Proximity and Distance: Palestinian Women's Social Lives in Diaspora

Syrian Women Refugees: Coping with indeterminate liminality during forcible displacement

“…Moreover, our process model explains how the forcibly displaced manage to symbolically re-establish a connection to their past selves. This point extends the current line of argument that forcibly displaced people work to maintain their own culture as merely an 'add on' to the main focus of their 'integration' into the host community (Rothenberg, 1999). Instead, our findings suggest that maintaining the connection to the past is crucial for them to maintain positive self-identification during indeterminate liminality and therefore, eventually, may lead to better outcomes of integration.…”

“…We then began to explore and contrast the three contexts within which the refugees were forcefully (re)settled. We believed that the within and cross-case analyses of different geographical distances from 'home' could be insightful (Rothenberg, 1999;Petreet, 2007).…”

“…Therefore, we drew upon studies on Palestinian displacement to shape our understanding of the Syrians refugees’ international (re)settlement in neighbouring Arab countries and around the world. For example, Rothenberg’s (1999) ethnographic research on Palestinian women who settled in two different countries – Jordan and Canada – provided nuances in refugees’ struggles across different contexts. In the Canadian context, it was found that community ties ease and relations to place shift to a more imaginary level, while the proximity of Jordan to Palestine facilitated periodic visits, allowing for a closer social relation and stronger sentiments of belonging.…”

“…We then began to explore and contrast the three contexts within which the refugees were forcefully (re)settled. We believed that the within and cross-case analyses of different geographical distances from ‘home’ could be insightful (Peteet, 2007; Rothenberg, 1999). However, as the data was narrowed down to a choice of empirical examples that ‘strongly informed the development and conceptualisation of liminality’ (Beech, 2011, p. 7) we noticed that, unlike previous cross-country studies, the actors were all experiencing the same seemingly never-ending ‘transition’ phase of liminality, regardless of the physical differences of each context.…”

Introduction: proximity relations in the 21st century

“…Thus, historians point out that various techniques have been invented over the centuries to help individuals maintain relational ties; among those techniques are writing (letters, for example), currency or the establishment of rules of behavior and exchange (King and Frost, 2002). Specialists in diasporas study the way in which the family, community, or friendship ties that diaspora members develop and maintain (Cli ord, 1994) enable them to share common cultures, values, and representations, even when they are located a great distance from one another; some authors examine how those ties are maintained despite distance and location changes (Rothenberg, 1999). Others extend the analysis of proximity between members of a work group (Monge and Kirste, 1980) to include the long-distance links between members of networks and talk of perceived or organizational proximity.…”