Refuge, 31(1), 5–17. Carpi, E., & Şenoğuz, H. P. (2019). Refugee hospitality in Lebanon and Turkey: On making ‘the other’. International Migration, 57, 126–142. Carsten, J. 2013. “What kinship does – And how.” HUG Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(2): 245-251. Chatty, D. (2014). Anthropology and forced migration. In E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long, & N. Sigona (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of refugee and forced migration studies. Oxford University Press. den Boer, R. (2015). Liminal space in protracted exile: The meaning of place in Congolese refugees’ narratives of home and belonging in Kampala. Journal of Refugee Studies, 28(4), 486–504. Dossa, P., & Golubovic, J. (2019). Reimagining home in the wake of displacement. Studies in Social Justice, 13(1), 171–186. Drolet, J., & Moorthi, G. (2018). The settlement experiences of Syrian newcomers in Alberta: Social connections and interactions. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 50(2), 101–121.

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Fathi, M. (2021). ‘My life is on hold’: Examining home, belonging and temporality among migrant men in Ireland. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2021.1916445 Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (Ed.). (2020). Refuge in a moving World: Refugee and migrant journeys across disciplines. UCL Press. Gupta, A., & Ferguson, I. (Eds.). (1997). Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hamilton, L., Veronis, L., & Walton-Roberts, M. (Eds.). (2020). A national project: Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Hanley, J., al Mhamied, A., Cleveland, J., Hajjar, O., Hassan, G., Ives, N., Khyar, R., & Hynie, M. (2018). The social networks, social support and social capital of Syrian refugees privately sponsored to settle in Montreal: Indications for employment and housing during the early experiences of integration. Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, 50(2), 123–149. Hart, J., Paszkiewicz, N., & Albadra, D. (2018). Shelter as home?: Syrian homemaking in Jordanian refugee camps. Human Organization, 77(4), 371–380. Hyndman, J., & Hynie, M. (2016). From newcomer to Canadian: Making refugee integration work. Policy Options, May. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magaz i n e s / m a y -­2 0 1 6 / f r o m -­n e w c o m e r-­t o -­c a n a d i a n -­m a k i n g -­r e f u g e e -­ integration-­work/ Ilcan, S. (2002). Longing in belonging: The cultural politics of settlement. Praeger Publishers. Ilcan, S., Rygiel, K., & Baban, F. (2018). The ambiguous architecture of precarity: Temporary protection, everyday living, and migrant journeys of Syrian refugees. International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 4(1/2), 51–70. Ilcan, S., Thomaz, D., & Jimenez Bueno, M. (2020, March). Private sponsorship in Canada: The resettlement of Syrian refuges in the Kitchener-Waterloo Region. IMRC Policy Points (17). IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada). (2016). Temporary public policy to facilitate the sponsorship of Syrian and Iraqi refugees by Groups of Five and Community Sponsors. Retrieved May 10, 2021, from http://www. cic.gc.ca/english/department/laws-­policy/syria-­iraq-­new.asp Kaplan, C. (1996). Questions of travel  – Postmodern discourses of displacement. Duke University Press. Kim, K., & Smets, P. (2020). Home experiences and homemaking practices of single Syrian refugees in an innovative housing project in Amsterdam. Current Sociology, 68(5), 607–627. Malkki, L. (1992). National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 24–44. Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. University of Minnesota Press.

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Perez Murcia, L. E. (2019). Where the heart is and where it hurts: Conceptions of home for people fleeing conflict. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 38, 139–158. Ralph, D., & Staeheli, L. (2011). Home and migration: Mobilities, belongings and identities. Geography Compass, 5(7), 517–530. Reynolds, J., & Clark-Kazak, C. (2019). Introduction: Special issue on private sponsorship in Canada. Refuge Private Sponsorship in Canada, 35(2), 3–8. Rottmann, S. B., & Nimer, M. (2021). ‘We always open our doors for visitors’: Hospitality as homemaking strategy for refugee women in Istanbul. Migration Studies, 9(3), 1380–1398. Squire, V. (2017). The European ‘Migration Crisis’: Families split and reconfigured across divides. Discover Society, 44. http://discoversociety. o rg / 2 0 1 7 / 0 5 / 0 2 / t h e -­e u r o p e a n -­m i g r a t i o n -­c r i s i s -­f a m i l i e s -­s p l i t -­ and-­reconfigured-­across-­divides/ Squire, V. (2020). Syrian experiences of re/making home in the UK (online report). https://warwick.ac.uk/about/cityofculture/get-­i nvolved/programme/ current-­events/remaking_home/ Statistics Canada. (2019). Insights on Canadian society: Results from the 2016 census: Syrian refugees who resettled in Canada in 2015 and 2016. https:// www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-­006-­x/2019001/article/00001-­eng.htm Taylor, H. (2013). Refugees, the state and the concept of home. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 32(2), 130–152. UNHCR. (2021). Global trends at-a-glance. https://www.unrefugees.org/ refugee-­facts/statistics/ Valenta, M. J., Jakobsen, D. Z.-I., & Halilovich, H. (2020). Syrian refugee migration, transitions in migrant statuses and future scenarios of Syrian mobility. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 39, 153–176. Veronis, L., Tabler, Z., & Ahmed, R. (2018). Syrian refugee youth use social media: Building transcultural spaces and connections for resettlement in Ottawa, Canada. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 50(2), 79–100. Waldinger, R. (2008). Between ‘Here’ and ‘There’: Immigrant cross-border activities and loyalties. International Migration Review, 42(1), 3–29. Wang, B. (2016). Emotions and home-making: Performing cosmopolitan sociability among first generation new Chinese migrants in New Zealand. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 25(2), 130–147. Zuntz, A. 2021. Refugees’ transnational livelihoods and remittances: Syrian mobilities in the Middle East before and after 2011. Journal of Refugee Studies. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093%2Fjrs%2Ffeab016

CHAPTER 8

Making Home in the Earth: Ecoglobalism in the Camps Yasmine Shamma

To preserve our places and be at home in them, it is necessary to fill them with imagination. (Wendell Berry, “Poetry and Place,” 1983) That earth is anywhere earth. (Gwendolyn Brooks, “Horses Graze”, 1986)

In the summer of 2016, at Al Azraq refugee camp in Jordan, a Syrian refugee I will here call Asma shared the story of her arrival to the camp. She explained: After I cried when I came here, I decided to keep myself strong for the children and start building the caravan to make it like home. They were at an age where they understood what was going on. They were sensitive to the situation and they could lose all that they have if they weren’t nurtured in a way This Research has been generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Y. Shamma (*) Department of English Literature, University of Reading, Reading, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_8

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that made them feel like they were home. I found it very hard on them to leave their rooms and their computers and all the things that they loved. So I sat them down and told them: the five of us are here, me you and your father, wherever the five of us are, that place should be your heaven. Whether it’s in a caravan, in a deserted land … the most important thing is that we are together. [The most important thing is] that we did not lose one of ourselves on the way. That we didn’t bury any one of ourselves. [From here on out], wherever the five of us are—together—that will be our heaven and our home. I also told them not to listen to the people around us. The people were asking why we were fixing the caravan. They would ask: do you think that you will be staying here for long? The day I planted that tree outside, all the neighbours ridiculed me, calling me ridiculous for planting outside my caravan. They would say: “… with all that planting you’re doing it seems you are planning on staying awhile!” I would tell them that it does not matter if I stay here for a long time or if I leave tomorrow. If I leave tomorrow this tree will stay as a standing memory of us to the people that will live here after us. It could serve as a means of shadow for a passer-by or a place where a bird could nest. After that I started planting more things, until it became a garden.1

Syrian refugees have been living in tents, caravans, and disregarded urban spaces of Jordan (and other neighbouring and further away countries) since the crisis of migration and its counterpart, reception, began in 2011. In these camps, they take refuge, not just from war, but from notions of the state at large, while making havens within safer, self-made and often protected, states. Testimony from Syrian refugees like Asma reflects a myriad of engagements with the environment. She signals towards escape in her discussion of arrival (“if I leave tomorrow”); she catalogues and thus collates various kinds of spaces (“home; caravan; deserted land”) into one overarching domestic or habitable space; she reaches for what Michel Foucault might call an “other” space (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986) —a heterotopia—in the metaphors of “heaven” mapped onto what others might more accurately distinguish as a form of purgatory or limbo (refugee camps as holding spaces, as per Giorgio Agamben’s theory of camps, for example) (1998); an audience’s attempted interruption of home-making is muted; and perhaps most importantly, a tree is offered as an opportunity for both 1  This interview is printed in full as “The Woman who Planted a Peach Tree,” (in Shamma, 2020).

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human and posthuman nesting; home and earth synonymous in their being “filled with the imagination” (Berry). The ubiquity of garden-references struck me during conversations about home with Syrian refugees in the camps of Jordan, specifically Zaatari Refugee Camp and Al Azraq camp, which I visited from June 2016 to December 2019. Examples of these references include the following: August 2016: Q: Can you tell me about your house in Syria Refugee: Yes, everyone had a garden. We lived outside the city. Everywhere you looked was green. Trees and fertile lands. We grew our own food with our own hands Refugee’s daughter: We grew olives and plums. August 2016: Q: Did you grow your own garden here? I see some green outside Refugee: Yes, it makes me feel at home. Seeing and feeling green and nature March 2018: Q: What makes you feel at home? Objects, food, ..etc Refugee: We have some cousins here and my children and husband. We have to get used to the situation because otherwise it will be hard for us to survive. Hope is always there of course. Some time ago I visited a friend of mine because she had a newborn. Once I entered her place I felt like I was back in Syria because she had a lot of greenery inside her caravan. Back in Syria our houses were filled with greenery. I was very happy to see the greenery and flowers. I was thinking of telling my husband to fix up a space ­outside the house for a garden. That’s his job; he works as a carpenter. Planting a garden would make me feel more comfortable and closer to home. November 2019: Q: What was your house in Syria like? Refugee: We had a four bedroom house with a small garden. It was beautiful. Small, but to me, it felt like paradise. We are mighty strong people.

This is just a small sampling from the over 60 interviews I conducted over five years with Syrians in the camps. Though I entered each caravan with the intention of asking refugees how they made themselves at home inside their tents or caravans (what they call the sheet metal structures that replaced their original tents), conversation repeatedly veered towards the space bordering each make-shift home. Indeed, the act of gardening itself has cropped up, more frequently than other acts of nesting, as a way to view manifestations of refugee rooting and as a way to talk about the need for roots without being direct with the vulnerable subjects of this research. So acute is the displaced

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subject’s sense of interminable waiting and displacement, that talking about the tree outside their caravan was easier for both them and myself, than talking directly about the fact that the caravan is their home. To add, in later conversations (in 2019) topics of conversation were limited by security guards accompanying me on these visits, and the garden became one of the few neutral subjects available for us to gather stories through. Instead of introducing myself, and the topic of the research I was there to conduct, I’d resort to pleasantries around plants. “What beautiful flowers,” I said, to a father of five on an autumn day in 2019. I had made a point of revisiting certain caravans, to ask about the ways in which refugee senses of home have changed, or grown, or regressed, according to the passing of time since we last spoke. He invited me in and I’m soon being offered Arabic coffee, while my questions about nesting were indulged. Though the purpose of my visits to the refugee camps of Jordan was to inquire about what Wendell Berry calls “the preserv[ation] of our places,” the inquiry found its routing as refugees pointed, not to memory, but to evidence of eco globalism, in practice: questions about home were quickly turned, by refugees themselves, into answers about earth. What did it mean, I wondered, that refugees turned my attention away from their make-shift homes in tents and caravans, towards instead the land surrounding their “home” spaces? Was there possibly a landgrab at play that had nothing to do with the politics of landgrabbing, and everything to do with the politics of ecocriticism? I wondered this because my own work on ecocriticism to date had suggested a turn away from the pastoral tradition of American environmental writing, and towards, instead a “whole earth” approach to what newer criticisms were calling “ecoglobalism.” Ecocriticism is a literary movement born mostly in the 1990s in America and has since blossomed into a multi-faceted organism of its own; replete with petals pertaining to climate change, Romanticism, the Anthropocene, and, I begin to argue here, colonialism and its discontents. Founders of ecocriticism in literary studies include Lawrence Buell, who offers this definition both of ecocriticism and “whole earth” thinking: To think “environmentally” or “ecologically” requires thinking “against” or “Beyond” nationness even more self-evidently than thinking “Culturally” does. Seldom do jurisdictional borders correspond to ecological borders. For the island nation of Iceland, yes. For the US-Canada and the US-Mexico borders, clearly not. Arguably “the oldest form of globalization” is the environmental rather than the economic or political…. Particularly during the last half century, supposedly integral “landscapes” have become “times-

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capes” subject to inexorable reshaping by exotic permeations we are just starting to learn how to measure… From this standpoint the case for a planetary perspective over against a nation-centered approach to environmentality seems open and shut. The whole earth image taken from the moon a third of a century ago has long since become a logo, a cultural cliché. But ecoglobalism, that is a whole-­ earth way of thinking and feeling about environmentality, is at the time of writing more a model that has begun to take root than an achieved result: a model for inquiry, furthermore, that is quite unevenly distributed across the disciplines. (Buell, 2007, p. 227)

Much of Buell’s opening argument is offered in my own opening argument, because this chapter’s “inquiry” is modelled along the lines he advocates. Where Buell attends to the ways in which American literature lends itself to being considered as a mode of “whole-earth” thinking, here I consider the way refugee testimonies, and sometimes literatures, tend towards “whole-earth” thinking, especially when reflecting on small but meaningful efforts to make home in a “whole-earth” beyond the limits of one's liminal, stateless, tent. In what ways might refugee engagements with the earth be read as home-making? How might they carry indications of an ecoglobalism at play? I am interested in pursuing such a reading to suggest that the seemingly simple acts of nesting connote deeper implications of both progressive and a priori “whole-earth” thinking. Pursuing this “whole-earth” model of inquiry, this chapter dwells on testimony from the woman who planted a peach tree, among other descriptions from refugees nesting through gardening, while gathering its sustenance from emerging theories of ecoglobalism. In so doing, this chapter builds on theories of home as process from Paolo Boccagni, while contradicting Agemben’s notion of the ‘bare-life’ life of the refugee camps, and suggesting a postcolonial counterpart to American ecocritical readings of “deep time” such as those posited by the likes of Buell and Wai Chee Dimock (2007). I am also interested in the possibilities of reading refugee testimony as literature, and doing so through this eco-critical lens. What possibilities unfold when the refugee pursuit of home-making is read as ecoglobal?

Tending “This Plot of Land” In one of the first studies to attend to the role of landscape in modern poetry, Bonnie Costello calls on Jorie Graham’s then popular verse to distinguish the “plotting” at play in ecopoetics. She explains:

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Graham’s sense of relation of ‘each and all’ comes from phenomenology rather than transcendentalism, from film (‘frames of reference moving’) rather than painting, and from Heseinberg and Einstein rather than Bacon. Instead of landscape we are given an image of vision as landscaping. The referential ‘plot’ of ground and the ‘plot’ of the imagination coincide on the page, and the poet, shoveling in, breaks them open. (Costello, 2003, p. 6)

Costello illuminates the relationship between the “plot” of poetry, and the “plot” of inspiration—the earth itself. She suggests, in her further reading of Graham’s poetry, that the “act of the imagination” as Berry calls it, is in the writer’s linking of these plots, and the tending to them equally and accordingly. Reading the possibilities of ecocritical appreciations of refugee testimony, I want to ask that the same is done for expressions of care such as those voiced by Asma, above. How does she fill her “plot”—that area of land just outside her allocated refugee caravan, with the imaginative act of care. For Asma, it is in gardening which is both a hopeful/ imaginative pursuit, and a practical, physical one. It is both present-tense and future-tense. It functions across a deeper sense of time than her experience—supposedly temporal in the camps—might tend to permit. It also functions across space, not limiting a sense of “home” to national borders, nor to human ones. It is, in this way, ecoglobal. In referring to “ecoglobalism,” I draw on Buell’s above definition, which is informed both by a close reading of the American ecocritical tradition—that is, writing that engages the environment in as its subject if not its antagonist—and also theories from the likes of Val Plumwood and Doreen Massey. Plumwood argues for an ethics of care to be enforced in engagements with the environment. Her theory steers away from rationalist, romantic, conceptions of nature as a thing to passively behold, and or relate to at a remove, and urges instead for an ecological framework of engagement—one in which humans understand that they live within an integrated environment, alongside, and or involved with the non-human. In this way, her theories predate and or anticipate Timothy Morton’s Ecology Without Nature (2009), and his work’s arguing for a ridding of the human-made construct of “nature,” to make space for actual nature, or ecology, to flourish. Further informing Buell’s work, Doreen Massey’s “Global Sense of Place” pursues “the vision of a particular site understood to be a nodal point of interconnected force fields of planetary scope” (quoted in Buell, 2007, p. 233) which resists the time-space compression of modernity and

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confusing signals regarding place which it can promote. Buell ultimately pushes this “planetary scope” further, but suggesting that American literature be reconceptualised as World literature (in various articles), but this is pivotal to Buell’s conception of ecoglobalism because it relies so heavily on re-reading the American literary tradition, and its obsession and romanticization of the pastoral. By removing the insistence on “American” in considering the Pastoral, Buell’s ecoglobalism frees its reader of the limits and problems of nationalism, such as those inherent in the American conception of “manifest destiny.” So what does this have to do with refugees, and what their displacement does to notions of home? I went into the camps on fieldwork intending to ask refugees what “home” meant to them; how they made themselves at home; when they decided to nest; what made them feel at home, away. What happened instead was that they frequently spoke of the space surrounding the home, such as in the interview excerpted above. The garden, or the space surrounding the caravan or tent they resided in, came to become a frame for their sense of home—both past and present. Talk of gardens also lent itself to a safety in our conversations. Later on in my interviews (years on—in 2019), I was not permitted to ask refugees about the past or the present. I was instructed by the officials accompanying me that it was no longer possible to ask them about the past or the future. “It’s too difficult; too painful” one explains. The directed framework of these conversations complicated the already complicated field of oral history within which I was operating (Alessandro Portelli’s notion of the interviewed interviewer here come to mind). My research now policed, the frameworks of its methodology shrunk to confines unintended, in a way held hostage to a kind of liminal space not unlike the refugee’s—no access to past, no promise of future, only present. So I, like them, took to engaging with what felt like the safe and ever-present question of the earth. I began asking only about the flowers, bushes and trees. Vegetables and fruits led to talk of cooking which led to talk of past meals and future yearnings. The flora was safe, or at least mostly so. One person I was speaking to explained that he had been planting things for “some time.” I asked when he began and he explained briefly, before being cut off by the aforementioned official’s hand in the air, that he started “when we realised we would be here awhile.” Like the refugees, I understood that Zaatari would be there “awhile,” and returned to the camp four times after that first visit. The first time I went to Zaatari refugee camp, I was struck by three physical facts. One, it

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is far away from Amman; two, it sits on an old, abandoned olive grove; and three, it is, despite being known as a grass-roots creation, organised. Refugee camps are rarely set in the middle of capital cities, with the possible exception of Yarmouk, in Syria. They are fringe spaces, abstractly and concretely liminal, so the first fact was easy to move past. The third fact was interesting, but again, not unexpected. A contemporary post chaos-­ theory called “emergence” suggests that organisations are connected, especially when growing from the ground up. The history of Zaatari refugee camp is quick to remind one that the camp has sprawled and grown as a direct response to the emergency of the Syrian migration crisis from its start. As John M.B. Balouziyeh writes in Hope and a Future: The Story of Syrian Refugees, in 2015, Zaatari was “the fourth most populous city in Jordan and among the largest refugee camps in the world, with some estimates ranking it as the world’s second largest refugee camp. Unlike other refugee camps that compete in size, Zaatari Refugee camp took only two and a half years to reach its current population. In contrast, Dadaab Refugee Camp in Northeast Kenya, which currently stands as the world’s largest refugee camp, took two decades to reach its current size” (2016). Six years since Balouziyeh’s writing, the camp is still registered to have 80,007 inhabitants, but Kutapalong, housing over 800,000 Rohingya Refugees, has edged both Zaatari and Dadaab Refugee Camps out, and Zaatari currently sits at the fifth largest camp in the world. It was not so much the size of Zaatari that struck upon entering it the first time, but rather, its rapid and organic sprawl, or organisation, depending on your vantage point. Its economic self-made market, for example, nicknamed the “Champs de Elyses,” sprouted out of a communal desire to have Syrian bread rather than Jordanian bread. That was, the story goes, the first shop, and now over 10,000,000 is circulated monthly in this refugee-made marketplace. UN “shelter policy” argues that refugees are more likely to feel greater well-being and senses of agency when offered the material to make a life, rather than the complete top-down created infrastructure of that life. If Zaatari’s reputation as “the camp with soul in it” is any proof, senses of agency, despite the limbo of displacement, grow strongly both inside and outside the sense of this specific camp. Georgio Agemben’s depiction of camp-inhabitants (and in the case of his most central argument, concentration-camp inhabitants) lack agency, finds complication in the case of the Syrian refugee in Jordan, who not only makes and participates actively in home-grown marketplace activity, but also makes a garden, and plants a tree that in multiple ways, discretely

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evades the otherwise overwhelming issue of nationality. Testimony like Asma’s implies that she would be prone to planting trees in Syria, in these camps in Jordan, or in Zimbabwe for that matter. The locale is not as important as the home-making/care-taking act the tree-planting implies. Earth, for Nour, is a home for animals and lends itself to nesting within, despite the state-boundaries it may have inscribed atop it by policy-­makers, pledgers (consider Greater Syria, e.g., before Balfour’s pledge), and or politicians. Asma’s act evades their lines. The tree that Asma plants becomes an extension of the “heaven” created, crucially, anywhere on earth in which unity is permitted. Recall: “Wherever the five of us are, that place should be your heaven.” Home is trumped by Heaven here, and thus permitted the abstraction of its boundaries. The refugee takes refuge in the garden, and in the unity with both family and animals that the garden offers, in a way that the state may not readily allow. Asma’s act is transgressive in this way—as an act of triumph, but also as an act of rooting in something beyond the notion of citizenship which, if not limiting, was most recently alienating and or risk-­producing to her. It is with this in mind that the question of refugee acts as ecoglobal begins to open itself to further discourses: Does the refugee tendency to garden satisfy recent definitions—both in structure and in implication—of ecoglobalism? In what ways may literary criticism, an outlier of contemporary discourses around migration policy reform, illuminate the ecoglobalism at play in refugee gardening tendencies? These and other questions, honouring the resilience and wherewithal demonstrated by refugees I have had the privilege of talking to in the camps of Jordan from 2015 to 2019, offer the possibility of deepening conversations about the nascent, palpable powers of the ecoglobalist refugee imagination.

Ecopoetics in Action Throughout my fieldwork I have noted a repeated tendency of the interview subject to engage in an imaginative and figurative drifting in conversation. The drift is towards outside of the traditional structure of home, towards the space and metaphors of the garden. In this drifting, refugees explore and explain an outside nesting experience which suggests that the description of the space surrounding their tent or “caravan” was as central as the creation of a space within. These structures are uniform dwellings made of sheet metal, offered as sturdier portable small one-room spaces by the UN after the crisis of Syrian migration, beginning in 2011, began to appear long-term.

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These caravans replaced tents that were used for upwards of five years by many, but were not originally meant to withstand the elements beyond a year. Most refugees whom I spoke with expressed a relief to have moved out of their tents to a caravan, though some, as late as 2016, were still residing within the tents. Though the focus of my interviews was on the internal domestic space, the refugees themselves tended to shift the conversation towards discussions of the make-shift gardens that surrounded their tents. Moreover, when a contemporary political crisis seems too traumatic to engage with, when the horror of what we do to ourselves feels too immense or complex to outline, the imagery and language of ecology—even the ecology we know we are destroying or living within depleting—often offers itself as familiar respite. While conversations with refugees circle the possibilities of escape in looking to the larger earth to eclipse the turmoil of more local, and or national, complexity of crisis, poetry—and strangely, American poetry— offers fleshed out metaphors for such negotiations to be riffed on further. There are many poems in which this respite finds form, including Adrienne Rich’s What Kinds of Times Are These. Rich’s poem, for example, marries humanitarian crises with ecological ones—that of the disappearing compound “leafmold paradise” and the “country moving closer to its own truth and dread”—through the soothing symbiosis of a made object, which, like a garden, represents a sense of order and balance. The poem, first published in 1955, reads: There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, its own ways of making people disappear. I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods meeting the unmarked strip of light— ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear. And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these to have you listen at all, it’s necessary to talk about trees. (Rich, 2016)

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Like a garden, this poem is steeped in metaphors that point to things but do not necessarily circle them, such as the things this chapter on refugee gardening and the environmental imagination gestures towards, without necessarily making unequivocal declarations. More explicitly speaking, it and other ecopoetic formulations invite the reader to flesh out the possibility of linking the refugee pursuit of an often maternal home-making process to an ecoglobalist agenda, a link that is encouraged by the refugees themselves who so often describe lost homes— both their recently “ghost-ridden crossroads,” and a more primordial “leafmold paradise”—and new homes, through “talk about trees.” Considering this poem, and the refugee tendency to reach towards the “here” (in Heidegger’s sense) of the earth in times of disaster, feels especially possible at a time in which the relation between ecopolitics and migration is becoming understood as informed by the experience of mass migration created by environmental disasters in the era of climate change. Indeed, environmental literature critic (ecocritic) Buell’s coinage of the phrase “ecoglobalism” might come to be applied to responses as they become increasingly global.2 Buell’s sense of the term is inherently transnational, as opposed, for example, to the definition offered by Ursula Heise, who writes instead of an “eco-cosmopolitanism” (2008). In his defining work, he links the emergence of such notions with “economic modernization,” explaining that “The emergence of U.S. ecoglobal imagination is symbiotic with the history of economic modernization,” while also being aware that such linking risks leading to “capitalism-bashing (which blocks one from understanding how a ‘responsible’ ecoglobalism might arise as a messily partial yet partially honorable reaction against the conquest mentality itself)” (232). What is interesting about considering ecoglobalism as a way of reading refugee testimony (and or vice versa) is that it becomes possible to consider “home” not as “settlement” in the American sense, but as—in the case of the Syrian refugee words on display here and elsewhere throughout the Making Home Away archive (www.makinghomeaway. com), rather, open, communal, social, and beyond human. As Buell gestures towards the slipperiness of such terms which inherently respond, in the case of Buell’s work on American literature, to an 2  Buell writes of ecocritical imaginations frequently, though only defines the phrase “ecoglobalism” throughout his more recent work, but I here return to my earlier citation of his chapter (in Dimock and Buell, 2007, pp. 227–248).

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“American settlement” “culture of economic entrepreneurialism” (2007, p. 232), what happens when Buell’s phrase “ecoglobalism” is drawn on for its transnational potential? Buell offers a definition that reaches towards the implications of engagements with the physical environment, which, though site specific, is also inherently global. He explains: By ‘ecoglobalist affect’ I mean, in broadest terms, an emotion-laden preoccupation with a finite, near-at-hand physical environment defined, at least in part, by an imagined inextricable linkage of some sort between that specific site and a context of planetary reach. Either the feel of the near-at-hand or the sense of its connection to the remote may be experienced as either consoling or painful or both. Diaspora can feel wrenching and liberatory by turns.

Buell is not the first to suggest the romantic implications of the wandering diasporic subject, before moving away from the implicitly understood complications of such romanticising.3 What interests me here, though, is that the diasporic subject is the first example Buell reaches for, when describing what a lived-in ecoglobalism, in action might come to mean. Returning to the words of the woman who planted a peach tree, we find an ecopoetics in practice; in action. Her noting that the tree might serve as a home for a bird in the future demonstrates not only an ecoglobal appreciation of the interrelatedness of the human and its region (and importantly, not “nation”), but also a posthuman, transnational approach to home-making. Whether ecoglobalism and transnational posthumanism are the same remains to be disentangled by ecocritics and postcolonialists currently at quiet war about the stakes of each term. The question I am pursuing is less about terminology, and more about possibility: if the refugee’s home-making pursuit is permitted to be re-envisaged as stretching to the limits of the refugee’s own articulation of “home,” and the refugee describes home-making as gardening, and gardening as a whole-earth project—a national, important before their resettlement or waiting in

3  In the popular imagination, Paul Simon’s 1983 title song, “Hearts and Bones” (released at what might be called the height of Simon’s musical career) begins with lines that imply that subjects of a Jewish diaspora’s “wandering” are “free to wander wherever they choose.” Though Simon has explained that the song was written about his relationship with Carrie Fisher, he also notes that the song’s opening phrase “was true.” An early review of the album in Rolling Stone ends with the claim that in this song, Simon “gets to be alone with his earth angel” (Shewey, 1983).

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transitory spaces, and lasting beyond it—then is it possible to imagine the refugee’s home-making practices, however small, as largely ecoglobalist? The quiet ecoglobalism of the woman who planted a peach tree seems manifest in the sequence of actions she describes as home-making: She ties heaven to home—the two are synonymous, in much the same way as “Syria” and “mother” are later in her interview: “What can I tell you? Syria makes the rocks cry. The last thing I remember is my mother.” Her linguistics slips and slides suggest the dense entanglement of Rich’s “dark mesh of the woods,” which make heaven and home one, in much the same way that the tears she explains might be brought on by her country, are brought on in this conversation, by thoughts of her mother (she did cry at this moment and we did take a pause). As the interview continues, the landscape—actual descriptions of landscape—become further enmeshed in the complexities of an essentially resilient and vibrant and deeply ecological imagination: the woman without a home becomes engrossed in the whole-earth project of creating homes—acquiring “the language of ecological humility” (as Christopher Manes calls such a language “free from the directionality of humanism”) to think and act beyond the human (Manes, 1996, pp. 15–29, 17). Just as Buell’s first example of ecoglobalism is the displaced, the displaced’s first example of “home” is, as my research testifies, firstly, references to family, and secondly reference to gardens. Indeed the way gardens became central to the conversations with Syrian refugees living in the deserts of Jordan is complex. Garden-talk affords ways into talking about something—neither tangible nor utterable—that persists beyond camps and the complexities of nation-states. On a literary level, they conversations about gardens bridge the chasm between postcolonialism’s appreciation of the pastoral, environmentalists’ denunciation of the cultivated (and implicitly colonial) garden, and the more recent “world” turn of ecoglobalism—ultimately suggesting that the “home” refugees in the camps make, is triumphantly in the earth at large.

Flowering: Past into Present Though I have returned to the camps many times since that first time, I am still in many ways stuck on the second fact that I noticed on first entry: that the tents and caravans sit on an old olive grove, which breathes life into a space that was abandoned.

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Those that I have spoken to living in the camps have tended to utilise the spaces they’ve been allocated for nesting, in various ways—but the garden has come up so frequently in the conversations I have had with Syrian refugees that it begs attention be given to it as its own form. When asked about their nesting practices within their allocated tents, even the most resourceful refugees I spoke to were either embarrassed or apologetic, often using the space of the question to recall the technology and comforts of their lost homes. But when asked about the nesting implied in the immediate spaces surrounding their tents—in their make-­ shift (and often illegal) gardens—pride or enthusiasm coloured the response. For an example of this, consider the below excerpt, from an interview I conducted in 2016 with a woman from a suburb of Aleppo. Q: What makes you feel at home? Are there any objects, stories, or meals that make you feel particularly at home? Refugee: We have some cousins here and my children and husband. We have to get used to the situation because otherwise it will be hard for us to survive. Hope is always there of course. Some time ago I visited a friend of mine because she had a newborn. Once I entered her place I felt like I was back in Syria because she had a lot of greenery inside her caravan. Back in Syria our houses were filled with greenery. I was very happy to see the greenery and flowers. Q: Do you think of planting a small garden outside your house? Refugee: Yes, I was thinking of telling my husband to fix up a space outside the house for a garden. That’s his job; he works are a carpenter. Planting a garden would make me feel more comfortable and closer to home. Q: How do you pass the time? Refugee: I spend most of my time reading the Quran and listening to religious songs [humming]. The Quran makes me feel comfortable from the inside. I teach Quran to the young as well. If it weren’t for the Quran, I wouldn't have forgotten all the suffering that we went through. Q: What is your favourite meal that reminds you of home? Refugee: Stuffed vegetables. It is the meal that reminds me of home. But I don’t have time (or the garden!) to cook with here, so I do easier more local meals like mansaf.

Even when asked for descriptions of the material and or of the home, the refugee redirects the conversation to green spaces, products of green spaces (vegetables), and divinity. In the context of the imposition of such various metaphorical and actual ecological space it bears mentioning that

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these are Syrian refugees living within the camps of Jordan—a desert land. Many of these refugees hail from provinces, such as Aleppo, which enjoy a Mediterranean climate: and in this way they share the experience of Palestinian refugees living within camps and resettled within Jordan, a desert country whose population is often estimated to be 75% refugee. These migrants come from landscapes where fruit grows off trees in Edenic ways, and where the diet is accordingly plant based. In moving— however temporarily—to the camps and cities of the desert of Jordan, they experience an environmental and dietary shock: leaving the green spaces of their homelands to be surrounded by a sepia toned pastoral of sand and dirt, and moving from a diet rich in vegetables to a meat-based Jordanian cuisine. In shifting from consuming the oft-mentioned stuffed vegetables (which, in various forms, managed to receive citation in almost every interview I conducted), to the Jordanian meal of mansaf (a lamb, yogurt and rice dish traditionally consumed with one’s hands), the refugee is incorporating a shift in greenery, inside-out. This specific refugee also had attempted to recreate the architecture of her lost home within her caravan-space. Her aforementioned husband— the carpenter—had, at her request, built a fountain in front of their caravan, in a simulation of the traditional Syrian courtyard, which ironically has its architectural roots in a previous, nomadic tradition.4 It was more difficult to visit the camps the second time—to see some of the same people who had felt ignored for not five years now, but seven, but it was not as difficult as it is to be resident in them. In 2016, the woman from Aleppo had a strength in her insistence on offering her children a religious education, on creating a sense of home and safety for them within Zaatari. In 2019, strength was palpably aching for replenishment—physical and spiritual—in much the same way that the dirt by her make-shift windowsill was wanting seeds and water. And yet the sense that if there could be green, there might be hope, seemed consistent throughout the years and the responses from these desert camp inhabitants.

4  I discuss this tradition and the implications of its inheritance and replication within the camps, in Shamma (2020).

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Watering the Garden Seeking permission to continue talking, in 2019, to the above refugee who mentioned “being here awhile,” I returned to the topic of flowers. He explained that they need water—a theme of many of my interviews. Zaatari is not only set on an old, abandoned olive grove, but also in the desert of a desert land: Jordan, a desert land without water (Whitman, 2019, np). Indeed gardens, I was told in 2016, were prohibited in the early days of the camps, because they implied some sort of water stealing. Camp-policing like this seemed more understandable than the policing of conversation. Indeed such policing and limitation of resources soon became common practice: In subsequent camps electricity was solar and water was rationed. And the issue of water remained pressing on the refugee mind over my years of entering Zaatari and Al Azraq camp. In 2018, I returned to the tent of the woman from Aleppo—the woman with the courtyard fountain who, in 2016, had dreamed of a garden. Two years later, her tone in discussing gardening was distinctly despondent. I ask her what her hopes are for the immediate present and the future. She responds I pray that my kids get better at school and in their studies. Financially, I do hope we get better. I hope we have enough to make this caravan nicer, like the other caravans. I hope we can pour concrete onto the floors so that we no longer live on the dirt. I hope we can grow a garden, which we can water with abundance.

Here, the request is not only for a garden, but for one that might grow— there is a decidedly long-term thinking evident in this mother’s hopes. There is also the implicit reference to the third implicitly subversive facet of gardening within the camps of Jordan: that the refugees who are doing so are doing so within a country that is, again, a desert. The lack of water is a well-documented ecological and political problem in Jordan suffered as a result of the occupation of Palestine (consider the 1964–1967 War over Water), but it has taken new forms in the context of the evolution of the refugee crises within Jordan (World Health Organization, n.d., np). In his Hope and a Future: The Story of Syrian Refugee, John M.B. Balouziyeh explains: Even before Syrian refugees began streaming in, Jordan suffered from scarce water supplies. Public institutions often lacked sufficient water to maintain sanitation standards. Water supplies were often inadequate to perform the

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Islamic daily ablutions. Neighbors would often visit one another to obtain water, but would often find that their neighbors’ water supply similarly ran dry. At the inception of the Syrian civil war, the tense water situation further worsened. The thousands of refugees that poured in from Syria added stress to and increased tensions over the Jordanian water supply. Today, areas of Jordan with significant refugee populations face water shortages on the threshold of emergency levels. (Balouziyeh, 2016, p. 105)

It is for these reasons and a few others that gardens are actually heavily policed, especially in Al Azraq camp. The issue of water brings two rebellions in refugee gardening to focus: The first is the practical one—that to plant a garden in a place without abundant water resources is a slightly subversive act of hope: It implies an intention to find a way, or a hope that a way will be found, to attain water, despite its limitations. It plants the refugee squarely within a broader crisis of ecology beyond the crisis of nationalism which they would have left at home. The refugee crisis and the climate crisis coincide in the example of gardening in refugee camps. It also marries this specifically noted pursuit of gardening into an ecological emergency, offering the refugee garden the possibility of being read into as an explicitly critical act. The refugees I spoke to knew there wasn’t much water with which to water the gardens they grew, yet they planted them anyways, because, as they mentioned so frequently, the sight of greenery provided necessary nourishment to the human soul in its own crisis. As proof of the need for greenery, aid workers and the UNHCR have, in Zaatari and beyond, permitted aid workers to paint caravans with murals of seasides and lush forests. To add, refugees I spoke to made their need for gardens amidst senses of displacement explicit where and when possible. In concluding my return interview with the woman from Aleppo, I asked her how she has, over the past two years in particular, made her caravan more homey. I ask her this using a strange mix of words—as the Arabic language has one for “house,” and one for “homeland,” but not one for “home.” She explains: “To be able to live here one has to recreate a home as much as possible. We spend most of our time here, don’t we? So you have to do things to achieve that.” Her tone is despondent and so I work to change it by complimenting her nesting efforts. Pointing to her make-­ shift bed and mattress, I tell her that I like the blue colours she used in her quilt. She responds, “—And green. Green brings me comfort.”

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“And you have flowers on the wall” I mention, pointing. “Yes, one can create—”

Here we are interrupted by her daughter asking about offering me juice, to which the Aleppo mother replies that it is not proper to even ask—that it is a given to offer the guests a drink, though I am politely explaining that it is not necessary, and the daughter—no more than seven years old—disappears obediently on the errand. The mother returns to the topic at hand without hesitation, explaining emphatically: Simple things can create home atmosphere; the curtains, the closets, such things we’ve tried to make. We put some dirt there under the windows in hopes of planting a few things, so that when I open the windows I will find flowers, like I did in Syria. There my in-laws had a big planted area with vegetables and greens, everything we needed. Here we have put the dirt but not the flowers yet. They need a lot of water.

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Here was a woman explaining the desire for flowers, and the lack of water to grow them, while also insisting on performing the etiquette of offering me a temporarily thirst-quenching drink. To add, the “simple things” she identifies as home-making are concrete and place-based, yet in the curation of her home-space she has identified (and, in offering me a drink, created) more abstract, spatial configurations, or inter-relations that constitute home-spaces. For example, she desires the flowers to be the focal point of the act of “opening the windows” and “finding flowers, like I did in Syria.” To add, in doing so, she’d be recreating not just her home, but her ancestor’s offering of home: “my in-laws had a big planted area with vegetables and greens, everything we needed.” Though the speaker claims to want things as “simple” as “curtains,” she is actually pursuing more complicated inter-relational experiences to cultivate a sense of home. This pursuit of process over physical place speaks to Paolo Boccagni’s theories of home: “Central to the concept of home … is the interaction between the built environment and the subjective attribution of meanings and emotion to it” (2017, p.  30). According to Boccagni, it is possible for home to be “reframed as a meaningful relationship with place … [an] interactive endeavour.” When that “place” is ecological, rather than built, might its “meaning” compound or present the possibility of posthuman elasticity? In another article, Boccagni writes with Andrea Mubi Brighenti: Once we ask, in a provocatively naïve way, ‘Where does home begin, Where does it end?” a number of relatively neglected phenomena, issues, and problems can be revisited. Since home is a relational, incomplete achievement rather than a pre-given and unproblematic domestic space, even from a merely spatial point of view, the separation between domestic and non-­ domestic space can be marked, asserted and experienced in radically different ways. The fixation—not to speak of the obsession—with a sharp outline of home boundaries is simply unknown in many contexts of emigration, as well as in different civilisation patterns. (2017, p. 4)

What the above offered testimonies and oral histories from interview subjects offer, is a subtle yet consistent refutation of the “fixation… with a sharp outline of home boundaries.” In pursuing the porosity of home, through the porosity of the liminal garden space, the refugee tendency to garden divulges an ecoglobalist pursuit: an engagement in the whole earth of the land surrounding caravans, as opposed to an entanglement with a pursuit of nationhood, or selfhood in seemingly unproblematic domestic spaces. They offer instead small yet notable relational, and ambitiously

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incomplete achievements (such as a tree that “could become” a bird’s nesting space) that both challenge western notions of the fixity of home, while making an inter-relational, implicitly precolonial, home in the earth at large. Funding  This writing has been generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

References Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer. Stanford University Press, California. Balouziyeh, J. M. B. (2016). Hope and a Future: The Story of Syrian Refugees. Time Books, 2016. Berry, W. (1983). Poetry and place. In Standing words. Counterpoint. Boccagni, P. (2017). Migration and the search for home. Palgrave Macmillan. Boccagni, P., & Brighenti, A. M. (2017). EDITORIAL: Immigrants and home in the making: Thresholds of domesticity, commonality and publicness. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 32(1), 1–11. Brooks, G. (1986). Horses Graze (p. 1986). The Near, Third World Press. Buell, L. (2007). Ecoglobalist affects: The emergence of US environmental imagination on a planetary scale. In W. C. Dimock & L. Buell (Eds.), Shades of the planet: American literature as world literature (pp.  227–248). Princeton University Press. Buell, L., & Dimock, W. C. (Eds.). (2007). Shades of the planet: American literature as world literature. Princeton University Press. Costello, B. (2003). Shifting ground: Landscape in modern American poetry. Harvard University Press. Foucault, M., & Miskowiec, J. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Heise, U. (2008). Sense of place and sense of planet: The environmental imagination of the global. Oxford University Press. Manes, C. (1996). Nature and silence. In C. Glotfelty & H. Fromm (Eds.), The ecocriticism reader: Landmarks in literary ecology (pp. 15–29, 17). University of Georgia Press. Rich, A. (2016). What kinds of times are these. Collected Poems: 1950–2012. Shamma, Y. (2020). Heaven is green. Journal of Narrative Theory, 50(3, Summer). Shewey, D. (1983, November 24). Paul Simon: Hearts and bones: Music reviews: Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved February 10, 2020. Whitman, E. (2019). A land without water: the scramble to stop Jordan from running dry. Available via Nature. Retrieved April 13, 2022, from https://www. nature.com/articles/d41586-­019-­02600-­w World Health Organization. (n.d.). The health and environment linkage initiative. Available via World Health Organization Pilot Projects. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from https://www.who.int/heli/pilots/jordan/en/

CHAPTER 9

Home Is Like Water: Nigerians in the Migration Pathway to the UK Marissa Quie and Titi Solarin

It was a soft, fluid tune: the tender draw of water— the sea, keen, humming a promise of calm, urging us to draw closer, to unlearn all we thought we knew about the posture of water. Gbenga Adeoba (2021)

Where is home? How do we know where we belong? Is home the place we were born, the passport we hold, the places in between, the people we

M. Quie (*) Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, UK Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] T. Solarin Rerouting Initiative CIC, Cardiff, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5_9

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meet or where we die? What does it mean to reroute from Nigeria to the UK? What does it mean to re-make home, to re-chart your life, both externally and internally? Nigeria is among the top ten countries of birth for migrants to the UK (Migration Observatory, 2020). For Nigerians in the migration pathway, re-rooting does not simply equate with a new place; home is liquid, overspilling spatial and temporal boundaries. Journeys between are multidimensional. If oceanic metaphors saturate the xenophobic immigration discourses of a post-Brexit era, water and the aqueous grammar of the sea also invoke Nigerian struggles to navigate movements across geographical and psychic shores. In vernacular language, home is defined as ‘the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household’. Time and space cohere in a clear-cut delineation. For Nigerian migrants to Britain, living on the margins of the territory/citizenship/state triad, ‘home’ is always much more complicated. ‘Once you have been displaced, movement becomes integral to your life’, as Bitrus describes it. The idea that ‘home is where you make it’ is constantly in flux. Yet movement is imbricated by the challenges of unequal borders. Hermetically sealed official categories like emigration/immigration, fundamental to managed migration approaches, do not correlate neatly with migrant experiences, obscuring key dimensions of the process. In this chapter, we deploy wet ontologies (Steinberg & Peters, 2015) to destabilise the static, bordered, linear interpretations which characterise migration studies of place, space and time. We use the ocean to disclose dynamic processes that typify making home away. The ocean is more than water. It offers fertile metaphors for reconceptualising time and space. It ‘exceeds that materiality’ (Peters & Steinberg, 2019). Seawater can become rain, hail or snow. It can solidify as ice; vaporise and become mist and fog. It generates strong winds and transports scents. It contains salt: which enlivens the taste of food and stings the eyes, making it hard to see. It encompasses coasts that were once land and exposes land which was once submerged. It merges with rivers and nurtures life that entwines with death in coral reefs. Its depths inspire innumerable fantasies of known and unknown worlds. The sea is integral to every aspect of our being, giving rise to more-­ than-­wet ontologies (Peters & Steinberg, 2019), ways of dwelling and making home. Mapping its limits is challenging because it continually dissolves and re-forms. Our chief objective is to probe the complex intergenerational processes of making home away for Nigerians in the migration

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pathway to the UK.  In contrast to flat government and media-centric accounts of migration, we draw on the ocean ‘in excess’ to explore multi-­ layered historical connections, imaginative depths and complex emotions involved in homemaking. Like divers limited by restrictive tanks of oxygen, we know the views we consider are circumscribed, and expect to raise more questions than we answer. Our hope is this modest circumnavigation may uncover hidden spaces and ignite new conversations, leading to more compassionate treatment for Nigerian migrants to the UK. The chapter is divided into six sections. The first, ‘Stories Matter’, outlines the qualitative methodology rooted in the stories migrants tell to make sense of their lives across oceans, time and space; and their internal voyages when re-making home away. Stories structure real world experiences (Bruner, 1991), helping us manage contradictions and seemingly insurmountable tensions. Yet sometimes, migrant stories plumb the depths of despair and hopelessness of lives consumed in a sea of intractable challenges. Stories matter. They illuminate the complexities of migration experiences. Our research underlines their power in determining the fate of Nigerians navigating the bureaucracy of migration. So much depends on whether they are heard, who in the justice system takes them up and who rejects them. In the current ‘hostile environment’ of the UK, distortion of stories reinforces punitive migration policies; but they can also be mobilised towards more progressive ends. The second section, ‘Tidal Perspectives’, looks at histories often disconnected from the present. ‘Irregular Migration’ from Nigeria is repeatedly framed as a new problem to be solved, but contemporary movement entwines with the extractive legacies of the past. Today’s Nigeria was the scene of the most extensive slave raids on the African continent. Slavery and colonialism caused incalculable harm to Nigeria while fuelling British economic and cultural growth. The colonial creation of Nigeria fostered the fragmentation and instability that drive migration. Just as we conceive of the ocean in excess beyond its material wetness, the third section, ‘Imagined Geographies’ considers ‘home’ beyond the limited cartographies of the nation state. Drawing on mythology, historic accounts, contemporary policy and events, fiction and poetry, we reveal the submerged perspectives of Nigerian migrants on making home away. The fourth section examines ‘Oceanic Talismans’. Migrants enter the UK with few mementos of home. Some arrive only with small suitcases, reinforcing the subterfuge of short holidays rather than migration. With

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few material remnants of distant homes, life in Britain can feel fragile and insubstantial. Scents, tastes and sounds can act as talismans; impalpable drops in what Proust (2003 [1913]) called the ‘immense architecture of memory’. Section 5, ‘Weathering Storms at Sea’, circumnavigates home in excess. Étienne Balibar writes that ‘exclusion is the very essence of the nation-­ form’ (2004, p. 23). But what Adeoba refers to as the ‘tender draw of the water’ dissolves the formal logic of migration, conferring a more liquid ‘imagined citizenship’. For Nigerians on the move, legal categories of migration are liminal, as are artificial divisions between ‘voluntary’ and ‘forced movement’. Only when waves crash against the hard shores of the Home Office and judicial management systems do harsh realities intrude. Pervasive surveillance dehydrates lives, desiccating hopes and opportunities. Deportation can be an un-weatherable storm, wreaking destruction beyond the bounds of individual lives. The conclusion encapsulates why ‘Home is Like Water’. Water not only gives us life, but is also the origin of life. Water is critical to sustaining life and the principal constituent of the bodies through which we live.

Stories Matter This research is principally the result of reflections obtained from involvement in the Rerouting Initiative CIC, a multidimensional programme focused on social justice and offering support services to Nigerians classified by the Home Office as ‘irregular migrants’. The Rerouting Initiative focuses especially on migrants in detention and those deported back to Nigeria. Its founder, Titi Solarin, is also Director of Tailored Futures, an organisation dedicated to supporting prisoners readjusting to ‘home’ and life outside the carceral system. The data here have been gathered over four years. Migrants supported by the Initiative have multifaceted familial relations. These allowed us to probe intergenerational ties, both ‘home’ and ‘away’; and provided a window into the impact of different experiences in terms of citizenship and migratory status. Within one family, some members may be British passport holders, while others are forced to navigate punitive treatment by the Home Office as ‘undocumented’ or ‘irregular’ migrants. Finances and prohibitive costs are central to this equation; but fantasy and urban myths about acquiring citizenship through birth or residence also play a role.

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Twenty-four individuals associated with Rerouting CIC formed the core of our study. They were, in effect, the spoke of a wheel connecting us with wider families in Britain and Nigeria. All these individuals had lived in the UK for five or more years. We aimed for an equal division between males and females. The age range of core individuals is from 20 to 40. Our sample includes members of the Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo tribes, and the Edo people. They identify as Muslim or Christian. We do not claim this sample is representative of Nigeria; but believe it offers insights into the meanings of making home for individuals in the fluid migration pathway. Names have been changed to protect anonymity. From the outset, it is important to note a wide variety of experiences and perceptions of home. Our intention is not to flatten or homogenise these differences; but detect underlying themes. This research aims to decolonise statist notions of home and citizenship by uncovering a range of counter-narratives at odds with the migration management framework. Until relatively recently, migration was a peripheral area of study. ‘Today it has become a firmly established interdisciplinary field’ (Yalaz & Zapata-­ Barrero, 2017, p. 3). Migration management regimes favour quantitative research, deploying state categorisations of wanted/unwanted migrants. Numerical measurements are used to gauge migration across borders. But quantitative approaches lack in-depth accounts of how home is perceived in often precarious conditions by migrants themselves. They generally omit investigation of how social relations produce racist and discriminatory practices, such as deportation (De Genova, 2002). Current research tends to be synchronic. Like taking a photograph at a moment in time, it misses the diachronic flow of what happens before, during and after. Alternatives which may have been open along the way are overlooked; the subjective dimension is lost. It is especially important to capture subjective perceptions about danger and protection, the hazards of return and impact of stigmatisation. A key ethical dilemma involves how migrants can be directly featured in ethnographically grounded research. How can the addition of new layers of trauma be avoided while still capturing their perceptions of home? Policy and legal frameworks tend to be out of synch with needs and requirements, exacerbating problems for both sending and receiving countries. Lack of comparative information renders unavailable vertical and grassroots spaces for shared dialogue. Our methodological approach is qualitative and influenced by Moya (2000, p.  12): who argues that all knowledge is socially mediated; and

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migration research needs to treat the complexity of subjectivity, experiences and social positions of social actors with the utmost seriousness (Moya & McKeown, 2011). These kinds of accounts take immigrant subjectivities very seriously; while moving beyond them by causally linking them to realities outside and investigating intersecting social inequalities of race, gender, socioeconomic and migration status (Iosifides, 2003; Walby, 2007). Our qualitative approach hinges on storytelling, highlighting the significance and use of stories for marginalised people. Stories and their interpretation matter. They are critical in determining what happens to Nigerians moving across shores. Stories are metaphors for the ambiguities of home. At some level, they allow individuals to frame the narrative. Nonetheless, conditions under which they are told and tropes through which they are narrated can obscure unequal power relations. Photographs, films, music, textiles and food provide further layers to understandings of home. Even within the bleak confines of brutal institutions like Yarl’s Wood detention centre, reminders of home offer solace. Chin chin (a Nigerian snack), Milo chocolates, plantain chips, Ankara textiles and Nigerian music are talismans for the imaginative spaces of home. Qualitative research methods are related to complex, sometimes challenging relations between ontology, epistemology and methodology. Self-­ reflectivity—the power differentials between participants and researchers during and after the research process—is critical but implies limitations on data uncovered. Our engagement in migration advocacy work makes us believe that ‘tidalectic immersion’ (Brathwaite, 1999; Brathwaite & Phillips, 1993) demands accountability and praxis rather than detached observation.

Tidal Perspectives The sea is in constant flux, making and re-making shores. It holds ruined pasts and can wash them away: whether pre-national, national, transnational or individual. Nigerian historians remind us of the disarticulation of present-day immigration from its historical roots. Nigeria was carved out of the African continent and stitched together by British colonial ambitions, facilitated by the sea. Its harrowing history partly explains its troubled present, driving current migration. Nigeria’s painful legacies of colonialism are compounded by global capitalism: the ‘slow violence’ (Nixon, 2013) that makes certain spaces

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too challenging to sustain visions of home. Yet the distinction between forced and voluntary migration elides the question of agency. Voluntary migration is rarely freely chosen; instead, it is a response to oppressive circumstances. In 1440, European ships conveyed ten Africans as a gift to King Henry of Portugal. Nigerian historian, Olasupo Shashore, calls this ‘the original sin’ (2021). The slave trade, integral to Britain’s capitalist development, has yet to be fully acknowledged. The forcible removal of Africans from their communities amounted to one of the greatest dispersals in human history. Slave merchants transported over four million slaves from what is now Nigeria to the West. Their names and histories have been lost, submerged in the seas and in foreign soils. In 2016, Gbenga Adeoba read a news report about a Nigerian boy comforting his sister after they were rescued from an overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean Sea. Their mother died in Libya. Adeoba was struck by the profound presence of the past in the present. He remembered Walcott’s poem, ‘The Sea is History’, and wrote his ‘Seafarers’ (Adeoba, 2021): What binds us, in this boat, is a known fear, a kinship of likely loss, the understanding that we, too, could become a band of unnamed migrants found floating on the face of the sea.

Adeoba’s words remind us of efforts to rewrite histories of slavery and colonialism, exposing the deep interconnections made by tidalectics (Brathwaite, 1999; Brathwaite & Phillips, 1993). Tidalectics imply a subconscious region. In contrast with colonialism, progress is not central; a simultaneous backward movement (paralleling tides) opening non-linear readings of time is prioritised. Tidalectics acknowledges the silences that colonialism creates and perpetuates. Migrants are constantly surprised at the ignorance surrounding colonial legacies pertinent to experiences of home. Here, we examine a plurality of practices which differ, yet must occupy the same space (Bhabha, 1994, p.  60). Post-colonial realities routinely construct a kind of co-presence. They are detectable in populist discourses around migration and race which have become increasingly xenophobic in the post-Brexit era, as well as in the criminalisation of young African men. Phrases like ‘bulldog breed’

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and ‘island race’ proliferate. Race and nation are entangled in British consciousness. Under the Cameron, May and Johnson governments, ‘repatriation’ of ‘illegal migrants’ has been a priority. Surveillance proliferates, entrapping migrants who live in fear that pigmentation places them at constant risk. For many Nigerian migrants, racism was previously abstract. ‘My first experiences of racism were in London. I think I’d only ever seen white people on television before that’. Michael says ‘race was not something I was really aware of. When I used the word in Nigeria, I was thinking of a marathon’. Michael was asked what he was doing here and told to ‘go back where you belong… I was essentially made different—made black’. He first attended university in Wales and had just one African friend. When they sat in lecture theatres—‘cavernous, tiered rooms with benches’—nobody would sit next to them, even if this left them sitting on the floor instead. He finally moved to Leeds: better, but still a ‘battle’. Now a father, he is conflicted about how to discuss racism, home and belonging with his son, Niyi, who is five. Recently, Niyi exclaimed that he had ‘found his twin’ at school. When Michael probed what he meant, he said, ‘my twin has skin like mine’. That raises questions for Michael. When he takes Niyi to Nigeria, his son sees it as foreign. He is ‘always asking for cheeseburgers’: unknown cuisine in the remote village where Michael grew up. ‘Do I want him to feel like a second-class citizen in the UK, or will some emotional connection with Nigeria give him a layer of protection against racism?’ Michael believes that if Niyi feels a bit like an expat, he might be shielded. ‘He can just distance himself and think, well, this is England’, when encountering racism. At the same time, he is concerned that there are psychological and social advantages to ‘being rooted in one place you call home’. Yet pride in ancestral roots can be a useful panacea for the macro and micro-aggressions of racism. The word ‘resilience’ repeatedly crops up in reflections on Nigerian identities. The British-Nigerian novelist, Chibundu Onuzo, observes: ‘Lack of infrastructure [in Nigeria] engenders in us a real creativity, so where others might see chaos, Nigerians see opportunity’ (Jackson-Obot, 2020). ‘Sometimes, that is why Nigerians in the diaspora—especially the first generation—can be reluctant to talk about race and racial barriers. They don’t want to talk about racial bias. They want to talk about the opportunities’ (ibid).

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The younger generation are different. Black Lives Matter and other protest movements have heightened consciousness around Britain’s extractive colonial histories and persistent struggles with racism. Titi notes, ‘The British Empire lasted over three centuries. At one point they ruled a third of the global population. I can’t get my head around how history is manipulated. It’s all about Britain’s delivery of freedom, justice and democracy to the world—how the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights came out of the halls of Parliament. What kills me is what they ‘forget’. It was from those very same halls that slavery and colonialism were carried out. We are always hearing, ‘go back to Africa’. If Africa closed its borders during Covid, where would the British get chips for their phones and cars and the resources they need to survive?’ Post-colonial theory calls for interrogation of the cultural and geographical abstractions that construct Britain as an island nation, widening the lens to encompass imperial expansions via the sea. Like Brathwaite’s ‘tidalectics’, Gilroy’s ‘black Atlantic’ (1987, 1995) delineates a distinctively modern, cultural-political space neither specifically African, American, Caribbean, nor British; but which instead is a hybrid mix. It denotes a specifically modern cultural-political formation induced by the experience and inheritance of the African slave trade and plantation system in the Americas, which transcends the nation state and ethnicity. This nation-less oceanic space evokes some of the imagined identities that Nigerians in the UK associate with ‘home’ and homemaking.

Imagined Geographies In line with Gilroy (1987, 1995), we probe ideas of imagined spatiality, interrogating imagined geographies that draw on connections across oceans and continents. We look at invocations of communal spaces drawn on fluctuating boundaries between ‘inside and outside’ physical locations and inner worlds, ‘home and away’. Imagined geographies confound the limitations of citizenship, frequently with negative consequences for migrants: whose mobile visions of home centre on flows between the UK and Nigeria. Migration entails ineffable losses. Seemingly solid relationships experienced in Nigeria dissolve into more transient linkages. The term ‘suitcase lives’ emerges repeatedly in reflections on movement to the UK. Olufemi says that before he left Nigeria, he packed and repacked his small bag. ‘How do you fit a whole life into a piece of luggage?’, he asks. Migrants

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are forced to shrink their belongings to a minimum. ‘You have to travel light’, says Toni. He remembers how he cried for the parts of his life that were lost. ‘Pieces of myself shrivelled inside of me. I can’t replace the weight of my childhood in Peckham’. Language is a key signifier. Pidjin was developed to facilitate the slave trade. Now, it is often viewed as the language of ‘home’. ‘I spoke English in school in Lagos and I was used to writing in English, but Pidjin and Yoruba were always the languages of emotion for me. It’s strange to no longer hear it in the street or to be able to turn to it in moments of fear and struggle’, Akin says. Many Nigerians say they have become ambivalent about ‘home’ as a place. Imagined geographies tend to prize the soil of birth; but the pitiless realities of time intrude on those fantasies. Folu feels home is where someone is from, yet that soil is different from memories of the past. ‘You take trips back and you no longer quite fit. You are like a broken piece of a puzzle’. Even brief ‘returns’ catalyse interrogation of belonging as migrants try to knit together pieces of themselves. Omolara ‘returned’ to Nigeria at 21 after a decade in London. As she sat in a Lagos beach club, a small crab crawled onto her finger. ‘The crab was a symbol of home. I’d never seen one in England. He died suddenly in my hand. I was in floods of tears. Without thinking I ran onto the beach and began digging a grave for him. The club manager came out with a gun asking what I was doing. He heard my foreign accent and my brother-in-­ law said, ‘leave her, she’s a tourist’. He told me the manager thought I was burying jazz (materials that bring bad luck according to Ifa beliefs) to sabotage his business’. Omolara says that when she is ‘at home’ in England, she forgets the whole spiritual world that surrounds life in Nigeria. Her mother believes that Ifa contains more knowledge than Google. The crab made her wonder how she can ‘hold home together’. Omolara cannot stop thinking about the label ‘tourist’. Common reference points with those who never left can be elusive. Connections take on an artificial quality as they watch family and friends grow up on Instagram and Facebook. Departures from Nigeria commonly coincide with childhood, rendering redundant any notion of a genuine choice to leave or apply for citizenship. Generally, the parent leaves first, disrupting the kinship unit integral to home. Children are forced to re-make home with family or friends in Nigeria, expanding the micro-geography and emotional attachments of the domestic space. A parent may return infrequently, bringing traces of new geographies with them.

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Blessing recalls how a strange ‘London smell’, transported across seas, would cling to her mother for days after arrival. Now living in London as an adult, she occasionally detects vestiges of that scent: reminiscent of her estrangement from her mother and a primal relationship signifying home. A series of ‘aunts’ were surrogate maternal figures in Lagos. When finally reunited with her mother in London after more than seven years apart, she called her ‘London mother’. Now, she was no longer the intimate parental figure of conventional childhoods. Instead, she was an ‘unknown quantity’. Blessing felt as though she was ‘walking on eggshells’ as she struggled to re-chart the landscape of home in a bare London flat that felt completely alien. After almost two decades in the UK, and a series of increasingly abusive, violent relationships, her mother feels the struggle to make London home was a waste. Her mental health has deteriorated; she wants to return to her village. She wants to be buried in the soil of her birth, essentially coming full circle. Blessing constantly asks herself whether the trauma of movement and re-making home was worth the pain. Loss of the primal bond with the mother is a recurrent theme in discussions around home. If life begins in the amniotic fluid of the womb, maternal departures are agonising. Digital mothering rarely suffices; children mourn the loss of ‘real’ connections. Mothers who have left may become resources for one another through friendship, socialisation and the construction of spaces and relationships of belonging (Diminescu, 2008). Separation can weaken the potential for creating an affective space with the emotional resonance of home. The term ‘mother’ can be used as a noun or verb. In contexts of ‘irregular migration’, Nigerians in the UK can be closely surveyed by a sophisticated architecture of border management. Illegal documentation, including false identities, is an ubiquitous, integral part of an underground economy. Friendships and social networks are vital in providing primary care for children who accompanied parents to Britain and are undocumented. Aminah remembers how her mother instructed her on what to do if she did not return home from work. When the former was first arrested outside a supermarket, Aminah and her siblings moved multiple times for months between the homes of ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ who attempted to act as surrogate mothers. The children were forced to learn new transport routes to school and live on almost no money. When her mother was

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finally released, Aminah felt as though she was ‘seeing a ghost—the ghost of home’. Spectral lives are a recurrent theme in descriptions here. Home is also redolent of wider spaces. Onochie longs for the big compounds surrounding many Nigerian houses that offer creative canvases to plant flowers, plants and vegetables. Growing up in Hackney, he did not have a garden. Visits to his grandparents in Enugu State meant the freedom of open spaces. Onochie and Chimanpaka reminisce about the vibrant communal life of the streets in small rural villages and urban centres. Chimanpaka says it flowed around him like ‘warm water’. ‘I guess I’m made of water, so it’s an extension of me’. Migrants repeatedly highlight home as a kind of sanctuary. The image of water recurs. Interestingly, the idea that ‘home should feel like a warm bath’ (Parsons, 1959) was raised. Fa’izah said, ‘whether it be your environment or an actual physical building, home should feel like a space to escape the madness of the world, a place where you feel calm, warmth, love and a place of belonging’. Elaborating on the metaphor, Fa’izah referred to the hostility to difference that permeates English life. In contrast, at home, no attention to ‘integration’ is required. Olanrewaju remembered the humiliation she experienced when white British students claimed that her lunch ‘stank’. Her mother told her ‘we need to learn the English way’. But her mother did not know what it meant to be an English teenager. Olanrewaju knew she needed to ‘understand how English people think’. She needed the tools to make home ‘in a new world, where you can’t do things the way you used to’.

Oceanic Talismans of Home Efforts to intertwine imagined geographies and past relationships with the realities of the present are tricky. ‘Time and your sense of time are all oriented towards the future when you go to the UK. But you leave essential bits of your past behind. It’s almost as though you have to cut out your past to live in your present’. Attempts to reclaim that past are shadowed with pain. They materialise in life rituals: christenings, graduations, weddings and funerals. They help Nigerians in the migration pathway make sense of what, at times, is understood as exile. Persistent struggles and lack of ease that accompany re-making home ignite a search for reconnection. Food is a powerful key here: Nigerian ingredients are dried and imported to British speciality shops and markets. Yet recreating ‘buka’ (authentic) tastes is complicated. In south-east

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London, Thamesmead, Abbey Wood, Lewisham, Peckham and Brixton all offer small shops and restaurants where some Nigerian ingredients can be sourced. However, the shock of losing easy access to basics can be hard. Igbo women find warmth and comfort in the flavours of bitter leaf soup, ofe onugbu. The name is misleading: authentic versions have little trace of bitterness. Nneka is fond of the rituals associated with preparation. In the UK, fresh bitter leaves are unavailable. She takes dried leaves and uses akanwu, edible potash, to soften them in an airtight plastic bag. She ruffles the bag to distribute the tenderiser. Reviving the leaves is a window to retrieving home. ‘When I first arrived in London and attempted to make my favourite soup, it tasted like cardboard’. Nneka thinks the taste and feel of cardboard are representative of her initial feelings about the UK. ‘It was tasteless and thin’, a flimsy facsimile of home. Reviving bitter leaves is indicative of her hard won capacities to create a bridge between her original and new homes. Efosa has been in the UK since adolescence. She notes English influences on her diet. ‘I’m more conscious of body image here than I was in Edo State. I love Nigerian food, but it can be unhealthy. I’ve been creating fusion dishes like yam croquettes with gluten-free ingredients. Maybe this says something about joining places that are home together’. Migrants frequently draw attention to ‘straddling’, ‘linking’ and ‘bridging’. They talk about experiences of ‘simultaneity’, pulling together seemingly disparate worlds to re-make ‘home’ (Gidwani & Sivaramakrishnan, 2003). Tayo tries to reconjure the simple relations she once had with home through Nigerian music, especially Afrobeats. She spends hours looking at Instagram and daydreaming about Onitsha. In her descriptions, Nigeria is more progressive than the UK. Inequalities are flattened through interactions of rich and poor in the streets. She says these are non-existent in London, where the rich are sequestered in ‘separate bubbles’. These images of Nigeria convey hopes for a more egalitarian version of home: where opportunity can be harnessed and upward mobility is possible.

Weathering Storms at Sea If many Nigerian migrants cross seas in the hope of better lives, others grapple constantly with seemingly inescapable nets of surveillance. ‘It’s like the sea’, says Tunji. ‘Anyone who knows it will tell you of her power. But unless you’ve experienced it for yourself, it’s hard to imagine’. Weathering the storms of judicial and Home Office surveillance is

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punishing. Ife feels ‘like a small fish caught in a huge net’. His life continues to hover between water and air. He can no longer swim against the currents. Experiences of deportation are characterised by intense fear and uncertainty. Migrants describe removal and attempts at removal as akin to ‘sewage treatment’. ‘I was flushed down a drain and out to sea like shit’, says Fola. Immigration, detention and deportation are inherently linked. They form part of UK and EU responses to managing unwanted migration, controlling borders and (re)-asserting sovereignty. Tightening approaches to migration have made deportation—the physical removal of someone against their will from the territory of one state to another—a key policy priority. Intricate bureaucracies straddling public and private sectors inflict ‘hidden violences’ on vulnerable people, often grouped together with dangerous adults. Women can experience sexual abuse in detention centres. In extreme circumstances, deportation is viewed as an existential threat. There have been cases of Nigerian suicides prior to physical removal from the UK. ‘Return’ and ‘reintegration’ are misnomers. They presuppose a ‘home’ to reclaim, safe sustainable communities for return and acceptance within those communities. Many young Nigerians have never lived in their ‘country of origin’. Young women and LGBTQI people face particular risks. The dangers of return include hypervisibility, discrimination, stigmatisation and the violence of unknown terrains. Undocumented youth are generally not considered by British social policies and specifically denied access to services. They face legal and practical barriers to pursuing education, physical and mental healthcare, and having a stable home. They cannot report violence or abuse from the police without risking arrest or family separation. This places them at greater risk of experiencing or witnessing violence, as they and their families are ‘zero risk’ victims. Gathering information on undocumented people in general and documenting their experiences in more detail is thus complicated by secrecy. Since 2012, immigration policy has generally cultivated a ‘hostile environment’ towards those categorised as ‘illegal migrants’. Home Secretary, Priti Patel, recently considered fitting vessels with pumps to generate waves to stem migrant ‘flows’ in the Channel (Read, 2020). Strategies have included ‘Go Home’ vans driving through ethnically diverse neighbourhoods and random passport checks in hospitals and schools. Some

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migrants are permanently attuned to the risks of deportation. Others have absorbed the fantasy of imagined citizenship. They are shocked when the storms of detention and deportation upend their lives. Eniola arrived in Hackney when just a year old. She has no memory of Lagos. She never questioned her migration status, simply assuming that she was British. When she was 16, immigration officers rang the doorbell. Her mother tried to cajole them into leaving but they were persistent. They were told to pack their bags before being taken to a detention centre. Amid the panic, one of the officers looked puzzled. He asked Eniola why she sounded so British. She was confused and answered that she was British. She had never thought of herself as anything else. During the long weeks in detention, her mother explained that she had never applied for citizenship for Eniola. Yet her father, who had divorced her mother after a prolonged history of domestic violence, was a citizen. In the UK, elements of asylum and deportation processes are outsourced to private companies, placing vulnerable youth at risk. Outsourcing was considered a natural development in a corporate-led world, but its pace has accelerated markedly since 2010. Yarl’s Wood has been a source of contention. The Chief Inspector of Prisons branded it ‘a place of national concern’ (Channel 4 News, 2015). Healthcare, particularly for pregnant teens, has been deemed inadequate. Security is outsourced to the private firm, Serco. Some families simply do not understand the complexities of the migration system. They assume that being born in the UK is sufficient to be British. So children are left with an ‘imagined citizenship’/home’ that does not correlate with migration realities. Others enter the labyrinthine process of obtaining ‘leave’ (permission) to remain. Since 2012, fees for people applying to remain in the UK have more than trebled. In 2015, the Home Office also introduced an immigration surcharge. If individuals are rejected, they must start again; costs can be completely unsustainable. If opportunities for decent employment are already circumscribed by uncertain status, funding is problematic. Families may choose to prioritise certain members for citizenship or leave to remain over others. Concerns around the ‘burden’ of migration may mean that someone’s true status only emerges when immigration officers flag it up. Young people unaware of their migration status are traumatised when realities surface. Dapo was arrested for driving a getaway car in a gang revenge attack. In prison, he transformed his life. He achieved strong GCSEs and A-Levels. He became a prolific writer. He had dreams of going

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to university. Just prior to his release, the Home Office intervened: declaring he was in the UK illegally, and as he had committed a crime, he should be deported. His father visited him in prison and confirmed his unauthorised status, admitting that he and his mother had passports, but they had never applied for one for Dapo. Titi Solarin led a long series of appeals. Dapo lived a painful existence moving in and out of detention, constantly fearing deportation to a country unknown to him. Dapo arrived in London as a baby and only visited Nigeria twice in his life. The Home Office made his life hell, placing illogical conditions on his movement. Allowed out only at night, he could not work and had to wear an electronic tag. He had constant check-ins with the immigration authorities. Dapo says, ‘I am a Londoner’. London is the only home he has ever known. He is now ‘powerless’ and ‘in limbo’. After years of protracted stays in detention centres, punctuated by court appearances, he has ‘no life’. ‘This is my home but to stay here, I can have no future. I can’t get married. I can’t have children. I can’t go to university. I can’t travel. I can’t own or officially rent a house. It is as though I am a ghost in the place that is my home. I am British in all but documentation’. A 2019 Pew Research Centre Report estimated that approximately 4.8 million unauthorised immigrants had been living in Europe since 2017 (Connor & Passel, 2019). But precision regarding the numbers of unauthorised immigrants living in the UK is difficult to obtain. Little is known about their lives. Migration experts believe most are young people living under the radar. Some travelled as unaccompanied minors or fell prey to traffickers. Many are part of complex family situations. Divorce can be a catalyst for informing the Home Office. Domestic violence fractures the home and may render single mothers vulnerable to deportation. Obtaining legal status is a challenging procedure. Then again, many Nigerians who arrived as young people are clear about their unauthorised status. They may have ostensibly come on holiday or to study, overstayed or found other ways to slip through the net. Years of living in Britain transform their conceptions of home. Akpomena, who came to Edinburgh at 19, ‘fell in love with Scotland’. She adores the clean air, rolling hills, murky weather and local cuisine. She cannot imagine going back to the heat, mosquitoes and electricity shortages that characterise her former village life. Due to her irregular status, she feels she must live life in Edinburgh as ‘an actress… When I come out of my door, I pretend to be someone else. I am confident and smiling but the real me

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must be invisible. I can’t let anyone know my situation. I am too scared’. She lives with the contradictions of wanting to be at home and make a home; but trying to regularise her status is perilous. Leave to remain is only a temporary panacea. Applicants granted status are generally given two and a half years, without access to benefits. They must reapply to extend their leave every two and a half years by making a paid application to the Home Office. Fees increase annually above the rate of inflation. The Home Office can take 12 months on average to decide. In the interim, it can be difficult if not impossible to retain employment, as the Home Office holds all the relevant papers. Only when an individual has held limited leave to remain for ten years can they apply to ‘settle’ in the UK. After holding settled status for one year, they can apply to ‘naturalise’ as a British citizen. Contrary to popular imaginings, especially media-centric narratives, deportation is not straightforward. It involves a complex range of governmental and non-governmental institutions, communities and families extending across national borders. Deportation also fuels a burgeoning industry, both legal and illegal, and an intricate set of economic and moral relations. Deportation evokes a series of antitheses. The deportee is simultaneously regarded as a responsible adult and a child unable to understand their interests (Khosravi, 2009). In the context of deportation, ‘voluntary’ further exposes these contradictions, because return is rarely a genuine choice. Deportation cannot be reduced to a singular event because like a wave, it begins long before and reverberates long after an individual’s removal from the UK. Yet notice of deportation is abrupt. Firms like Capita send brusque text messages to inform ‘overstayers’ of legal consequences (Tickle, 2015). Letters outlining deportation arrangements are sudden and alarming. Historically, deportation has worked as a mechanism to divide ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’ (Walters, 2010). Like other forms of expulsion or transfer of populations, it is intrinsically linked to boundaries of belonging and definitions of citizenship (Anderson et al., 2011). Despite extensive use of categories like ‘Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration’, virtually all deportation is forcible. The state has the power to deport, re-charting the direction of movement away from the UK from ‘receiving’ to ‘sending’ countries. Definitions of ‘origin’ are problematic; they rest on assumptions about assimilation and ‘re-integration’ which fail to adequately

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consider who moves, and the impact on the inverted relationship between ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’. Migration remains a fantasy for many Nigerians upended by the cold wave of deportation. Deportees experience a form of double abandonment: recipient communities in Nigeria are highly likely to stigmatise them as ‘failures’, rather than ascribe their deportation to British policies. The treatment which Nigerians are subjected to during the process exacerbates their vulnerabilities, often harming their future psychosocial development and wellbeing. Detention tends to be sudden and unpredictable (Hasselberg, 2013). Detention centres are bleak sites, characterised by carceral conditions. Smartphones and internet access are not permitted. There is no freedom of movement. A deportee from Edo State in detention in London said, ‘it doesn’t matter how supposedly nice the facility is… the fact that I have lost freedom of movement makes me a prisoner’. Support for detainees is haphazard due to lack of capacity and bureaucratic inertia. Allegations of the Nigerian High Commission’s periodic complicity with British authorities, facilitating the corrupt interests of individual bureaucrats, heighten insecurity. This is a real catch-22 for migrants. The High Commission is conventionally conceived as a symbol of ‘home’. Migrants believe it should act as a ‘shield’ against what many view as the ‘criminalisation’ of movement. If remaining at ‘home’ was no longer tenable because of poverty, violence and corruption, the attempt to move—to find a better life—is understood as something more than an individual wish. Migrants are closely connected with families in need who may have economised and saved funds to send to the UK. This emotional and financial debt constitutes a continual albatross. The unstated bargain is they will help support their families and communities once settled. When the Nigerian High Commission ‘colludes’ with the Home Office on returns, it is viewed as a callous betrayal; a violation leading to psychological and moral conflict. Living without regularised status handicaps the reshaping of home, but migrants still find spaces for new, vital attachments. For those with no memory of Nigeria as home, deportation is the ultimate shock. Chukwuwike is unable to fully describe the distress he experienced when he received a Home Office message detailing arrangements for his removal and ban on re-entry. His life was anchored in London. His father had been murdered as part of a political conflict when he returned to Nigeria. He had no family or friends there. Chukwuwike’s health has always been fragile. Detention and the violence he endured and experienced shattered his

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mental health. He was taken from Harmondsworth Removal Centre to the airport. It felt dystopian. He was loaded onto the plane ‘like cargo, as though I wasn’t human’. In Lagos he was ‘dumped onto the tarmac like freight’. Chukwuwike’s case is not unusual. After long periods in detention, deportation is the final expulsion. The Nigerian High Commission failed to back him on health grounds, despite his suffering from clinical depression and heart problems. It failed to detail the challenges of survival for someone without family ties. Like other deportees, he understood this as abandonment, underscoring his abject social status. Deportation is a ‘disrecognition’ of ‘imagined citizenship’ and its integral connections with ‘home’. Arrival back in Nigeria cannot be neatly correlated with ‘return’. Fear, disorientation, estrangement and stigmatisation accompany transfer. Deportees have scant funds and sources for protection. Hypervisible in a home that is ‘unhomely’, they are often severed from the primal relationships that signify home. Tito was deported two years ago. ‘I was in England since I was a kid’, he says. He was arrested for possession of Class A drugs and intent to sell. He misses playing and interacting with his children. He cannot navigate life in Lagos nor find a job. He was a personal trainer in London. He says, ‘everyone knows I’m foreign. I’m British and when you’re British, they’re all just out to scam you’. He appealed his case several times, but the Home Office finally won. His miniscule room is hot. He cannot open the windows because of the mosquitoes. He is angry: ‘I can’t say this is home… I don’t feel Nigerian. My heritage is Nigerian, but I don’t know no one in Nigeria. I don’t know nothing. I have to start life again’. Tito views his new, precarious existence as bare ‘survival’. Our analysis of post-deportation consequences highlights impoverishment, displacement and loss of identity, cultural estrangement, psychological stress, shame, renegotiations of family and community relations, stigmatisation, criminality and (re)-imprisonment (Khosravi, 2009; Peutz & De Genova, 2010; Schuster & Majidi, 2013). Combined with return to similar or worse conditions at ‘home’, this often creates conditions ripe for attempted return (Galvin, 2015; Hiemstra, 2012; Khosravi, 2017; Schuster & Majidi, 2013). As Brathwaite (1999) notes, the tide moves in and out, but not in a linear direction. Women and girls face additional risks because of assumptions about prostitution and sex work. Margaret Ngozi Ukegbu, zonal director for the

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National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, says returnees are frequently labelled as ‘wayward girls’. Stigmatisation can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, fuelling hypersexual, destructive behaviours. Families are ashamed of returnees; without support, they may re-enter a vicious circle of trafficking. Support for returnees is inconsistent and inadequate. The International Organisation for Migration and a range of non-governmental organisations try to re-settle deportees, but financial and psychosocial needs can be overwhelming. Skills acquisition may be a black hole given insufficient training and attention to market needs. Nigeria generally lacks capacities to absorb returnees. A predatory political economy and endemic corruption exacerbate this. Although political discourses refer to ‘national frameworks for reintegration and return’, little is available, and deportees find themselves in perilous circumstances whereby re-making ‘home’ no longer seems viable. As Jennifer puts it, ‘This is an impossible place, but what do you do when you can’t return and you can’t leave?’

Conclusion: Home Is Like Water In 1983, Benedict Anderson framed the nation as an ‘imagined community’ that takes shape in many different sites and settings. This diversity is always overshadowed by the persistent articulation of citizenship as a national question. In British immigration policy, citizenship constitutes the hallowed ground of sovereignty. It is the prime designation of ‘home’. For Nigerian migrants, leaving the soil of birth is contradictory. Departure is recurrently not a choice, but an act of desperation repeatedly remembered as a wound. Departure also cannot be separated from the barbaric history of the slave trade and colonialism, and the wildly unstable conditions generated by this. Citizenship is the universal mark of belonging somewhere—but also the mask we put on to be legally and politically visible (Arendt, 1951). What happens when someone falls through the fissures of nation states? How do they go about re-constituting belonging? The migration pathway is complicated. Ostensible holiday visits or brief study periods may morph into years. Settlement—the colonial approach for occupation and taking control of a new ‘home’—is not straightforward. At its heart is the dichotomy between juridical/legal personhood and imagined realities. Misunderstandings conflate the birth of a child with citizenship and the right to designate a place as home. Inflated costs of legal paths to

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citizenship deter migrants from applying for all their children. Rupture occurs through a knock on the door or sharply worded Home Office communication. The weight of the perceived need to integrate is difficult to sustain. Some respond with hyperintegration. Awareness of irregular status forces migrants to assume dramatic personas: becoming actors in a world they want to make home. They try to swim in different waters, but the undertow of punitive migration policies and racism are strong. Sourcing the knowledge necessary to make the performance convincing is a struggle. Parents, traditional sources of routes to socialisation, cannot act as guides. Migrants regularly ask themselves what the losses entailed by reconstructing a ‘habitus’ mean. Can they find the authentic intersubjectivities they believe are coeval with home? Can they ‘bridge’ continents and the sea as a body of water between relationships? Time and again, water is used as a symbol in Nigerian narratives on making home away. Home is not static; it is a fluid and mobile condition. Some speak of rivers that flow in different directions. Others see it as directed towards specific visions of new, better places: homes embodying the fateful, powerful direction of the flow of their lives. Rain and the cold, damp landscapes of Britain are a frequent reference point, contrasting with the warmth of past homes. Certainties around that past begin to dissolve in the liquidity of wet British environments. ‘They are uncertain whether the past is really the past’ (Said, 1978). Rain may equally be redolent of the fertility and richness of new lives: more children, wider studies, new pathways. Yet there is also drought: atrophy of previously fundamental fragments of the self. ‘We are water’, as Titi observes. Her mother Dolapo notes, ‘nobody can live without water. Water connects. The water of Ijebu-Ode can be found in Lagos, London Bridge and Purfleet too’. Water signifies fluidity, mobility, presence and absence. It is non-negotiable for life. It can be a potent source of abundance or a mechanism of devastation. It can enfold or it can divide. Echoing Fela Kuti, Dolapo says, ‘Ko s’ohun to’le se k’o ma lo’mi o, nothing without water. Water has no enemy’. Home is the water of life. Acknowledgements  We would like to thank all the participants involved in this research for their courage and generosity in sharing their stories. We would also like to thank ’Gbenga Adeoba for his inspiration and kindness and Titi’s mother, Dolapo, for her patience in guiding us through the intricacies of Ifa.

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References Adeoba, G. (2021). Seafarers. [online]. Retrieved January 11, 2022, from https:// www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/155570/seafarers Anderson, B., Gibney, M. J., & Paoletti, E. (2011). Citizenship deportation and boundaries of belonging. Citizenship Studies, 15 [online]. Retrieved January 11, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2011.583787 Arendt, H. (1951). The origins of totalitarianism. Penguin. Balibar, E. (2004). We, The people of Europe? Princeton University Press. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge. Brathwaite, E. K. (1999). Conversations with Nathaniel Mackey. We Press. Brathwaite, E. K., & Phillips, A. (1993). The people who came. Longman Caribbean. Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21. Channel 4 News. (2015). Yarl’s Wood detention centre becomes a national concern [online]. Retrieved January 11, 2022, from https://www.channel4.com/ news/yarl-­s-­wood-­detention-­centre-­becomes-­a-­national-­concern Connor, P., & Passel, J. S. (2019). Europe’s unauthorized immigrant population peaks in 2016, then levels off. Pew Research Center, November. De Genova, N. (2002). Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 419–447. Diminescu, D. (2008). The connected migrant: An epistemological manifesto. Social Science Information, 47(4), 565–579. Galvin, T. (2015). ‘We deport them but they keep coming back’: The normalcy of deportation in the daily life of ‘undocumented’ Zimbabwean migrant workers in Botswana. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(4), 617–634. Gidwani, V., & Sivaramakrishnan, K. (2003). Circular migration and the spaces of cultural assertion. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93(1), 186–213. Gilroy, P. (1987). There ain’t no Black in the Union Jack: The cultural politics of race and nation. Hutchinson. Gilroy, P. (1995). The Black Atlantic. Harvard University Press. Hasselberg, I. (2013). Shahram Khosravi, “Illegal” traveller: An auto-ethnography of borders. Etnográfica, 17(1), 207–209. Hiemstra, N. (2012). Geopolitical reverberations of US migrant detention and deportation: The view from Ecuador. Geopolitics, 17(2), 293–311. Iosifides, T. (2003). Qualitative migration research: Some new reflections six years later. The Qualitative Report, 8(3), 435–446. Jackson-Obot, I. (2020). What makes Nigerians in the diaspora so successful? Financial Times, October 29. Khosravi, S. (2009). Sweden: Detention and deportation of asylum seekers. Race and Class, 50(4), 38–56.

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Khosravi, S. (2017). After deportation: Ethnographic perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan. Migration Observatory. (2020). Migrants in the UK: An overview. [online]. Retrieved January 11, 2022, from https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/ resources/briefings/migrants-­in-­the-­uk-­an-­overview/ Moya, J., & McKeown, A. (2011). World migration in the long twentieth century. American Historical Association. Moya, P. M. L. (2000). Postmodernism, “Realism”, and the politics of identity. Cherríe Moraga and Chicana feminism. In P. M. L. Moya & M. R. Hames-­ García (Eds.), Reclaiming identity: Realist theory and the predicament of postmodernism (pp. 67–101). University of California Press. Nixon, R. (2013). Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Harvard University Press. Parsons, T. (1959). The social system. Free Press. Peters, K., & Steinberg, P. (2019). The ocean in excess: Towards a more-than-wet ontology. Dialogues in Human Geography, 9(3), 293–307. Peutz, N., & De Genova, N. (2010). The deportation regime. Duke University Press. Proust, M., Scott-Moncrieff, C., Kilmartin, T., & Enright, D. (2003 [1913]). Swann’s way. Modern Library. Read, J. (2020). Priti Patel considered wave machines to stop migrants crossing the English Channel. The New European, October 1. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Routledge. Schuster, L., & Majidi, N. (2013). What happens post-deportation? The experience of deported Afghans. Migration Studies, 1(2), 221–240. Shashore, O. (2021). A platter of gold: Making Nigeria (1906–1960) (2nd ed.). Quramo Publishing. Steinberg, P., & Peters, K. (2015). Wet ontologies, Fluid spaces: Giving depth to volume through oceanic thinking. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(2), 247–264. Tickle, L. (2015). No place to go: The undocumented children facing deportation in the UK. The Guardian, September 25. Walby, S. (2007). Complexity theory, Systems theory, and multiple intersecting social inequalities. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 37(4), 449–470. Walters, W. (2010). Deportation, expulsion, and the international police of aliens. In N.  De Genova & N.  Peutz (Eds.), The deportation regime. NC; Duke University Press. Yalaz, E., & Zapata-Barrero, R. (2017). Mapping the qualitative migration research in Europe: An exploratory analysis. GRITIM Working Paper Series, 32 (Summer). [online]. Retrieved January 11, 2022, from https://www.upf.edu/ web/gritim/wp-­32

Index1

A Accommodation landlord, 39, 73 rent, 39, 73 Activism, 2, 75 Aesthetics, 79, 81, 87, 87n9, 88, 93, 96, 97, 114, 116 Affect emotion, 179 happiness, 76, 118, 136 resonance of home, 179 See also Depression; Eco globalism/ eco globalist affect, eco criticism, ecopoetics; Grief; Loneliness Agamben, G., 17, 148 Agency, 132, 154, 175 Ahl-il-Kitab, 15 Aleppo, 23, 161–165

Alienation, 44, 65, 93, 113 Ambivalence, 32, 37, 40–43, 131 A.M. Qattan Foundation, 85n5, 86, 91 Anatolia, 15 Animals, 155 Anonymity, 60, 173 Antonsich, M., 33, 37, 38, 43, 44, 124 place belonging, 33, 43 politics of belonging, 33, 37 See also Belonging Arabic, 19, 24, 26, 62, 63, 63n6, 87, 126, 150, 164 dialects, 126 See also Language Arab Spring, 127 Architecture, 162, 172, 179 See also Built environment

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Shamma et al. (eds.), Migration, Culture and Identity, Politics of Citizenship and Migration, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12085-5

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INDEX

Archive archival art making, 79, 94, 96, 97 ‘archival turn,’ 81 participatory, 77 pseudo-archival, 80 Armenia, 14, 17, 21, 22 Arrival, 3, 10, 12, 13, 38n5, 41, 68, 119, 131–134, 140, 147, 148, 179, 187 See also Migration; Reception Art collection, 80 contemporary visual art, 7, 79, 81–85, 96, 97 drawing, 4, 6, 8, 9, 33, 34, 76, 86, 89, 96, 106, 112, 124, 143, 171 history, 83, 88n11, 89–92, 94 murals, 164 painting, 89–93, 96, 105, 106, 152 refugee art, 106 Artists Abu Arafeh, Noor, 89 Brisly, Diala, 8, 102–120 Gannam, Hamody, 89 Khalaf, Bashar, 90, 91, 96 Mansour, Sliman, 90–93 Saleh, Farah, 89 Tamari, Vera, 84 Weiwei, Ai, 116, 118 Asylum laws, 17 seeker, 17, 34n3, 67, 69, 73, 127, 132 Al Azraq refugee camp, 147 Atheism, 59, 67, 74 See also Secularism Attachments, 4, 37, 62–66, 68, 70, 92, 96, 112, 120, 123, 186 emotional, 37, 62, 65, 113, 178

B Balkans, 15, 16 Bangladesh, 59 Beckett, S., 101 Becoming, 113 Bedouin, 26 Belonging limitations on, 33 negotiated, 123–143 politics, 7, 33, 37, 38, 44–48, 58, 68 Benjamin, Walter, 81 Bereavement, 13, 103, 105, 112, 170 Berry, Wendell, 147, 149, 150, 152 Birthplace, 13, 109n4, 170, 172, 178, 179, 188 Black, see Race Black Lives Matter, 177 Boccagni, Paolo, 2, 36, 111, 119, 120, 124, 128, 129, 135, 138, 143, 151, 166 Bohemia, 15 Border control, 182 crossing, 86 Bread Jordanian, 154 Syrian, 154 Brexit, 7, 60, 72 British culture British Values, 68 Greggs, 140 British history empire, 177 See also Colonialism; Slavery Buell, Laurence, 150–153, 157–159, 157n2 Built environment, 166 Bulgaria, 15, 16 Bullying, 142 Bureaucracy, 171, 182

 INDEX 

C Canada, 3, 8, 125–128, 126n2, 128n3, 131–137, 139–143, 142n4, 150 See also London, Canada Capitalism, 174 Caravan, 8, 147–150, 152, 153, 155, 156, 159, 161–164, 166 Care care-avoidance, 37 care-taking, 7, 155 ethics of, 33, 34, 44, 152 financial assistance, 129 four phases of, 41 relations of, 7, 32–34, 37, 47 See also Reciprocity Cartography, 171 Checchia, Viviana, 90 Chechnya, 15 Children childhood, 105, 108, 129, 178, 179 play, 18, 133, 137, 138, 187 See also Family Christianity, 13, 15, 16, 22, 25, 27, 74, 173 Circassians, 14–16, 25 Citizenship global, 102 imagined, 172, 183, 187 legal paths to, 188 See also Immigration, surcharge Civil society, 14 Climate crisis, 164 Collage, 102, 115 as repair/rebuilding, 115 See also Collection Collection/collecting, 1–10, 60, 80–83, 83n2, 89, 97, 109, 112, 114–116, 118, 119 as a method of home making, 80, 93, 101–120 See also Collage Colombia, 59

195

Colonialism, 82, 83, 150, 171, 174, 175, 177, 188 the sea and, 66, 189 Comfort, 6, 37, 118, 137, 161, 164, 181 Communication Facebook, 178 Instagram, 178, 181 letters, 23, 69, 185 Skype, 85, 88 smartphones, 186 text message, 185 of warnings, 39 Zoom, 126 See also Language Community, 13–16, 28, 32, 36, 38, 45–47, 57, 57n3, 59, 60, 75, 77, 80n1, 83, 110, 127, 128, 132, 134, 137, 175, 182, 185–188 See also Belonging Community outreach, 57, 57n3 Compassion, 118, 171 Conscription, 15 forced, 35 Continuity, 5, 8, 88, 97, 107, 109, 115 Cosmopolitanism, 13, 15 Counter-narratives, 58, 173 Covid-19 lockdown, 142 pandemic, 142n4 Creative/creativity, 79, 81, 82, 88, 92, 94–98, 102, 110, 116, 125, 135, 143, 176, 180 Crime, 184 Crimean War, 14 Curation, 3, 80, 166 D Daily life dentist, 141 domestic practices, 33 See also Independence

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INDEX

Damascus neighbourhoods; Arnoos, 27; Mazra, 25, 27; Muhajireen, 23, 25–27; Qassa’ Quarter, 11, 19, 21, 25, 27; Salhiyyeh, 21, 23, 24, 27; Sha’laan Quarter, 19, 23, 26; Shuhada, 19, 23, 27 notable families, 23 Dawhet al Adab School, 22, 23 Death funeral, 180 grave, 136, 138, 139, 178 Democracy, 75, 177 Deportation detention, 35, 39, 182–184, 187 See also Return Depression, 69, 187 Desert, 9, 22, 26, 159, 162, 163 Detention centres Harmondsworth Removal Centre, 187 healthcare in, 182, 183, 186, 187 sexual abuse in, 182 suicide in, 182 Yarl’s Wood, 174 Development, 43, 63, 66, 85, 90, 175, 183, 186 Digital library, 57 Dignity, 17, 42, 67, 118 Dimock, Wai Chee, 151, 157n2 Disability, 32n1, 60 Discrimination, 32, 65, 69, 75, 182 See also Prejudice; Stigma Displacement forced, 8, 17, 57 protracted, 32, 36, 48, 79 Dispossession, 79, 82, 83, 90, 93, 96, 97 Diversity, 4, 9, 32, 33, 66, 67, 72, 74, 75, 80, 106, 116, 141, 188 cultural, 141

Division, 63, 82, 83, 85, 86n7, 93, 172, 173 spatial, 83 Domestic violence, 64, 183, 184 Dreams, 48, 74, 103, 110, 116, 119, 183 Druze, 25, 27 Dwelling, 7, 34, 36, 37, 118, 119, 155, 170 E Earth, 6, 110, 147–167 Eco globalism/eco globalist affect, eco criticism, ecopoetics, 150, 151, 155–159 Whole earth thinking, 150, 151 Ecology, 152, 156, 164 Education exams, 67 Higher Education, 67 schools, 11, 12, 18, 19, 21–24, 26, 28, 61, 65, 105, 129, 133, 138, 163, 176, 178, 179, 182 university, 73, 176, 184 See also Language Egypt, 14, 127, 128, 135 Eid, 138 Emergency, 12, 128, 154, 164 Emigration, 166, 170 Enugu State, Nigeria, 180 Environment, 2, 5–9, 35, 36, 46, 47, 60, 64, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 106, 110, 111, 118, 119, 138, 148, 152, 158, 166, 171, 180, 182, 189 Estrangement, 179, 187 E.T., 103 Ethics, 33, 34, 44, 57, 61, 152 Europe, 13, 60, 111n5, 127, 131, 135, 184 Exclusion, 32, 35, 44, 46, 47, 75, 102, 111, 124, 133, 135, 172

 INDEX 

Exhibitions Documenta13, 87 Eyewitness, 84 100 Shaheed-100 Lives, 84 Exile, 6, 12–14, 16, 28, 62, 63, 65, 82, 83, 101, 102, 105, 107, 112–116, 118, 119 Expat, 176 Experience, 1–9, 18, 32–37, 39, 42, 44–48, 56n2, 57–61, 57n3, 63–65, 68, 70, 72, 74–77, 80–82, 86, 89, 93, 96, 97, 107, 112, 113, 116, 119, 120, 123–143, 152, 155, 157, 162, 166, 170–177, 181, 182, 186 F Fabric Ankara textiles, 174 blanket, 68, 107, 110 cloth, 14, 22, 26, 39, 68, 72, 89n12, 107, 108, 133, 138 curtains, 90, 107, 110, 113, 165, 166 embroidery, 23, 90 Familiarity, 12, 37, 45, 137 See also Home, feeling at Family aunts, 20, 21, 23, 179 bonds, 135 divorce, 13, 184 fatherhood, 20, 27, 45, 61, 62, 72, 89, 103, 131, 136, 138, 142, 178, 179, 189 ‘London mother,’ 179 loss, 126, 128, 136, 137 motherhood, 20, 21, 65, 72, 73, 126, 130, 136, 137, 139–142, 159, 163, 165, 175, 178–180, 183, 184, 189

197

parents, 20, 27, 62, 72, 89, 103, 131, 136, 138, 142, 178, 179, 189 reunification, 135 separation, 70, 135, 136, 182 support networks (see Children; Domestic violence; Estrangement; Home making, barriers to) Fear, 103, 128, 129, 131, 133, 176, 178, 182, 187 See also Affect Fiction, 112, 171 Financial assistance, 129 Food Arabic coffee, 150 cheeseburgers, 176 chin chin, 174 cooking, 39, 153 cuisine, 162, 176, 184 drink, 22, 165, 166 green plums, 26 Nigerian ingredients, 180, 181 Foreign, 21, 102, 175, 176, 178, 187 Fountain, 25, 162, 163 See also Water France, 13, 66, 102, 103, 105–107, 118 Calais, 74 Freedom of belief, 141 of expression, 75, 141 of movement, 13, 132, 186 French mandate, 27 Friendship, 4, 39, 45, 108, 109, 138, 139, 142, 179 Furniture, 113, 118 Future, 9, 42, 43, 48, 62, 67, 87, 88, 93, 93n16, 94, 97, 111, 112, 131, 139, 142, 153, 158, 163, 180, 184, 186

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INDEX

G Gardens/gardening compound, 180 flowers, 9 garden-talk, 159 greenery, 162 planting, 9, 148 plants, 154, 164 roots, 9 seeds, 8, 80, 110, 162 trees, 9, 154 See also Food/cuisine Gaza, 83, 85–88, 89n12 Gender, 32, 32n1, 33, 33n2, 57, 60, 129, 174 experiences, 124 See also Sudanese refugee men Generosity, 17 Geography, 3, 4, 83, 85, 87, 97, 177–180 Global, 2, 34, 45, 57, 102, 113, 157, 158, 174, 177 Global South, 7, 58, 59, 73, 75 Government-Assisted Refugee (GAR) settlement scheme, 125, 134, 135 Greater Syria, 13–16, 28, 155 Bilad al-Sham, 6, 13, 16, 21, 27, 28 Grief, 106, 136 Guest-host relations, 34 Guilt, 103 H Haifa, 80n1, 85, 86, 88, 89, 92 Wadi Nisnas, 89 Health care GP surgery, 133 hospital, 20, 128, 182 medicine, 68 sickness, 69, 72, 73, 140, 142, 179, 187 surgery, 69, 142

X-ray, 108–110, 112 See also Covid-19 Heaven, 128, 148, 155, 159 Hebrew, 89 Heterotopia, 148 History living, 57, 110 official, 81, 89, 97 personal, 89, 109 postcolonial, 81 Home ambiguity of, 123, 135, 143, 174 ambivalence to, 131 care in creation of, 33 complexity of, 63, 123, 135, 143 conceptions of, 2, 9, 13, 132, 135, 184 contradictions of, 63, 123, 143 conventional framing as static, 132 denial of, 86 everyday experiences of, 33 feeling at, 37, 43–47, 138 feminist critiques of, 46 fluidity, 124 hybridity, 4, 81, 119 limitations on, 33 loss, 2, 7, 9, 62, 63, 80, 82, 128, 135–143 negotiation of, 2, 82, 114 ownership, 102 policy framings of, 143 porosity of, 166 as process, 6, 58, 64, 76, 81 relational, 36, 43, 58, 66, 74, 166 remaking, 2–5, 7, 37, 70, 71, 73, 75, 81, 82, 88, 93, 96, 119, 123–143, 188 as sanctuary, 76, 180 sedentary notions of, 125, 128, 143 social understandings of, 12, 27, 64, 81, 152 temporal, 67, 76, 88

 INDEX 

temporary, 70, 74, 127, 130, 131 See also Home making Home improvement – DIY, 17, 33, 64, 94, 108, 148, 178, 184 Homing, 111, 124, 125, 127, 128, 132, 135, 143 labour of, 135, 143 See also Boccagni, Paolo Homeland, 7, 61–64, 79, 81, 83, 86–88, 87n8, 92, 95–97, 124, 162, 164 imagined, 124 Home making barriers to, 86, 125 conditions of, 72 creativity in, 98 cultural aspects of, 8, 80 everyday experiences of, 8 as liquid, 170 material aspects of, 8, 80 personal aspects of, 8, 80 struggle within, 8 See also Nesting Home Office, 68–70, 72, 73, 172, 181, 183–187, 189 Hope, 4, 44, 67, 69, 70, 74, 93, 103, 105, 106, 119, 162–165, 171, 172, 181 Hopelessness, 171 Hospitality, 5, 6, 15–18, 33, 34, 43 family honour, 17 humanitarianism, 17 See also Generosity Host states, 125–127, 131, 143 Hostile environment ‘Go Home’ vans, 182 ‘illegal migrants’ discourse, 182 See also Patel, Priti Hosting as act of care, 33–34 household-level, 6, 7, 47 humanitarianism and, 32

199

refugee-refugee, 5, 6, 31–48 See also Hospitality Host states, 125, 126, 127, 131, 143 Housing choice, 132, 154, 175 crisis, 70 See also Living conditions; Precarity Human rights, 63n6, 66, 72, 73, 75 Hungary, 15 Hyperintegration, 189 Hypomnêmata, 114, 118 I Identity, 7, 9, 16, 27, 37, 38, 43, 45, 46, 48, 56–77, 80–83, 85, 87n10, 88, 90, 94, 102, 103, 110, 113, 114, 116, 118, 124, 126, 176, 177, 179, 187 shared, 44, 46 Ifa beliefs, 178 Imagination, 4, 89, 97, 115, 118, 119, 147, 149, 152, 155, 157, 157n2, 158n3, 159 imagined spatiality, 177 See also Citizenship, imagined Immigration ‘good immigrant’ discourse, 73, 74 surcharge, 183 Immigration status naturalised British citizen, 185 permanent residence permit, 67 precarity, 44, 47 settled status, 185 undocumented, 76 Inclusion, 13, 46, 88, 102, 124, 137 Independence, 13, 41 Inhabitation, 33, 47 Insider/outsider, 185 Institutions, 13, 62, 80, 84, 89, 163, 174, 185

200 

INDEX

Integration, 14, 16, 36, 125, 127, 131, 180 Intergenerational, 5, 8, 80, 83, 92–96, 170, 172 Interior (inside, domestic space), 20–22, 84n3, 108, 113, 118, 149, 156, 166, 178 International, 3, 17, 36, 59n4, 63, 86, 87n9, 90, 92n14, 94, 113 Internet connection, 131 See also Communication Intifada, 84 Iran, 59, 70 Iraq, 22, 126–129 ISIS, 60, 72, 113 Islam Islamic education/Madrasah, 61, 62, 63n6 Prophet Muhammed, 141 Quranic verse, 141 Shia, 59 Sunni, 59 Tatars, 14, 15 Israel, 12, 80n1, 83, 86, 86n7, 88, 89 See also Haifa J Jaffa, 91 Jerusalem, 22, 23, 27, 83, 85, 85n6, 86, 90, 92 Jerusalem Show, 85 Jewish National Fund, 83 Jordan Amman, 31–48 Aqaba, 43 refugees in, 35, 36, 134, 149 Sudanese community in, 45 Journeys, 8, 61, 103, 111, 112, 115, 123–143, 170 Justice system, 171

K Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre (KSCC), 84 Kurdish community, 28, 137 Kutapalong, 154 Kuti, Fela, 189 Kuwait, 59, 72, 86 L Lagos, 178, 179, 183, 187, 189 Land, 14, 15, 84, 86n7, 95, 110, 113, 129, 136, 141, 148–155, 162, 163, 166, 170 Landland, 15 Landscape, 48, 61, 62, 64, 76, 150–152, 159, 162, 179, 189 Language accent, 178 Arabic, 63, 63n6, 126, 164 barrier, 139, 140 emotion and, 131, 166 English, 13, 70, 126, 140, 178 official-language, 134 Pidjin, 178 tuition, 63, 80, 82, 102, 105, 129 Yoruba (see also Translation) Latin America, 59, 64 Lebanon, 6, 14, 22, 28, 64, 81, 84, 103, 105, 106, 108, 111, 112, 126–135, 141 Beirut, 103, 108 Leisure, 43 play (see also Social spaces) Levant, 16, 28 LGBTQI, 182 Libya, 135, 175 Liminality, 93, 97 limbo, 148, 154, 184

 INDEX 

Literature American environmental writing, 150 literary criticism, 155 pastoral, 153, 159 (see also Eco globalism/eco globalist affect, eco criticism; World Literature) reading refugee testimony as, 151 Living conditions, 71, 125, 127–129, 131, 143 Living Refugee Archive (LRA), 7, 56, 57, 59, 60, 77 London Canada, 8, 125–127, 126n2, 137, 141 Londoner, 184 Peckham, 181 UK-Hackney, 180, 183 Loneliness, 44, 108, 118, 135, 137, 139 Loss cultural, 135, 136 physical, 136 of respect, 136 M Marriage, 13, 90 Massey, Doreen, 124, 152 Material dirt, 162 homemaking, 79–82, 88, 89, 93, 110–112, 157 water, 8, 9, 111, 171, 180, 182 (see also Belonging; Fabric) Mbembe, A., 76 Media, 74, 89 Mediterranean, 175 See also Sea Memory, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 17, 18, 44, 56, 58, 60, 61, 63–66, 76, 77, 82, 83, 90, 96, 97, 102, 103,

201

105–108, 110, 112–116, 118, 119, 124, 128, 129, 131, 135, 137, 138, 148, 150, 172, 178, 183, 186 MENA, 95 Mental health, 73, 179, 187 Metaphor oceanic, 170 water as, 5, 9, 170 Methodology cognitive interviewing, 18 experience-centred narratology, 58 interviews, 59, 60, 153 oral history, 56, 58, 60, 61, 76, 153 quantitative methods, 173 questions, 18, 102, 153 semi-structured interviews, 60 storytelling, 174 (see also Anonymity; Community outreach; Ethics; Oral history; Translation) Micro-aggressions, 176 See also Racism Migration circular, 17 managed migration approaches, 170 pathway, 9, 169–189 policy, 155, 171 unwanted, 182 (see also Reception; Hostile environment) Millet system, 13, 16 Mobility domestic, 94 See also Transport Morocco history, 62, 63, 66 Morton, Timothy, 152 Motherhood, 20, 21, 65, 72, 73, 126, 130, 137, 139, 159, 163, 165, 175, 178–180, 183, 184, 189 See also Family Multidimensionality, 80, 97

202 

INDEX

Museum, 80, 81, 84, 110, 113 Music, 87, 174, 181 Afrobeat, 181 Mythology, 171 N Nakba, 27, 28, 83, 84 Nation culture, 80, 82 national identity, 77, 80, 81 nation-state, 9, 17, 27, 28, 116, 159, 171, 177, 188 Nature, 12, 27, 48, 64, 81, 149, 152 Negotiation, 2, 4, 9, 82, 94, 102, 114, 124, 156 Neighbourhood, 11, 27, 89, 133, 182 Neighbours, 17, 27, 65, 110, 133, 138, 139, 141, 142, 148 Nesting, 149–151, 155, 161, 164, 167 See also Home making NGOs, 39, 103, 140 Nigeria corruption, 188 history, 175 Nigerian High Commission, 186, 187 Nigerian identities Edo, 173 Hausa, 173 Igbo, 173 Yoruba, 173 Non-human, 152 North America, 13, 127 Nostalgia, 4, 92, 93, 93n16, 114, 129, 136 O Occupation, military, 79 Off Qalandiya Forum, 93 Olive trees, 92, 106

One Refugee Approach, 35n4 Oral history, 56, 58–61, 59n4, 76, 89, 153, 166 Oslo Accords, 83 Otherness/othering/the other, 13, 15, 24, 26, 32, 39, 42, 70, 72, 74, 87n10, 109, 113, 115, 126, 131, 138, 143, 163 Ottoman Commission for the General Administration of Immigration, 15 Ottoman Empire taxation, 15 Ottoman Sublime Porte, 14 Refugee Code, 14 P Palestine Arab Revolt, 19 British Mandate, 12 exile, 6, 12, 83, 112–115 Nablus, 22, 27 nationalism, 84 Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), 86 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 84 Palestinian diaspora, 83, 86, 95 identity, 27, 80, 82, 83, 87n10, 90 symbolism, 6 Passport, 35, 46, 169, 172, 182, 184 Patel, Priti, 182 Persecution, 35, 57, 61, 66, 129, 130 Place, 2, 6, 8, 9, 11–15, 22, 23, 26, 27, 31, 32, 34, 36–38, 43–46, 48, 57, 60–62, 64–71, 73–76, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88, 90, 95, 97, 101–103, 106, 108–112, 116, 118, 119, 123–125, 132, 137, 139, 141, 143, 147–150, 153, 155, 156,

 INDEX 

161, 164, 166, 169, 170, 176, 178, 180–184, 188, 189 Plumwood, Val, 152 Poetry, 6, 114, 151, 152, 156, 171 Poets Adrienne Rich, 156, 159 Gbenga Adeoba, 169, 175 Poland, 15 Policy integration, 125, 131 state refugee, 123–143 See also Hostile environment Politics, 3, 4, 7, 33, 37, 38, 44–48, 58, 63, 66, 73, 86, 88, 94–96, 150 political reform, 127 Postcolonial, 81, 151, 175, 177 Posthuman, 149, 158, 166 Power, 12, 17, 27, 46, 56, 60, 68, 74, 76, 77, 81, 105, 108, 116, 118, 119, 155, 171, 174, 181, 185 relations of, 58, 59 Precarity, 44, 47 See also Living conditions Prejudice, 57, 67, 71 Pride, 42, 62, 66, 91, 161 See also Care, care-avoidance Prison, 62, 183, 184 See also Detention centres Privately Sponsored Refugee (PSR) resettlement scheme, 125, 134 Private sector, 182 Capita, 185 outsourcing, 183 Serco, 183 Protection, 17, 34, 36, 47, 65, 103, 109, 124, 125, 127, 131–134, 143, 173, 176, 187 Q Qalandiya (village), 86 checkpoint, 86

203

Qalandiya International (QI), 82, 85–88 See also Off Qalandiya Forum Quran, 62, 161 See also Religion R Raad, Walid, 81 Race, 32, 33n2, 35, 45, 56n2, 57, 58, 60–63, 68–70, 74, 75, 116, 174–176 Racism, 35, 56n2, 116, 128, 129, 133, 139, 176, 177, 189 macroaggressions (see also Micro-aggressions) Ramadan, 25, 131, 138 Ramallah, 80, 80n1, 82–86, 85n5, 88, 88n11, 90–93 Reception, 2, 25, 70, 127, 148 See also Integration; Migration Reciprocity, 34 obligations, 34 Refugee crisis/crises, 3, 60, 70, 163 identity, 45, 71 imagination, 124, 155 resettled, 3, 8, 125, 131–135, 143 Refugee camp children in, 103, 105 Palestinian, 12, 86, 111 See also Al Azraq refugee camp; Dadaab; Kutapalong; NGOs; Yarmouk; Zaatari Relationships, 6, 7, 33, 34, 36, 38–40, 42n6, 43–45, 47, 48, 80, 82, 84, 94, 95, 107, 110, 111, 123, 124, 128, 135, 136, 138, 142, 143, 152, 158n3, 166, 177, 179, 180, 186, 187, 189 Kinship, 4, 139, 178 See also Care; Family; Friendship

204 

INDEX

Religion, 62, 63 religious education, 162 See also Atheism; Christianity; Islam; Judasim; Quran; Secularism Relocation, 8, 125 Rerouting Initiative CIC, 172 Resettlement, 2, 3, 5, 8, 44, 70, 81, 124, 125, 127, 130–136, 142, 143, 158 Resettlement schemes, see Government-Assisted Refugee (GAR) settlement scheme; Privately Sponsored Refugee (PSR); Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) Residency rights, 127 Resilience, 67, 103, 116, 155, 176 Resistance, 3, 47, 83, 84, 89, 116, 119 Resources electricity/solar, 85, 88, 128, 129, 163, 184 finances, 5, 172 water, 5, 9, 20, 22, 23, 25, 129, 162–166, 170, 172, 180, 182, 189 Return forced, 7, 12, 16, 31, 34, 56 See also Deportation Reworlding, 82 Ritual christening, 180 funeral, 180 graduation, 180 wedding, 180 Russia, 14, 15, 89 Tsarist, 14 S Safety material, 36, 37 personal, 39 (see also Protection)

in research process, 174 See also Methodology Scale of belonging, 102, 176, 178, 179 local, 14 national, 9 planetary, 151 Scotland, 7, 64, 70, 71, 111, 184 Glasgow, 56, 58, 66, 75, 76 Sea black Atlantic, 177 seaside, 137, 164 See also Channel crossings; France, Calais; Mediterranean Secrecy, 182 Secularism, 59 See also Atheism; Religion Selfhood, 166 See also Identity Sensory aspects of home scent, 172, 180, 181 sound, 172 taste, 172 Settler colonialism, 82, 83 Sexual violence, 64 See also Domestic violence Sex work, 187 See also Trafficking Sheikh Jarrah, 83 Slavery, 171, 175, 177 Social benefits, 140, 141 Social conditions/worlds, 8, 37, 143 Social life, 19, 45, 141 visiting, 138 See also Community Social mobility, 102 Social spaces activities, 15, 36, 43, 80, 128, 130, 132, 137, 138, 142, 154 bike rides, 137 hiking, 137 outings, 137

 INDEX 

picnics, 24, 137 visits, 137, 138, 142 Social welfare, 68 Somalia, 59, 67 Sovereignty, 182, 188 Space, spatial territorial, 124 transitory, 159 Sponsorship schemes private, 134, 135 state, 134 Stability, 43, 102, 118 State, 2, 4–6, 8, 9, 13–17, 28, 35, 62, 65, 68, 76, 83, 86, 89, 115, 123–143, 148, 155, 170, 171, 173, 182, 185 state-building, 82 Stigma, deportation and, 186 Sudan Darfur, 35, 44, 45 North, 59, 66, 70 tribal backgrounds, 45 Sudanese refugee men, 31–48 Suitcase lives, 177 Sumud, 8, 94–97, 94n17 Surveillance, 172, 176, 181 Survival, 14, 96, 102, 112, 119, 187 Symbol, symbolic, symbolism, 6, 36, 37, 82, 83, 86, 91–93, 102, 106, 111–114, 118, 178, 186, 189 See also Collage Symbolon, 109 Syria, 6, 8, 12, 13, 16–18, 22, 27, 28, 59, 67, 72, 103, 105–108, 112, 113, 125–132, 135–143, 149, 154, 155, 159, 161, 164–166 Syrian war, 8, 143 See also Aleppo; Damascus; Greater Syria Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS), 125, 126, 132, 133

205

T Tailored Futures, 172 Tangible/intangible, 40, 159 Tent, 8, 105, 106, 119, 148–151, 153, 155, 156, 159, 161, 163 Tidalectics, 174, 175, 177 See also Sea Time/temporality change through, 85, 97 past, 107 present, 92, 115 synchronic/diachronic, 173 See also Future Tolerance, 15, 139 Tradition, 6, 12, 17, 28, 92, 109, 116, 141, 150, 152, 153, 162, 162n4 Trafficking, 188 Transcultural encounters, 76 Transgression, 9 Translation, 105, 106, 114, 115, 133 See also Language Transnational, transnationalism, 59, 63, 68, 72, 101, 118, 124, 127, 157, 158, 174 Transport car, 23, 84, 130, 141, 177, 183 public, 134 travel, 130 Trauma, 60, 76, 106, 129, 173, 179 Turkey, 6, 14, 24, 28, 66, 67, 103, 127, 128, 134, 135 Istanbul, 103, 118 U UAE, 135, 136 Uncertainty, 39, 41, 44, 47, 48, 58, 65–67, 69, 71, 101, 106, 182 See also Asylum, decisions; Immigration status Unhomely, 36, 187

206 

INDEX

United Kingdom (UK), 3–5, 8, 9, 57, 61–63, 63n6, 67–69, 71–74, 113, 125–128, 125n1, 128n3, 130–133, 135–143, 169–189 See also London, UK United Nations (UN), 130, 131, 154, 155 resettlement process, 130, 131 United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 34n3, 35, 36, 127, 132, 134, 164 in Jordan, 34n3, 35, 127, 134 UNRWA, 12, 86 V Visual cartoons, 103 photography, 102, 105, 108, 118, 173, 174 Voice excluded, 81 forgotten, 81 refugee, 5, 9, 57 representation, 97 silences, 175 See also Dignity Voluntary migration, 175 See also Capitalism; Work Volunteers, 133 W Water drought, 189 fountain, 25, 162, 163 home is like, 169–189 Islamic daily ablutions, 164 rain, 170, 189

shortage, 164 stress, 164 War Over Water, 163 See also Fountain; Gardens/ gardening Welcome, 43, 68, 71, 74, 107, 116, 132 West Bank, 80n1, 83, 85, 86, 88, 88n11, 94n18 West Midlands, UK, 125–127 Whole earth thinking, 150, 151 Widow, 126 See also Bereavement Work deskilling, 140 health barriers, 140 illegal, 129, 131 immigration status and, 58 permits, 35, 60, 131 rights, 130 skilled labour, 141 unemployment, 40 unskilled labour, 129 World literature, 153 World War I, 12, 13, 15, 16, 28 Y Yarmouk, 154 Yazidi, 73 Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA), 7, 80, 82, 85–92, 92n14, 97 Youth, 62, 129, 182, 183 Z Zaatari, 149, 153, 154, 162–164 Zeltschule, 105, 106