Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East & North African Migration Studies
Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East & North African Migration Studies is an online, open access, double-blind peer-reviewed journal devoted to disseminating original research on migration from, to, and within the Middle East and North Africa. The journal, whose readership includes any person or organization interested in MENA migrations, welcomes submissions on all aspects of human movement and the circulation of ideas, cultural artifacts, and commodities, from the disciplinary perspectives of history, anthropology, economics, political science, sociology, art history, literary studies, and comparative religion. Each issue contains double-blind peer-reviewed articles and detailed reviews of relevant publications. The journal publishes two issues per year on a rolling basis. We wish to note that the publication schedule during 2020 and 2021 was irregular and impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and resultant personnel changes.
Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies
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NAHUM KARLINSKY, ed., The Modern Israeli and Palestinian Diasporas: A Comparative Approach (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2024)
Copyright (c) 2026 Mira Sucharov (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Edward Said’s Interlocutors in Portuguese and Spanish: Frontiers of a Futura Palestina
This article asks how Milton Hatoum in Brazil and Lina Meruane from Chile each borrowed from Edward Said (1935–2003) as well as crossed over into the United States where their intellectual and political synergies drew less interest than the provenance of migrant forebears. Each writer catalyzed and carried on Said’s critique of orientalism and commitment to present-day Palestine, though Hatoum’s father departed French-mandate Lebanon for Brazil, and Meruane’s paternal grandparents journeyed from Ottoman Palestine to Chile. To paraphrase Said, I suggest that the two highly acclaimed authors anticipated and speculated how migrant “filiations” can be supplanted by and lead to more global “affiliations,” namely in relation to Palestinian self-determination. This futura Palestina (future Palestine, in Portuguese and Spanish) emerges in their dialogues across print and digital domains as well as southern and northern hemispheres. Despite respective debuts some twenty years apart, Hatoum and Meruane, in connection with Said, point to a future Palestine that is about not only origin and return but also beginning and border-crossing.
Copyright (c) 2026 John Karam (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Introduction: Locating Palestine in the Arab Americas – Part I
Copyright (c) 2026 Ricardo Marzuca Butto, Jacob Norris (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
On Palestinian Latin Americanism: Reading Walter Garib and Mahfud Massís
In this article, we direct our analysis to the political, literary, and aesthetic reflections on the Palestinian question in the work of two Chilean Palestinian literary intellectuals, Mahfud Massís (1916–1990) and Walter Garib (1933–). Analyzing a selection of their work spanning from the 1960s to the 1990s, the article shows particular interest in the formation of a modernist and Third Worldist discourse that combines Latin American and Palestinian revolutionary timelines. This highlights the presence of various counterhegemonic political discourses within the literary history of the Palestinian diaspora that literary criticism has not yet addressed. For this purpose, we initially seek to develop a concept of identity that allows us to approach these authors’ work beyond the traditional integrationist approaches of literary criticism. Subsequently, this article demonstrates, through a direct reading of the discursive aspects analyzed, that El Viajero de la Alfombra Mágica by Walter Garib and a collection of Mahfud Massís’s poems together open a gateway to new perspectives on Palestinian diaspora identity in Chile, and on our idea of identity in diaspora itself. At the end, the article proposes a new category for the discursive study of the politicization of Palestinian identity during the twentieth century in Latin America: Palestinian Latin Americanism.
Copyright (c) 2026 Miguel Carmona Tabja, Afshin Irani Cereceda (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Latin America in the Palestinian Magazine Al-Karmel
The Arabic magazine al-Karmel operated as the cultural, intellectual, and literary arm of the Palestinian Revolution.[i] Published by the General Union of Palestinian Journalists and Writers and edited by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and the Syrian-Kurdish writer Salim Barakat, al-Karmel focused on the relationship between politics and literature, as well as on the engagement of writers with the revolutionary causes of the moment. In search of aesthetic models, al-Karmel turned towards Latin America, where the Boom writers appeared to have resolved the question of commitment in literature. In this paper, I present and discuss the inclusion of Latin American writers and intellectuals in al-Karmel. Which Latin American writers do we find on the pages of al-Karmel and who were they translated and interviewed by? I examine how, through literary translation, the exchange of ideas, and the creation of networks of intellectuals that appeared on the pages of al-Karmel, the struggles and political conflicts that were taking place in both the Arab world and Latin America intersected and dialogued.
Copyright (c) 2026 Shadi Rohana (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Dis:Locating Palestine – Enacting Community: Chilestino Contemporary Art and Cinema
Chilean artists with Palestinian origin crystallize varying experiences of displacement, in-betweenness, genealogical quest, and communal affiliation. First generations of Palestinian migrants described in detail the tortuous trips to Chile after crossing Argentina, the Panama Canal, and the Andes, searching for other opportunities in neighboring countries or fleeing a war-torn area. Later generations provide narratives on the reverse travel, in their attempts to decipher the multilayered meanings of Palestine, be it a political cause or a screen for scattered family memories and the desire for belonging. With a special focus on the works of Miguel Littín and Claudia Aravena Abughosh, this article shows how artistic practices can imagine or enact alternative forms of community countering nationalist, religious, and ethnocentric imaginaries. I ground the study of the selected art pieces in the more than a century-long history of cultural and political entanglements between the Arab world and Latin America to interrogate the intertwined questions of the policity of art and the experience of friendship as a path toward defining non-exclusive communities.
Copyright (c) 2026 Laure Guirguis (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
A Work of Fiction and the Traces of History: The Palestinian Creoles
Fiction writing is a path to understand the ways in which History becomes personal. My first novel, Salt Crystals (Charco Press, 2022), addressed questions about Creole identities in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, in Colombia. As part of a larger literary project to develop fictional narratives about diasporas and Creoleness in the region, I offer a review of the Arab Caribbean in a personal key, involving emotional and political matters that generally concern second and third generations of Palestinian immigrants. My second novel, Capitán, focuses in the regions of Barranquilla and San Andrés Island, and the experience of my ancestors and family of aviators, the Christian Palestinian Al-Bandaj family, which arrived from Bethlehem in America between 1914 and 1917. The Creole cultural space of the Caribbean and the Palestinian diaspora affect each other and the traces of this interaction are present in all aspects of life. Fictions allow one to encompass such complexity, and to explore how personal trauma, geopolitics and colonialism are intertwined, in an attempt to recover what has been lost, or withheld, from one generation to the next. New generations have emerged in territories in which certain material and cultural elements condition the degree of awareness of the Palestinian self. A perspective on relations of language, body and territory, I provide insights into creative ways of becoming, performing and representing that which is Palestinian Arab, while already rooted in the contemporary Caribbean. Imagining motives, motivations and emotions based in global movements becomes a strategy to unravel wounds of hopelessness and displacement, as well as a strategy to approach the colonial experiences from the Caribbean. An emotional cartography emerges from the routes of migrations, and often it is only through art and fictions that a way back, and forth, can be attained.
Copyright (c) 2026 Cristina Bendek (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
STACY D. FAHRENTHOLD, Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2024)
Copyright (c) 2025 Emily Pope-Obeda (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
SARAH BAKKER KELLOGG, Sonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World (New York: Fordham University Press, 2025)
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Hager (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
JOSEPH JOHN VISCOMI, Migration at the End of Empire: Time and the Politics of Departure between Italy and Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024)
Copyright (c) 2025 Eleonora Angella (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Beyond Transit: Tunisia as Imagined, Experienced, and Negotiated by Migrant Women from West and Central Africa
This article critically examines spatial categories such as countries of origin, transit, and destination within migration discourse, arguing that these classifications fail to capture the complexity of migrants’ trajectories and aspirations. By centering the lived experiences of two sub-Saharan migrant women, Fatou and Christine, the study draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Tunisia and a feminist methodological approach to explore how migrant women navigate non-linear and ambivalent paths shaped by legal precarity, gendered labor, motherhood, and evolving migration policies. For some women migrants, this North African country, which has been undergoing radical political change since 2011, can be seen as a destination for work or study but can also become a place of transit for varying lengths of time and vice versa. Rather than progressing toward Europe or returning home, their journeys reflect constant negotiation, compromise, and strategic adaptation. Mobilizing Camille Schmoll’s concept of autonomy in tension as a form of constrained agency enacted under structural vulnerability, the article highlights how migrant women engage in everyday practices of resistance and care within extended periods of uncertainty. I argue that, beyond their simple status as transit or settled migrants, these women are transforming and being transformed by the Tunisian space. It is a space where they embark on a process of learning and self-assertion. By foregrounding their voices, this work contributes to feminist migration studies and offers a grounded critique of the transit paradigm.
Copyright (c) 2025 Asma Ben Hadj Hassen (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
ALBERTO BENJAMÍN LÓPEZ OLIVA, Memoria e Identidad: La diáspora árabe en Chile a través de su prensa (Granada: Ediciones de la Universidad de Granada, 2023)
Copyright (c) 2026 Laura Galián (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Peasant Families’ Journeys from Algeria to Mashriq (1880s–1890s): Personal Correspondence, Migration Networks, and Resettlement
In this article, Salma Hargal analyzes the journey of impoverished Algerians who became settlers on state-granted lands within the framework of Ottoman immigration policies and who acquired Ottoman citizenship under the 1869 Nationality Law. Drawing on a diverse range of sources—including confiscated letters, Ottoman archival documents, and French colonial and diplomatic correspondences and reports—Hargal reconstructs the trajectories of two families who emigrated to Damascus and Tiberias in Ottoman Palestine. Their experiences shed light on the interplay between personal networks, the support provided by trans-imperial family, Ottoman migration policies, and the challenges posed by ambiguous legal statuses.
Copyright (c) 2025 Salma Hargal (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
A Mobile Boundary: Empires, Nomads, and Refugees between Tripolitania and Tunisia
This article introduces the concept of a “mobile boundary” in the context of North Africa from 1881 to 1893, when various non-state actors resisted French and Ottoman attempts to delineate an official border between Tripolitania and Tunisia. By focusing on the activities of nomadic, tribal, and refugee populations, this study explores how these groups created a mobile boundary, one defined by their fluid mobility and identities and challenges to imperial conceptions of fixed borders. It challenges prevailing narratives on the making of the Tripolitania-Tunisia border that emphasize the cartographic diplomacy between France and the Ottoman Empire following the establishment of the French protectorate over Tunisia in 1881. This manuscript highlights the mobility of various non-state actors in destabilizing imperial cartographic conceptions of the Tripolitania-Tunisia border and the imperial attempt to manage mobility and settlement to advance state interests. It argues that these mobile populations continually reshaped imperial conceptions of the Tripolitania-Tunisian border and contributed to new challenges the French and Ottoman empires had to address. It also contends that tensions over the border evolved into attempts to exploit the mobility of “nomads-cum-refugees” as a destabilizing force to secure imperial interests.
Copyright (c) 2025 Fredrick Walter Lorenz (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This article explores the urban worlds of African and Asian migrant domestic workers living in Beirut, Lebanon. Over the last two decades, many women who first arrived in the country as domestic workers have fled domestic confinement and entered Lebanon’s informal labor market, where after 2011 they were also joined by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing war across the country’s eastern border. Together with their male counterparts as well as diverse Lebanese citizens, migrant domestic workers have created a thriving underground layer to the city that includes religious and commercial establishments, mechanisms of informal service provision, and spaces of leisure, desire, and politics. Through an ethnographic analysis of intimate relations within these spaces, I designate this the “undercommons” of Beirut, drawing the term from Moten and Harney’s theorization of fugitivity and Black life. Forged in flight of the oppressive kafala system that regulates temporary migrant labor in much of the Middle East, the layered interdependences of this world constitute an undercommons of globalization itself.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sumayya Kassamali (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Fluid Borders, Temporary Refuge: The Cyclical Nature of Displacement between Lebanon and Syria
The escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in September 2024 has displaced over a million people within Lebanon, including Lebanese citizens, Syrian and Palestinian refugees, and migrant workers. Simultaneously, an estimated 400,000 individuals have fled Lebanon into Syria, marking a significant reversal of established displacement patterns. This research note explores the fluid and cyclical nature of displacement between Lebanon and Syria, challenging traditional models of migration that view displacement as unidirectional. Through interviews with Lebanese and Syrian refugees, this study reveals how displacement decisions are driven by immediate safety concerns, with both groups viewing their movement as temporary. The findings emphasize the limitations of conventional refugee protection systems, which often fail to account for the dynamic and reversible nature of displacement in conflict zones. This ongoing study at the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University highlights the need for a more flexible understanding of displacement in the Middle East, where borders are porous, and refuge is fleeting. By documenting the experiences of those displaced, this research aims to contribute to a more nuanced discourse on migration and conflict in the region.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jasmin Lilian Diab (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Faith, Language, and Identity: The Role of Education in the Americanization of “Syrians” in the United States, 1880–1928
This article seeks to address a significant lacuna in Arab American Studies in respect of the role played by primary, secondary, and adult education in the integration of hundreds of thousands of mainly Christian immigrants from the Ottoman Levant between the 1890s and the late 1920s. The article begins by discussing the context in which US federal authorities sought to assimilate and “Americanize” these new immigrants through the education of adults and minors in a rapidly evolving public education system, also addressing the developing role of charitable, parochial, and other private schools within the nascent Arab American community. At the heart of national policy was a concern, voiced particularly loudly during the second half of World War I, that the loyalty of immigrants to their new country had to be embedded through a deliberate inculcation of common American values. The education system, in its various forms, bore the brunt of this work. This ideological policy, however, often came into conflict with a countermovement of cultural pluralism, through which it was attempted to retain or reclaim intellectual, cultural, and social legacies from the migrants’ countries of origin. After tackling this wider context, the article focuses on the disparate communities of Arabic-speaking immigrants, from New York to states such as Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, and California. Within this heterogenous but, initially at least, mainly Christian diaspora, an intense debate took place throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century over these questions of Americanization, race, identity, the desirability, speed, and comprehensiveness of assimilation, and the extent to which the language and cultural legacy of the mother country would have to be sacrificed in becoming American. These debates, focused on education, shaped the self-view of the nascent diaspora community in ways that lasted until the more nationally diverse “second wave” of post-World War II Arab immigration.
Copyright (c) 2025 Fergus Nicoll (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
(Re)constructing Homelands Between Precarity and Intentionality: Syrian Armenians in Armenia
Syrian refugees from the war which has been waging since 2011 now number more than 6.4 million. Of these, an estimated 24,000 Syrians of ethnic Armenian origin have arrived in the Republic of Armenia since 2011. Government sources estimate the number of those who have stayed to number around 14,000. Some have moved to other destinations perceived to hold better prospects, whether temporarily or with a view to stay permanently; others have returned to rebuild their lives in Syria. In mapping these multidirectional movements, it is apparent that Syrian Armenians’ encounter with Armenia is a process of continuous negotiation—Armenia is alternately a site of refuge, a historic or potential homeland, and a temporary transit. While previous studies have acknowledged the economic, social, and political challenges of settling in Armenia, the 2020 war in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh and its continuing reverberations at both the local and the wider geopolitical levels add a layer of critical precarity that is qualitatively different. This article argues that the 2020 war and its continuing violences have rendered Armenia a precarious homeland for Syrian Armenian refugees. Such precarity potentially jeopardizes the intentionality of many Syrian Armenians to stay in Armenia.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sossie Kasbarian (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
“In truth, I was really a pioneer”: Female Entrepreneurship and Selfhood Formation in Bethlehem's Diasporic Merchant Community, 1900–1940
This article explores girlhood, marriage, and female entrepreneurship in Bethlehem’s diasporic merchant families in the early twentieth century, focusing on the lives of two women whose transition from girlhood to womanhood overlapped with their diasporic experiences in the Americas. Focusing on oral history interviews with Katrina Sa’ade and the memoir of Victoria Kattán de Hirmas, this study examines the outward expansion of Bethlehem’s merchant middle-class from the perspective of women whose lives were indelibly shaped by these ventures. This piece argues that transnational migration and marriage equipped women with essential skills for commercial success and highlights their self-perception as pioneers who forged new paths in the mahjar. Flexible roles for women in Bethlehem’s merchant community, underpinned by Ottoman cultural transformations and the innovative and outward-looking values which underpinned the community’s bold business enterprises, also played a significant role in fostering female entrepreneurship. By tracing the journeys and entrepreneurial endeavors of Katrina and Victoria, the study underscores the transformative impact of migration on understandings of womanhood, work, and identity within diasporic communities, and emphasizes the agency and resilience of women who redefined possibilities for Palestinian women in the diaspora.
Copyright (c) 2025 Eibhlin Priestley (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
TALAR CHAHINIAN, SOSSIE KASBARIAN, and TSOLIN NALBANTIAN, eds., The Armenian Diaspora and Stateless Power: Collective Identity in the Transnational 20th Century (London: I. B. Tauris, 2023)
Copyright (c) 2024 Jennifer Manoukian (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
İLKAY YILMAZ, Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876–1908 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2023)
Copyright (c) 2024 Ella Fratantuono (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
SANİYE DEDEOĞLU, Syrian Refugees and Agriculture in Turkey: Work, Precarity, Survival (London: I. B. Tauris, 2022)
Copyright (c) 2024 Deniz Pelek (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Mobility, Migration, and Domestic Servants in Mid-Nineteenth Century Egypt
Copyright (c) 2024 Mario Ruiz (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Households as Historical Ethnography: People in Motion and Roads to School
Copyright (c) 2024 Julia Clancy-Smith (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Unpacking Education as Migration Driver among Young Jordanian Women: A Study on Gender, Agency, and Sociocultural Transformations in Jordan
This paper explores young Jordanian women’s desire to migrate, uncovering often-unacknowledged factors influencing their decision to leave their home country. By delving into their dreams, aspirations, and expectations, this research uncovers why they firmly aspire and creatively plan to migrate, shedding light on the intricate interplay of agency and gender in shaping their migration choices. It theorizes that these women employ a co-optation strategy, whereby they reinterpret and leverage the inner meaning(s) of gendered expectations regarding education, to facilitate their journey abroad and enact more desired life trajectories. This paper argues that young Jordanian women’s desire to migrate stems from shifting sociocultural values and norms, mirroring evolving understandings of femininity, gender roles, and social hierarchies. Within this framework, migration emerges as a consequence of the country’s inability to address its young population’s aspirations for change. By addressing these dynamics, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of the underlying drivers behind the migration aspirations of a significant segment of Jordan’s youth—a pressing issue the country is facing. Ultimately, the insights offer a valuable perspective on migration as a lens through which ongoing sociocultural transformations can be comprehended.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ivana Cosmano (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Children and Youth Coerced Displacement: A History of Power Struggle between State and Provincial A‘yān’s Families
This article offers a new perspective on children and youth’s coerced displacement in the context of the Ottoman Middle East and highlights their potential as a social group to inform studies of children, kinship, and family vis-a-vis the state. Using iltizām contracts, I argue that the Ottoman state prioritized its stability and economic interests and turned a blind eye to promises it made to ensure the “well-being” of young Ottoman subjects. The contracts recorded around the mid-eighteenth century document an institutionalized practice by the state to remove and incarcerate young and minor males associated with the families of multazims, or tax farmers, who generally hailed from the class of provincial notables, or a‘yān, to persuade the latter to render payment of taxes. Although multazims appeared to be indifferent to the fate of their castaway children, evidence suggests that multazims took advantage of geopolitical changes toward the last quarter of the eighteenth century to avoid the incarceration of their children, as the practice completely disappeared at that time. This article also attempts to approach the question of whether this forced displacement of children represents a form of mobility, in comparison to other forms of children’s mobility, like the devširme, and explores what this meant for the expansion, or retraction, of the state power and its governing policies.
Copyright (c) 2024 Reda Rafei (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
In-Between Categories: Documenting Greek Children’s Legal Belonging in the Suez Canal Region
This paper looks at the complex manner in which children were documented in Ottoman Egypt and their access to citizenship later in postcolonial Egypt. It discusses the making of social and political categories, like citizenship and statelessness, and how Greeks moved through those categories. This paper also analyzes how these categories were imposed, first by the Ottoman Empire and then by the Egyptian nation-state. The end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, and the declaration of the Egyptian Republic in 1953, the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Arab-Israeli Wars in 1967 and 1973, and the new labor laws of the 1950s and 1960s, among other events, impacted Greeks and others who lived in Egypt at that time. The impact among Greeks in Suez Canal cities was particularly evident in the community’s cohesion, as most evacuated the cities in 1967 with almost everyone else following in 1973. These economic and political factors, and the social processes the community underwent, defined Greek children’s relation with the Egyptian postcolonial state.
Copyright (c) 2024 Eftychia Mylona (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
MAURICE EBILEENI, Being There, Being Here: Palestinian Writings in the World (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2022)
Copyright (c) 2023 Joseph R. Farag (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Lifetimes of Instability: the Consequences of Excluding Syrian Boys on the Progressive Era US-Mexico Border
In the first decade of the twentieth century, United States immigration inspectors at the US-Mexico border excluded hundreds of young Syrians, turning many toward unstable lives as unauthorized migrants in North America. Inspectors combined Progressive Era concerns about child labor with orientalist and racist views of migrants from the Ottoman Empire to conclude that unaccompanied young Syrians posed a threat to the American family and workplace and should be sent back across the Atlantic. And while some excluded boys did return to Syria, the majority found ways to enter the United States without authorization. Some sought the help of smugglers and others obtained falsified papers that claimed uncles, brothers, and family friends as their fathers and accompanied them across the border. While these tactics worked, illicit border crossing launched young migrants into an unauthorized life marked by precarity and fear. In fact, oral histories conducted by the author have revealed that young boys who entered the United States without authorization often ended up in unstable professions connected to urban underworlds. Ultimately, this article seeks to demonstrate the ways hardline immigration policies of the early twentieth century targeting young boys set them on paths toward precarity as they navigated lives in the United States.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ashley Johnson Bavery (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Syro-Lebanese from ‘Syriban’: Nostalgia, Partition, and Coexistence in Eveline Bustros’ Imagined Homeland
This article offers new insights into nostalgia and nationalism in the Syrian/Lebanese diaspora through the literary, artistic, and philanthropic work of Eveline Bustros (1878–1971). It relies on her underexplored published works as well as a rare collection of Bustros’ personal correspondence, journals, photographs, and speeches compiled by her family. After World War I, the French partitioned Bilad al-Sham into multiple polities and inaugurated a new citizenship regime dividing erstwhile Ottoman Syrians into categories of “Syrian” and “Lebanese.” In the midst of these geopolitical changes, Bustros and her family lived in Paris, where she began her celebrated literary career. Although she was a committed Lebanese nationalist, Bustros articulated hybrid notions of identity that elided distinctions between “Syrians” and “Lebanese.” Confronted with reports of sectarian violence during the Syrian Revolt (1925–1927), Bustros used her writings to grapple with the feasibility of peaceful coexistence in the Levant. Upon returning to Lebanon, she became a leading member in Lebanon’s early feminist movement while maintaining deep, affective connections to the Syrian interior. Bustros’ life and work complicate understandings of diasporic nationalism and nostalgia by highlighting fluid identities shaped by multidirectional bourgeois mobility, inviting scholars to consider nationalisms beyond the confines of the nation-state.
Copyright (c) 2023 Joshua Donovan (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0