Amman, as the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, has been said to suffer from a crisis of identity, a condition that is seen as impinging a sense of authentic urban memory and form. As it has become the destination of multiple refugee and migrant communities seeking safety in Jordan, Amman's subsequent migrant make-up has been primarily narrated as a burdenon space, on resources and on understandings of the Jordanian national self-preventing a sense of national unity being found within its capital. Countering these narratives of burden and crises, this paper seeks to reconceptualise the role of migrants in Jordan's capital as contributing to and participating in the development of Amman as a modern urban centre. By discussing one particular communal group -Palestinian Christiansand their contributions to the socio-spatial fabric of the city this paper aims to promote a shift in narrative around Amman in particular, and Jordan in general, as one which can embrace its history of not only migrating people but their ideas of modernity and urbanity and how they are imprinted on the urban landscape today.
This paper contributes to 'visiting friends and relatives' (VFR) discussions within migration and diaspora literatures by proposing a closer theorization of religious mobilities through the conceptual framework of 'diasporic pilgrimage' . It advances VFR thinking by considering religion as a productive analytical category to interrogate relationships between people and place which sustain and constitute diasporic connection and attachment. This will be explored through the experiences and encounters of Palestinian-Jordanian Christians undertaking visits to places of religious and relational significance across Israel and/or Palestine from Jordan. Through an exploration of ethnographic data collected amongst diasporic PalestinianChristians living in Jordan, diasporic pilgrimage will be theorized as a localized process critically engaging with everyday facets of familiarity and regularity. This will revolve around three main elements of diasporic pilgrimage: translocal connections, temporalities and power geometries which constitute visits from Jordan and the so-called 'Holy Land' a diasporic form of religious mobility.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.