Narratives of Statelessness and Political Otherness: Kurdish and Palestinian Experiences (Minorities in West Asia and North Africa)

This book argues that citizenship is an inadequate solution to the problem of statelessness based on a critical investigation of the lived experiences of Kurdish and Palestinian diasporas in western Europe. It examines how statelessness affects identity formations, homelessness, belonging, non-belonging, otherness, voices, status, (non)recognition, (dis)respect, (in)visibility and presence in the uneven world of nation-states. It also demonstrates that the undoing of non-sovereign identities' subjection to structural subalternization and everyday inferiorization requires rights in excess of the mere acquisition of juridical citizenship, which tends to assume national sameness. That assumption in turn involves sovereign practices of denial and assimilation of ethnic alterity. The book therefore highlights the necessity of de-ethnicizing and decolonizing unitary nation-states that are based on the politico-cultural supremacy of a single, "core" ethnicity as the sovereign legislator of the rules and regimes of national belonging and un-belonging. It therefore broaches questions of "majority" and "minority," mobility, nationalism, home-making, equality, difference and universalism in the context of the nation-state and illustrates how stateless peoples such as Kurds and Palestinians endure and challenge their subordinate position in a hierarchical (geo-)political order and how in so doing remain bound by political otherness. Barzoo Eliassi is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work at Linnaeus University, Sweden Acknowledgments Praise page Narratives of Statelessness and Political Otherness Contents 1 Theorizing Statelessness and Stateless Diasporas The ‘State’ of Statelessness Studies Rethinking Arendt’s Conception of Statelessness Migration, Exile and Otherness Dispersed Communities and the Ties that Bind Across Borders The Ongoing Zionist Dispossession of Palestinians Palestinian Displacement and Dispersal The Political Encirclement of the Kurds in the Middle East Turkey Iran Iraq Syria Kurdish Diaspora Formations in Sweden and the UK Narrating Experiences of Statelessness and Political Otherness Organization of the Book References 2 The Nation-State Crafting of Majorities and Minorities Sovereignty and the State Hierarchies of Nation-States and Contesting Globalization The Nation-State, Minority/majority and Statelessness Predatory Majorities and the Struggle Over (Re)definition of the Political Home Viewing Minority Rights Through the Lenses of Securitization References 3 Defining, Embracing and Resisting (State)lessness Statelessness as a Status Injury Resisting Statelessness, Otherness and Invisibilization (De)stabilizing Hierarchies of Statelessness and Suffering References 4 Politics of Home and ‘Statesickness’: Perils and Promises Belonging and Home-Making in an Uneven World ‘Statelessness Means a Grave Without an Address’ (Un)imagining Statehood Pluralizing Claims to Home(Land) References 5 Marked Groups and Hierarchies of Citizenship in Authoritarian and Liberal Democratic States Citizenship and Its Others The Other Side of Citizenship: When the Particular Masks Itself as the Universal Citizenship, Welfare and (Im)mobility The Discomforts of Being a Non-White Citizen in White Countries References 6 The Weight of Assimilation and the Confines of Resistance in Diaspora Molding National Sameness Through Assimilation Dehumanization and Foreignization of Kurdish Identity Internalized Racism and Domination The Parameters of Diasporic Resistance The Continuation of the Cultural War Against the Kurds References 7 Critique and Dissent as a Transnational Obligation: Diasporic Appraisals of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq Kurdistan Region as the Benchmark for Kurdish Sovereignty and Statehood Desiring Kurdish Rule Beyond Authoritarianism and Patrimonial Power Diasporic Grievances and Critique References 8 Seeing as the Stateless in a World of Nation-States References Index "This book argues that citizenship is an inadequate solution to the problem of statelessness based on a critical investigation of the lived experiences of Kurdish and Palestinian diasporas in western Europe. It examines how statelessness affects identity formations, homelessness, belonging, non-belonging, otherness, voices, status, (non)recognition, (dis)respect, (in)visibility and presence in the uneven world of nation-states. It also demonstrates that the undoing of non-sovereign identities subjection to structural subalternization and everyday inferiorization requires rights in excess of the mere acquisition of juridical citizenship, which tends to assume national sameness. That assumption in turn involves sovereign practices of denial and assimilation of ethnic alterity. The book therefore highlights the necessity of de-ethnicizing and decolonizing unitary nation-states that are based on the politico-cultural supremacy of a single, "core" ethnicity as the sovereign legislator of the rules and regimes of national belonging and un-belonging. It therefore broaches questions of "majority" and "minority" mobility, nationalism, home-making, equality, difference and universalism in the context of the nation-state and illustrates how stateless peoples such as Kurds and Palestinians endure and challenge their subordinate position in a hierarchical (geo- )political order and how in so doing remain bound by political otherness"-- Provided by the publisher