Citizenship, Memory, Identity: Life Histories of Palestinian Migrants to Canada

Abstract

My thesis describes the significance of refugee camp experiences on Palestinian migrants to Canada. I portray the ways in which political solidarity and individual aspirations relate though life history interviews with migrants that have left the Middle East. My interview data, based on ten qualitative interviews, suggests that migrants do not necessarily view migration from camps as a central point of tension with the national liberation movement. The people I spoke to do not consider themselves to have turned away from Palestine in any way by coming to Canada. Rather, on many levels, kin relations and social networks structured how participants saw their responsibility to national liberation. The choices migrants made for the benefit of themselves and their families were fundamentally related to their ideas of belonging to and having a responsibility to a collective. I argue that for the people I spoke to, migration was not an act but an ongoing and cyclical experience.