Exiles, Migrants, and Refugees from Syria: Imagined Homelands, Asylum, and Transnational Belongings

Refugees and the international refugee regime are currently, and will likely continue to remain, in the forefront of international politics. From the US, UK and the countries of Europe, politicians and mass media outlets focus on the numbers of refugees and their potential to disturb the social order of their states. Social scientists and historians have not been sufficiently quick off the mark to engage with this dehumanization of people who have largely suffered significant social, economic, and physical violence. Nor has there been an adequate exploration of the agency, history, and resistance to silencing which these people have exhibited. Taking the modern state of Syria as the focus for a two-day workshop, this event endeavours to bring an inter- and cross-disciplinary focus on the forced migrations and exile of well over 5 million people from Syria in the 20th and 21st centuries. The workshop considers how practitioners in state and inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations situate themselves in relation to these displaced people.

Workshop convened by
Dawn Chatty, Emerita Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration, Refugee Studies Centre, and Visiting Professor of Anthropology, NYUAD

Attendance

By invitation only. Interested scholars please contact nyuad.programs@nyu.edu