Tahir Zaman
University of Sussex, Geography/School for Global Studies, Faculty Member
- University of Groningen, Centre for Religion, Conflict, and the Public Domain, Department MemberUniversity of East London, Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging, Department Memberadd
- Islam, Refugee Studies, Iraq, Middle East Studies, Syria, Forced Migration, and 27 moreRefugees, Iraqi History, Sociology of Religion, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, Syrian Studies, Social Production of Space, Middle East Politics, Ethnicity and National Identity, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Anthropology of Religion, Post-Neoliberalism, Urban citizenship, Right to the city, Citizenship Theory, Border Theory, Anthropology of Borders, Governance and Civil Society, Humanitarianism, Displacement, Migration, Migration Studies, Deportation, Citizenship, Border Studies, and Religion and migrationedit
- Tahir is primarily interested in matters pertaining to refugee agency and alternative socio-cultural understandings o... moreTahir is primarily interested in matters pertaining to refugee agency and alternative socio-cultural understandings of refuge during times of mass-displacement. He was awarded a PhD in Refugee Studies from the University of East London in 2013. His work explored the social and cultural life-worlds of Iraqi refugees in Damascus where he undertook fieldwork in 2010 and 2011. His doctoral thesis was recently published as a book by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016 under the title of 'Islamic traditions of refuge in the crises of Iraq and Syria'. His doctoral research also critically engages with the limits and opportunities of faith-based humanitarianism. Tahir has since worked extensively with a leading peace-building and conflict transformation NGO on considering the role of Syrian Diaspora actors in responding to mass displacement and contributing towards peace-building. His current research interest focuses on the intersections of displacement, humanitarianism and social economy.edit
Introductory Chapter to 'Islamic Traditions of refuge in the crises of Iraq and Syria'
Research Interests:
To better understand the range of possibilities and opportunities for (co)existence available to displacement‐affected people, attention must be given to the thick webs of sociality shaping interactions in situations of mass displacement.... more
To better understand the range of possibilities and opportunities for (co)existence available to displacement‐affected people, attention must be given to the thick webs of sociality shaping interactions in situations of mass displacement. This paper makes the case that refugee squats in Athens are distinct spaces wherein different understandings of (co)existence converge – spaces whose production is contingent on support from neighbourly relations and networks that are mediated in moments through conceptions of conviviality informed by religion. Based on ethnographic work carried out in 2016 and a spatial analysis of refugee squats in Athens, this paper emphasises neighbourliness and conviviality as they relate to sacred understandings of coexistence. This helps highlight the limits built in to thinking about the movement of refugees from the global South through Euro‐centric ontologies of the social. More than this, following postcolonial debates on the decentring of knowledge production, the research makes manifest how Islamic socio‐cultural memories of jiwār or a right of neighbourliness complicate geographies of humanitarianism that make stark binary assumptions between religious and secular space. In turn, the evidence from Athens indicates that refugee perspectives on neighbourliness are imperfectly translated by migrant rights activists as solidarity, obscuring the different ways Muslim structures of feeling contribute to the production of refugee squats.
Research Interests:
The use of the faith-based label demands greater clarification lest it lose coherence and result in adverse policy implications, excluding religiously motivated actors from providing much-needed assistance to displaced communities,... more
The use of the faith-based label demands greater clarification lest it lose coherence and result in adverse policy implications, excluding religiously motivated actors from providing much-needed assistance to displaced communities, particularly inside Syria now.
Research Interests:
This article seeks to address the paucity of research on the Palestinian Iraqi commu-nity. Analysis of refugee narratives gathered at the Palestinian Iraqi Association community centre in Damascus reveals the dynamics of the refugee... more
This article seeks to address the paucity of research on the Palestinian Iraqi commu-nity. Analysis of refugee narratives gathered at the Palestinian Iraqi Association community centre in Damascus reveals the dynamics of the refugee process in the context of local integration with the host community. It also considers the extent to which previous experience and memory of being a refugee acts as a social and cultural resource, helping to create a distinctive geography of exile and a means of bolstering welfare strategy. Mukhayim Yarmouk, a suburb of Damascus, provides the context in which social relations unfold, and where Palestinian Iraqi refugees renegotiate identity and space.
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The rise in the number of interventions by faith-based organisations in the humanitarian field has reignited debate about the role of religion in the public sphere. This paper presents a nuanced examination of the part played by religious... more
The rise in the number of interventions by faith-based organisations in the humanitarian field has reignited debate about the role of religion in the public sphere. This paper presents a nuanced examination of the part played by religious institutions and networks in the strategies of forced migrants in urban contexts. Furthermore, it considers how such organisations work to integrate displaced populations into their new surroundings. Drawing on two case studies and ethno- graphic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Iraqi refugees and refugee service providers in Damascus, Syria, carried out between March
2010
and March
2011
, it evaluates how Iraqi refugees, as active social agents, utilise religious institutions and networks in conjunction with established international humanitarian organisations to produce a distinctive geography of exile. In addition, it draws attention to how the Syrian state exerts influence over religious actors and how ultimately this affects the decision-making of forced migrants.
2010
and March
2011
, it evaluates how Iraqi refugees, as active social agents, utilise religious institutions and networks in conjunction with established international humanitarian organisations to produce a distinctive geography of exile. In addition, it draws attention to how the Syrian state exerts influence over religious actors and how ultimately this affects the decision-making of forced migrants.
Research Interests:
The so-called ‘European refugee crisis’ has drawn attention to hitherto peripheral actors who produce new spaces, socialities, and readings of humanitarianism. Amongst the actors found in this milieu are faith-based initiatives; diaspora... more
The so-called ‘European refugee crisis’ has drawn attention to hitherto peripheral actors who produce new spaces, socialities, and readings of humanitarianism. Amongst the actors found in this milieu are faith-based initiatives; diaspora networks; volunteer efforts; and refugee-led self-help initiatives. Recently arrived refugees and migrants find themselves at the loci of intersecting social relations that append themselves to an existing infrastructure of hidden forms of welfare outside state-led social support.
To better understand these emergent spaces and socialities, I mobilise the example of autonomous refugee housing collectives, or squats, located largely in and around the Exarcheia district of Athens. This case study reveals the potential and limits of migrant solidarity organising - highlighting the competing, conflicting, and at times contradictory discourses and practices of actors involved.
The chapter concludes by questioning whether the transience of refugee
populations in Athens adds a further layer of complexity to the possibility
of enacting egalitarian modes of solidarity. In so doing, I consider how
normative readings of hospitality imbue solidarity initiatives with migrants
and refugees. The argument presented here is that refugee squats in Athens are embedded in an almost ineliminable hegemonic humanitarian logic and are thus caught between hospitality and abject space.
To better understand these emergent spaces and socialities, I mobilise the example of autonomous refugee housing collectives, or squats, located largely in and around the Exarcheia district of Athens. This case study reveals the potential and limits of migrant solidarity organising - highlighting the competing, conflicting, and at times contradictory discourses and practices of actors involved.
The chapter concludes by questioning whether the transience of refugee
populations in Athens adds a further layer of complexity to the possibility
of enacting egalitarian modes of solidarity. In so doing, I consider how
normative readings of hospitality imbue solidarity initiatives with migrants
and refugees. The argument presented here is that refugee squats in Athens are embedded in an almost ineliminable hegemonic humanitarian logic and are thus caught between hospitality and abject space.
Research Interests:
Recognizing alternative understandings of refugee assistance other than the hegemonic account that structures the governance and availability of protection and assistance measures to around 60 million forced migrants today is an important... more
Recognizing alternative understandings of refugee assistance other than the hegemonic account that structures the governance and availability of protection and assistance measures to around 60 million forced migrants today is an important first step towards finding something different. It is with this in mind that this chapter presents alternative readings of refuge, hospitality and protection through a close consideration of Islamic traditions of refuge, hospitality and protection on its own terms. By seriously engaging with the socio-cultural life worlds of migrants themselves, we can better build an understanding of what these terms mean to them and uncover an alternative language on refugee protection that has hitherto been made largely inaudible and invisible.
In what follows, three key arguments are presented. First, I interrogate the production of knowledge concerning the international refugee protection regime. Following Haddad (2008) and Malkki (1992), I make the case that hegemonic understandings of refugee protection are anchored in a ‘sedentarist metaphysics’ born of a particularistic European history locking hospitality within a discursive frame of a politics of pity and gratitude. This is exemplified in the humanitarian interventions we see today – a practice of hospitality which renders the refugee as deserving on the condition it is administered from a distance. Part two considers how Islamic traditions of refuge, hospitality and protection cannot be disentangled or disembodied from the living practices of historically and socially located communities and their institutions. These alternative discursive understandings form a set of expectations and entitlements forced migrants carry with them as they make their journeys. This approach frames hospitality as a practical ethic embedded in relations of reciprocity. Finally, I question the limits of such readings when mobilized at the scale of the nation state. Taking the Turkish state response to the Syrian refugee crisis as an example, I make the case that religious discourses of hospitality remain subordinate to the fact of the nation state and are doomed to reproduce the hierarchical power relations inherent to the humanitarian endeavour. To mitigate against this fatalism, I suggest that Islamic traditions of hospitality allow for metanoia at the level of the everyday – transforming the rupturing experience of being made into a stranger into not only a guest but a neighbour and in the process reconfiguring and broadening contemporary understandings of citizenship to include those who are present.
In what follows, three key arguments are presented. First, I interrogate the production of knowledge concerning the international refugee protection regime. Following Haddad (2008) and Malkki (1992), I make the case that hegemonic understandings of refugee protection are anchored in a ‘sedentarist metaphysics’ born of a particularistic European history locking hospitality within a discursive frame of a politics of pity and gratitude. This is exemplified in the humanitarian interventions we see today – a practice of hospitality which renders the refugee as deserving on the condition it is administered from a distance. Part two considers how Islamic traditions of refuge, hospitality and protection cannot be disentangled or disembodied from the living practices of historically and socially located communities and their institutions. These alternative discursive understandings form a set of expectations and entitlements forced migrants carry with them as they make their journeys. This approach frames hospitality as a practical ethic embedded in relations of reciprocity. Finally, I question the limits of such readings when mobilized at the scale of the nation state. Taking the Turkish state response to the Syrian refugee crisis as an example, I make the case that religious discourses of hospitality remain subordinate to the fact of the nation state and are doomed to reproduce the hierarchical power relations inherent to the humanitarian endeavour. To mitigate against this fatalism, I suggest that Islamic traditions of hospitality allow for metanoia at the level of the everyday – transforming the rupturing experience of being made into a stranger into not only a guest but a neighbour and in the process reconfiguring and broadening contemporary understandings of citizenship to include those who are present.
Research Interests:
Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) working paper for the constructive deconstruction series where alternative visions for humanitarian action were put forward. This paper makes the case for re-configuring the contribution of humanitarian... more
Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) working paper for the constructive deconstruction series where alternative visions for humanitarian action were put forward. This paper makes the case for re-configuring the contribution of humanitarian actors in societies and economies affected by mass displacement. I argue that cooperative modes of production are an integral component of the community economy and can provide the necessary tools to alleviate poverty; reduce tensions between host and displaced communities; ease pressures for onward migration; and enhance the dignity and well-being of displaced people. What is proposed is an economy that works for displacement-affected communities. This paper rejects the taken-for-granted binary of ‘host’ and ‘guest’ communities and challenges paternalistic approaches to assistance embedded in the colonial histories of the humanitarian
endeavour and its post-colonial imaginaries. Here, the concept of a
‘humanitarian anchor’ is introduced as a means of disrupting the humanitarian market so that it can better address the concerns of people in protracted displacement. I consider how this model breaks from the path-dependent and isomorphic behaviour of humanitarian actors embedded in the formal humanitarian system – acknowledging instead the institutional multiplicity characterising the humanitarian field.
endeavour and its post-colonial imaginaries. Here, the concept of a
‘humanitarian anchor’ is introduced as a means of disrupting the humanitarian market so that it can better address the concerns of people in protracted displacement. I consider how this model breaks from the path-dependent and isomorphic behaviour of humanitarian actors embedded in the formal humanitarian system – acknowledging instead the institutional multiplicity characterising the humanitarian field.
Research Interests:
يسعى هذا المقال لتفنيد المنهجية الطائفية التي تؤثر على نظرتنا لما يحدث في سوريا اليوم. لن يتحدث المقال عن مخاطر الطائفية، الموجودة بالفعل، لكنه سيبدأ حواراً لمحاولة إيجاد نص مشترك يساعد في تحويل مؤشرات هذا الصراع المدمر. للقيام بذلك،... more
يسعى هذا المقال لتفنيد المنهجية الطائفية التي تؤثر على نظرتنا لما يحدث في سوريا اليوم. لن يتحدث المقال عن مخاطر الطائفية، الموجودة بالفعل، لكنه سيبدأ حواراً لمحاولة إيجاد نص مشترك يساعد في تحويل مؤشرات هذا الصراع المدمر. للقيام بذلك، اقترح نقل الصراع إلى أولئك الذين يطالبون بالسلطة عبر تحريك الرمزية الدينية. يمكن أن يتم ذلك من خلال التشكيك بالأسس المعرفية التي يعتمدون عليها للمطالبة بالسلطة عن طريق الدين. بناءاً على حوارات أجريتُها مع نازحين في المنطقة، وصلتُ إلى ما مفاده إن الدين مرتبطٌ بالعلاقات، وليس بالهوية. إذ يحثُّنا الدين على النظر إلى داخلنا لتعزيز العلاقات مع الذات ومع الله، ويتجلّى ذلك عملياً، أي على مستوى الدين الـمُعاش، من خلال تغذية العلاقات مع الآخرين. نحن مخلوقاتٌ اجتماعيةٌ بالأصل والدين قوة نابذة. أما تنظيم علاقاتنا مع الآخرين فهو الشغل الشاغل للتعاليم الدينية. في ما يلي سأدرس الاحتمالات التي تتيحها التقاليد الإسلامية لتحويل الغرباء إلى جيران، وكيف يمكن لسياسات التقارب تأمين أطر بديلة للصراع الدائر.
Research Interests:
This article questions the dominant narrative of sectarianism that has come to characterise the Syrian conflict. It considers the possibilities Islamic tradition affords in transforming strangers into neighbours and how a politics of... more
This article questions the dominant narrative of sectarianism that has come to characterise the Syrian conflict. It considers the possibilities Islamic tradition affords in transforming strangers into neighbours and how a politics of propinquity could provide an alternative framing of the conflict in Syria to date. Attention is also drawn to how a right to neighbourhood had been eroded under the Ba'thist regime in the years leading up to the current crisis.
Research Interests:
Over the past 35 years, political understandings of Islam have been dominated either by authoritarian/autocratic states or movements aligned to the right of the political spectrum. In many cases they have offered very little resistance to... more
Over the past 35 years, political understandings of Islam have been dominated either by authoritarian/autocratic states or movements aligned to the right of the political spectrum. In many cases they have offered very little resistance to neo-liberal readings of the economy and have often been complicit in furthering its political agenda. Arguably, the Islamic response to the challenge of neoliberalism to date has been characterised by simply inserting Islam within a capitalist framework through a selective reading of Islamic jurisprudence. This article sets out to question the episteme on which contemporary understandings of economy, society and nation-state in predominantly Muslim countries are premised. I make the case that the encounter with colonialism and the push towards modernity has resulted in the production of neo-liberal readings of Islam which in turn have engendered violent responses.
Research Interests:
This paper describes the Syrian diaspora in the UK and outlines the potential for Syrians living in the UK to contribute to building peace in Syria. It is intended to help inform relief, development and peacebuilding policy and practice.... more
This paper describes the Syrian diaspora in the UK and outlines the potential for Syrians living in the UK to contribute
to building peace in Syria. It is intended to help inform relief, development and peacebuilding policy and practice. The
target audience for this paper is UK-based policymakers and humanitarian and development actors.
to building peace in Syria. It is intended to help inform relief, development and peacebuilding policy and practice. The
target audience for this paper is UK-based policymakers and humanitarian and development actors.
Research Interests:
Anthropology institutions situated in the West are hosting research projects looking at the burdened lives of those living on the margins, more than ever before. A lot of international and national level funding is being granted to study... more
Anthropology institutions situated in the West are hosting research projects looking at the burdened lives of those living on the margins, more than ever before. A lot of international and national level funding is being granted to study the most pressing and emotionally challenging issues from child migrants escaping wars, to people subjected to trafficking, sexual harassment, enslavement, torture, disenfranchisement and violence in general. The nature of such work, requires anthropologists to work closely with those who experience such unfortunate realities. Knowledge rooted in the pain, suffering, and struggle of the unfortunate, flows from peripheries and margins to the centre where fortunate job holders are located. In many instances, such knowledge is converted into data sets to be held captive as institutional intellectual property in the form of university lectures, seminars, journal articles, and monographs. This results in the reproduction of unfair theory cut off from its empirical origins-co-researchers and co-authors. One needs to ask: whose intellect is the source of knowledge? Who do we mean by the intellectual and to whom do we assert the term? The research partner is in some respects the expert in the field. She is an interlocutor from whom we learn the nuances of a language and culture. She is often the gatekeeper to networks we otherwise would not enjoy. On the other hand, our privileged location calls attention to how she is viewed as lacking in expertise-be it requisite educational qualifications, appropriate institutional affiliations, or access to funding. Anthropological knowledge production of all kinds is embedded in sets of social relationships (the professor, the post doc, the PhD student, research partners) as Anthropology's epistemology is itself relational—in the sense that knowledge is collaborative, dialogical, and gained by way of relations, and that (in consequence) the relationships between researchers and their collaborators become a property of the object of inquiry itself; that is, " [t]he relation between the 'knower' and the 'object' of necessity bends back into the perception of the object itself and is cemented in writing " (Hastrup 2004: 456). Hence, both as the subjects and objects of knowledge within the institutions of neo-colonial learning, we ask whose knowledge are we working with: our own or that of our research partners? And to what purpose? Knowledge converted into anthropological language, is utilized as a source of prestige and recognition. The result opens its way to the creation of new projects. Numerous new vacancies are marketed from institutions situated at the Global North asking to work on the Global South.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The use of social protection measures has garnered increasing attention in recent years from academics and policymakers aspiring to unite the humanitarian origins and development ambitions of displacement governance regimes. Much of this... more
The use of social protection measures has garnered increasing attention in recent years from academics and policymakers aspiring to unite the humanitarian origins and development ambitions of displacement governance regimes. Much of this attention has been focused on establishing and strengthening national systems of social protection provision. Analysis of policy approaches to social protection has become increasingly detailed, but typically does not extend beyond formal rights-based provision. This article seeks to address the paucity of literature on how refugees strategise around access to social assistance beyond Northern-mandated approaches. We review existing research on Syrian displacement in Lebanon to interrogate assumptions that refugees automatically seek institutionalised assistance. Drawing on postcolonial literature, we explore why modalities of social and humanitarian assistance offered through a rights-based approach represent only a partial mapping of the social pr...
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Having a right that is not respected is not the same as having no right at all. At least this should not be the case. Failure to receive something to which you are entitled should lead to formal redress or failing that, protest. The... more
Having a right that is not respected is not the same as having no right at all. At least this should not be the case. Failure to receive something to which you are entitled should lead to formal redress or failing that, protest. The rights-based discourse has a wider importance. If and when it is or should be used is significant. In terms of access to social protection (including social and humanitarian assistance), the rights-based discourse means there is no difference between refugees and others who fail to receive the protection to which they are entitled, such as Internally Displaced People (IDPs). This introduces two key tensions, both of which we explore in this paper. The first concerns the identification of the institution responsible for fulfilling the right, as determined in state-led/formal humanitarian system of social protection. The second concerns the alternatives displaced people may identify when Northern mandated forms of social protection fail, or when the condit...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Displacement forms part of virtually any major crisis. It introduces a level of complexity when providing social assistance that leads to a specific, usually context-dependent set of challenges. It is widely recognised that the vast... more
Displacement forms part of virtually any major crisis. It introduces a level of complexity when providing social assistance that leads to a specific, usually context-dependent set of challenges. It is widely recognised that the vast majority of displaced people will travel as short a distance as possible to reach safety, whether as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), refugees or irregular migrants in neighbouring countries. Displaced people are disproportionately hosted in low- and middle-income countries, and the length of their displacement is increasing. This highlights the urgent priority of displacement; indeed, it has received sustained attention from the highest levels of global decision-making, particularly since 2016, including two Global Compacts in 2018 (Global Compact for Migration, Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration). Although some have argued that such global summits offer a replacement for meaningful action, these events at least highlight clear p...
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In Damascus there are no direct routes linking Jaramana to Mhajirin, or the Yarmouk camp to Sayyida Zayneb - each home to different communities stratified along lines of class and religious belonging. Isolation and distance is reinforced;... more
In Damascus there are no direct routes linking Jaramana to Mhajirin, or the Yarmouk camp to Sayyida Zayneb - each home to different communities stratified along lines of class and religious belonging. Isolation and distance is reinforced; and in so doing serves to reproduce the Other.
Research Interests:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork of refugee-led autonomous housing collectives in Athens carried out over the summer of 2016, this chapter investigates whether alternative solidarity initiatives reproduce power dynamics and representations... more
Based on ethnographic fieldwork of refugee-led autonomous housing collectives in Athens carried out over the summer of 2016, this chapter investigates whether alternative solidarity initiatives reproduce power dynamics and representations of refugee others inherent in the existing humanitarian architecture or effectively challenge the host-guest relations underpinning hegemonic understandings of refugee protection and assistance. Recently arrived refugees and migrants find themselves at the loci of intersecting social relations that append themselves to an existing infrastructure of less-visible forms of welfare outside state-led social support. To better understand these emergent spaces and socialities, the chapter mobilises the example of autonomous refugee housing collectives, or squats, located largely in and around the Exarcheia district of Athens. This case study reveals the potential and limits of migrant solidarity organising - highlighting the competing, conflicting, and at...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Recognizing alternative understandings of refugee assistance other than the hegemonic account that structures the governance and availability of protection and assistance measures to around 60 million forced migrants today is an important... more
Recognizing alternative understandings of refugee assistance other than the hegemonic account that structures the governance and availability of protection and assistance measures to around 60 million forced migrants today is an important first step towards finding something different. It is with this in mind that this chapter presents alternative readings of refuge, hospitality and protection through a close consideration of Islamic traditions of refuge, hospitality and protection on its own terms. By seriously engaging with the socio-cultural life worlds of migrants themselves, we can better build an understanding of what these terms mean to them and uncover an alternative language on refugee protection that has hitherto been made largely inaudible and invisible. In what follows, three key arguments are presented. First, I interrogate the production of knowledge concerning the international refugee protection regime. Following Haddad (2008) and Malkki (1992), I make the case that hegemonic understandings of refugee protection are anchored in a ‘sedentarist metaphysics’ born of a particularistic European history locking hospitality within a discursive frame of a politics of pity and gratitude. This is exemplified in the humanitarian interventions we see today – a practice of hospitality which renders the refugee as deserving on the condition it is administered from a distance. Part two considers how Islamic traditions of refuge, hospitality and protection cannot be disentangled or disembodied from the living practices of historically and socially located communities and their institutions. These alternative discursive understandings form a set of expectations and entitlements forced migrants carry with them as they make their journeys. This approach frames hospitality as a practical ethic embedded in relations of reciprocity. Finally, I question the limits of such readings when mobilized at the scale of the nation state. Taking the Turkish state response to the Syrian refugee crisis as an example, I make the case that religious discourses of hospitality remain subordinate to the fact of the nation state and are doomed to reproduce the hierarchical power relations inherent to the humanitarian endeavour. To mitigate against this fatalism, I suggest that Islamic traditions of hospitality allow for metanoia at the level of the everyday – transforming the rupturing experience of being made into a stranger into not only a guest but a neighbour and in the process reconfiguring and broadening contemporary understandings of citizenship to include those who are present.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
To better understand the range of possibilities and opportunities for (co)existence available to displacement‐affected people, attention must be given to the thick webs of sociality shaping interactions in situations of mass displacement.... more
To better understand the range of possibilities and opportunities for (co)existence available to displacement‐affected people, attention must be given to the thick webs of sociality shaping interactions in situations of mass displacement. This paper makes the case that refugee squats in Athens are distinct spaces wherein different understandings of (co)existence converge – spaces whose production is contingent on support from neighbourly relations and networks that are mediated in moments through conceptions of conviviality informed by religion. Based on ethnographic work carried out in 2016 and a spatial analysis of refugee squats in Athens, this paper emphasises neighbourliness and conviviality as they relate to sacred understandings of coexistence. This helps highlight the limits built in to thinking about the movement of refugees from the global South through Euro‐centric ontologies of the social. More than this, following postcolonial debates on the decentring of knowledge production, the research makes manifest how Islamic socio‐cultural memories of jiwār or a right of neighbourliness complicate geographies of humanitarianism that make stark binary assumptions between religious and secular space. In turn, the evidence from Athens indicates that refugee perspectives on neighbourliness are imperfectly translated by migrant rights activists as solidarity, obscuring the different ways Muslim structures of feeling contribute to the production of refugee squats.
Research Interests:
This paper describes the Syrian diaspora in the UK and outlines the potential for Syrians living in the UK to contribute to building peace in Syria. It is intended to help inform relief, development and peacebuilding policy and practice.... more
This paper describes the Syrian diaspora in the UK and outlines the potential for Syrians living in the UK to contribute to building peace in Syria. It is intended to help inform relief, development and peacebuilding policy and practice. The target audience for this paper is UK-based policymakers and humanitarian and development actors.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
It has been consistently argued that the aggressive sectarianism and violence, which accompanied the resistance to American occupation, were key drivers of general instability in the country resulting in the displacement of millions of... more
It has been consistently argued that the aggressive sectarianism and violence, which accompanied the resistance to American occupation, were key drivers of general instability in the country resulting in the displacement of millions of Iraqis (al-Khalidi and Tanner 2006). This is borne out in the testimonies of the Iraqi refugees I spoke to — iterated in their persecution narratives. Yet, there is an acknowledgment that the heavy footprint of the American occupation itself was pivotal in igniting a sectarian conflict that had lain simmering under the surface of Iraqi society.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) working paper for the constructive deconstruction series where alternative visions for humanitarian action were put forward. This paper makes the case for re-configuring the contribution of humanitarian... more
Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) working paper for the constructive deconstruction series where alternative visions for humanitarian action were put forward. This paper makes the case for re-configuring the contribution of humanitarian actors in societies and economies affected by mass displacement. I argue that cooperative modes of production are an integral component of the community economy and can provide the necessary tools to alleviate poverty; reduce tensions between host and displaced communities; ease pressures for onward migration; and enhance the dignity and well-being of displaced people. What is proposed is an economy that works for displacement-affected communities. This paper rejects the taken-for-granted binary of ‘host’ and ‘guest’ communities and challenges paternalistic approaches to assistance embedded in the colonial histories of the humanitarian endeavour and its post-colonial imaginaries. Here, the concept of a ‘humanitarian anchor’ is introduced as a means of disrupting the humanitarian market so that it can better address the concerns of people in protracted displacement. I consider how this model breaks from the path-dependent and isomorphic behaviour of humanitarian actors embedded in the formal humanitarian system – acknowledging instead the institutional multiplicity characterising the humanitarian field.