• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

EXPULSIONS AND RECEPTIONS: PALESTINIAN IRAQ WAR REFUGEES IN THE BRAZILIAN NATION-STATE by BAHIA MICHELINE MUNEM A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Women’s and Gender Studies Written under the direction of Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas And approved by _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May, 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Expulsions and Receptions: Palestinian Iraq War Refugees in the Brazilian Nation-state By BAHIA MICHELINE MUNEM Dissertation Director: Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas This dissertation examines the resettlement of a group of Palestinian Iraq War refugees in Brazil. In 2007, Latin America's largest democracy and self-proclaimed racial democracy made what it claimed was a humanitarian overture by resettling 108 Palestinian refugees displaced from Baghdad as a result of the Iraq War. The majority of them had escaped from Baghdad in 2003 and had been living for nearly five years in a makeshift refugee camp on the border of Jordan and Iraq. Utilizing a multi-method approach, this work examines how Brazil, with its long history of Arab migration, incorporates this specific re-diasporized group into the folds of its much-touted racial democracy, an important arm of Brazilian exceptionalism. In order to address the particularity of Palestinian refugees, and while considering pluralism discourses and other important socio-political dynamics, I engage and extend Edward Said’s framework of Orientalism by analyzing its machinations in Brazil. To closely assess the particularity of the resettled Palestinian refugees (but also Arabs more generally), I consider how already stereotyped Brazilians construct Palestinians in Brazil through an Orientalist lens. This Orientalism, I argue, is a product of a Neo-Orientalist glaze. This formulation takes into consideration the racialized and ii exoticized constructions of Brazilians in order to examine how these essentialist ideas are reconfigured and reproduced to “Orientalize” other others. In examining the near and distant history of this group, interrogating labor histories and contemporary labor practices, dissecting their incorporation into Brazilian public policies, and interrogating discourses of cultural misrecognitions and problematic Palestinian cultural constructions, I have made significant theoretical interventions and highlighted distinct ways in which members of a minority community are de-subjectified and re-subjectified in the Brazilian context. Moreover, this analysis provides insight into the Brazilian nation-state and the scope and scale of its neoliberal form of statecraft. Considered together, my dissertation engages and traverses a wide range of literatures, crosses disciplinary boundaries, and contributes to multiple fields of study. At the same time, it illuminates in fine detail the daily lives of a group of refugees whose experiences can help us re-imagine the lives of multiply-displaced persons in other times and places. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In undertaking this project, I embarked on a complex, at times difficult, but still wonderful journey and have a number of people to thank for their encouragement and generosity at various stages of this process. First and foremost, I must thank the resettled women and men who graciously allowed me into their lives and provided the very possibility to craft this project. Their generosity and resilience have been inspiring and humbling. In Brazil, an unanticipated enduring friendship and working relationship blossomed in the process of my fieldwork. Fellow scholar Sonia Hamid, ukhti e amiga, provided support, encouragement, and exceedingly helpful data exchanges across a great distance. This project would have been far less rich without such generous interchanges. Francirosy Ferreira was particularly kind and insightful in forging this contact, but also in providing other invaluable connections. Adriana Piscitelli was instrumental in providing scholarly and logistical information that made my first field visit less arduous and living accommodations in São Paulo possible. I am very thankful to Mary Hawkesworth, who at the time was Chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies department at Rutgers University, for facilitating contact with Adriana and her Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero. At Rutgers University, I am also very grateful for the support of the current Women’s and Gender Studies Chair, Abena Busia, and the faculty who have served as Graduate Directors during my time in the program. Samira Kawash, Ed Cohen, Anna Sampaio, and Yana V. Rodgers were supportive and always made themselves available to answer questions and address concerns. Dr. Yana Rodgers has been tremendously iv invested in graduate student success and her encouragement and assistance with locating funding were enormously helpful. Kayo Denda, WGS librarian extraordinaire, played a pivotal role in locating sources during the early stages of my research, and our conversations about migratory movements in Brazil were always informative and generative. Her keen insights were valuable and encouraging. I must also thank Kayo and the Rutgers University Libraries Tech Staff, Richard Sandler and Andrew Ruggiero, for all of their assistance with technology leading up to and on the actual day of my defense. Awards from the Rutgers Graduate School-New Brunswick, the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, a Fellowship from the Institute for Research on Women, a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies, and a Scholar-Teacher appointment in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Rutgers University-Newark, made it possible to research, develop, and complete this project. My utmost respect and deep gratitude for my dissertation advisor, Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas, is difficult to encapsulate. Enrollment in her seminar, “Race, Migration, Citizenship,” in my first year of graduate coursework was transformative. It was there, in part, that my dissertation project began to take root. The readings, discussions, and Ana Yolanda’s incisive interventions provoked my thinking and also led me to fall in love with ethnography. She has provided me with guidance, support, and mentorship through the various stages of my project’s development. Ana Yolanda was willing to look at early and under-developed ruminations of my work to provide me with sound critique and advice. Her provocative questions during dissertation writing always pushed my analysis and my work has benefitted from her insights in immeasurable ways. I am deeply v indebted to Ana Yolanda for showing an enduring confidence in me as a scholar. Her genuine excitement and investment in my project encouraged and pushed me through challenging times in this process. I feel very fortunate to have had her as an advisor. A deep and resounding thank you to my wonderful dissertation committee members: Nancy Hewitt, Ethel Brooks, and my outside reader, John T. Karam. Their important insights and engagement with my work made the final stage of this process a memorable and wonderful experience. A seminar class with Ethel Brooks in my first year of graduate school was another critical space that sparked the genesis of this project. Ethel’s keen questions and enthusiasm for my work from the very beginning were invaluable and are deeply appreciated. Even though this dissertation was already enormously indebted to John Karam’s scholarship, it was made all the richer when he agreed to be my outside reader. He immediately provided me with more recent and important resources, which were enormously fruitful in the final draft of this dissertation. I am very grateful to John for his willingness to come on board in the later stage of this journey and for his sincere support and excitement for my work. I especially want to thank Nancy Hewitt for being so generous with her time and for providing detailed feedback on early drafts of my project, even after officially retiring. I feel incredibly lucky to be among the few remaining graduate students to have the privilege of her participation in their dissertation committee. Nancy’s rigorous scholarship, genuine kindness, and serious commitment to students’ work and ideas will always stand as a source of guidance and inspiration in my own journey as a scholar and teacher. I am thankful to friends near and far who have provided support and encouragement throughout this process. Nuha, Robert, Suheir, Siobhan, Alice, and vi Sherril Kuby. Sherril, while supportive, often reminded me of the importance of taking breaks from my work to enjoy life a little. My only regret is not heeding her advice often enough. Sherril lost her courageous struggle with cancer March 15, 2014. Her words, however, will resonate for a long time. Writing sessions across state lines with my writing buddy and good friend, Danielle Phillips, were enormously helpful and fruitful. Our weekly accountability lists also served well to keep me on task. I am fortunate to have encountered such a great source of support and motivation in grad school. My parents’ lives and multiple migrations in many ways served as a catalyst for this project and even made it possible. I am indebted to them and the struggles they endured which somehow led me to this peculiar social space. My father, Hassan, taught me at a young age that the world was not always as it seemed and neither was the broadcast news. I hope for us 10,000 Thursdays—asharat aalaf al-khamees, Inshallah. How I wish minha mãe querida, Juraci, could be here to partake in this milestone. This accomplishment is as much hers as it is mine. My mother’s very life gifted me with grit and possibility. She was a master negotiator and economist—the kind a difficult life forges. Her ingenuity inspires me everyday. What heart, compassion, and profound sensibility she had. Mãe was the incarnation of sumud [steadfastness]. Her death broke me open in painful and magical ways, and her light and love guided me through this process in knowable and unknowable ways.

Load more

  305

Copy Link