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Migrations and Diaspora: the Experience of Palestinian Christians in Jordan and the United States of America

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Migrations and Diaspora: the Experience of Palestinian Christians in Jordan and the United States of America Migrations and diaspora : the Experience of Palestinian Christians in Jordan and the United States of America Hadeel Fawadleh To cite this version: Hadeel Fawadleh. Migrations and diaspora : the Experience of Palestinian Christians in Jordan and the United States of America. Geography. Université d’Angers, 2017. English. NNT : 2017ANGE0005. tel-01581760 HAL Id: tel-01581760 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01581760 Submitted on 5 Sep 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Hadeel FAWADLEH Mémoire présenté en vue de l’obtention du grade de Docteur de l'Université d'Angers Sous le sceau de l’Université Bretagne Loire École doctorale : Droit, Économie, Gestion, Environnement, Sociétés et Territoires Discipline : Géographie physique, humaine, économique et régionale Spécialité : Géographie humaine Unité de recherche : Espaces et sociétés ESO-Angers (UMR 6590) Soutenue le 23 mars 2017 Thèse N°: 112479 Migrations et diaspora : Expérience des Chrétiens palestiniens en Jordanie et aux États-Unis JURY Rapporteurs : Kamal JABARIN, Professeur de géographie , Université de Birzeit Kamel DORAI, Chargé de recherche au CNRS, Institut français du Proche-Orient (IFPO), Amman-Jordanie Examinateurs : Vincent GEISSER, Chargé de recherche au CNRS - Institut de recherches et d'études sur le monde arabe et musulman, UMR 7301 Ahmad ABU HAMMAD, Professeur de géographie, Université de Birzeit Membre : Mustapha El Hannani, Maître de conférences en géographie, Université d'Angers Directeur de Thèse : Christian PIHET, Professeur de géographie, Université d'Angers Co-directrice de Thèse: Chadia ARAB, Chargée de recherche au CNRS, UMR ESO 6590 L’auteur du présent document vous autorise à le partager, reproduire, distribuer et communiquer selon les conditions suivantes : Vous devez le citer en l’attribuant de la manière indiquée par l’auteur (mais pas d’une manière qui suggérerait qu’il approuve votre utilisation de l’œuvre). Vous n’avez pas le droit d’utiliser ce document à des fins commerciales. Vous n’avez pas le droit de le modifier, de le transformer ou de l’adapter. Consulter la licence creative commons complète en français : http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-nd/2.0/fr/ 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The work of this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Christian Pihet, who accepted me as his Ph.D. student at the University of Angers, France. I appreciate his invaluable advice, constructive comments, and guidance. I would like to express my thankfulness to my co-supervised, Chadia Arab, who always patiently supervised me and guided me to the right direction. Without his guidance, I could not have successfully completed my Ph.D. dissertation. I also appreciate the advice of the committee of examiners. I am especially thankful to my former supervisor, Kamal Abdul-Fattah, who supervised my master dissertation in Birzeit University, and to Kamel Dorai for his ongoing encouragement and critical comments. I am also thankful for the two other members of the committee, Vincent Geisser and Ahmad Abu Hammad, for their contribution of time and ideas and acceptance to supervise my Ph.D. dissertation. I would like also to express my appreciation to all those Palestinians in the diaspora, especially in the US (San Francisco Bay) and Jordan (Amman), who hosted me and provided me with a lot of information as part of the interviews and questionnaires. I am also thankful to the city and village clubs, churches, clerics, legal persons, politicians, and some of mayors or their representatives who devoted much of their time and provided all that was necessary to accomplish this thesis in a timely fashion. I would like also to offer my sincere thanks to Birzeit University, Angers University and the Municipality of Angers. Thanks to their academic partnership that I was offered this Ph. D. scholarship. I would like also to offer my sincere thanks to all institutions which offered me their indispensable generous support, particularly French Government and Open Society Foundation. I am also grateful for my family for their faithful support and encouragement over the stages of this Ph. D. Special thanks to my brother, who has dedicated much of his time for proofreading the chapters of this study. “Research for this dissertation was supported in part by Open Society Foundations (OSF). The opinions expressed herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily express the views of OSF.” 2 RESUME EN FRANCAIS Introduction Pourquoi les Chrétiens migrent-ils de Palestine ? Peut-on considérer leur migration comme sectaire plutôt communautaire ? Est-elle la manifestation de sentiments patriotiques « fragiles », ou d’un détachement progressif de l'arabisme et de l'Orient ? Ces questions, entre autres, font de la migration des Chrétiens palestiniens un objet d’étude important des chercheurs ces dernières années. Pourtant il existe encore peu de travaux sur cette problématique. La migration des Chrétiens palestiniens est liée à une composante fondamentale de la société palestinienne. Bien que la migration ait aidé les Chrétiens palestiniens à résoudre certains de leurs problèmes, en particulier sur le plan économique, elle a aussi accentué leur situation de minorité numérique, ce qui a fait que leur nombre diminue, et leur rôle dans leur pays d'origine est moindre. À l’appui de ces constats, cette étude tente de fournir une contribution géographique et sociologique au thème de la migration et de la diaspora des Chrétiens palestiniens. Selon les statistiques démographiques, le total des Chrétiens palestiniens dans le monde s'élève à 20% (2 280 000 personnes) sur un total de 11 400 000 Palestiniens. Environ 200 000 Chrétiens palestiniens continuent de vivre en Palestine historique, tandis que les autres sont dans la diaspora. Parmi les pays de dispersion des Palestiniens dans le monde, la Jordanie et les États- Unis ont été identifiés pour cette étude. Le choix des deux pays repose sur des bases démographiques, géographiques et culturelles. En Jordanie, les Palestiniens représentent environ 60% de la population totale en Jordanie, 70 à 80% d'entre eux sont concentrés dans le gouvernorat d'Amman et al-Zarqa et dans les banlieues. Quant aux Chrétiens, ils sont environ 239 003 personnes (3,68% de la population totale en Jordanie), dont environ 157 541 (65,71%) Chrétiens d'origine jordanienne et 81 962 (34,29%) Chrétiens d'origine palestinienne. La deuxième zone d'étude était les États-Unis, qui comptent de 200 000 à 250 000 Palestiniens dans tout le pays. La Californie est l’État qui en accueille le plus. Il compte environ 19 000 Palestiniens, principalement basés à Los Angeles et dans la baie de San Francisco. 3 En outre, les Chrétiens palestiniens partagent les mêmes croyances religieuses que l'Occident et la même culture et l'histoire que l'Est. D'autre part, les deux régions (la Jordanie et les États- Unis) ont des similitudes qui ont joué un rôle de premier plan dans le processus de sélection. Représentée par la capitale, Amman, la société jordanienne est une juxtaposition de groupes des migrants. Non seulement elle est composée de Jordaniens, mais également de Palestiniens, d’Irakiens, de Syriens et d’Égyptiens. Il en va de même pour la Californie, qui est une société essentiellement composée des migrants italiens, espagnols, mexicains, philippins et arabes. En outre, le statut juridique des Palestiniens dans les deux sociétés est semblable à celui de leur naturalisation. Bien que cette étude soit géographique et sociologique, la nature du thème – la migration et la diaspora – nous a conduits à utiliser plusieurs méthodologies et outils de recherche ancrés en sciences humaines et sociales. Les méthodologies s’appuient sur l’analyse archives, mais aussi des entretiens, des questionnaires, des photographies et des observations sur le terrain. Nous avons d’abord dépouillé des archives, en particulier des archives statistiques. Cette étape a été décisive car elle a permis de mettre en évidence l’importance du phénomène de migration des Chrétiens palestiniens, ce qui justifie ce choix comme sujet d'étude. De plus, les archives se sont révélées riches en documents publiés par des institutions, en particulier ecclésiastiques et nationales palestiniennes, auxquels il faut ajouter des bulletins et rapports publiés par les clubs de la diaspora. Des entretiens ont été menés avec des personnes individuelles et des familles de la diaspora. Chaque entretien peut être divisé en deux parties. La première partie est narrative. La famille, surtout les parents, ont raconté leur histoire de migration. Ils ont mis en évidence les raisons et les mécanismes de la migration ainsi que les chemins qu'ils avaient suivis jusqu'à leur lieu de vie actuel. D'autres membres de la famille d'un migrant, comme les frères, les sœurs et les oncles, ont également été impliqués dans la narration. La deuxième partie de chaque entretien est cadré par un questionnaire pré-planifié. Les réponses sont données par le père et parfois par la mère (migrants de première génération). Dans certains cas, un migrant de deuxième génération a répondu aux questions. Le questionnaire se compose de trois sections : les réseaux, la diaspora et les identités. 4 Ainsi, l'échantillon de l'étude se devait d’être choisi et inclusif, correspondant à cent douze migrants à parts égales entre Amman et la baie de San Francisco. Nous avons aussi présenté différents cas de familles dans les deux pays.
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