Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants: Displacement and Emplacement in a Palestinian Refugee Camp

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Graduate student Nadia Latif, supervised by Dr. Brinkley M. Messick, is conducting research in and about the Palestinian refugee camp of Bourj el-Brajaneh, located in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. Many of the refugees in this camp, as well as in other settlements in Lebanon, continue to assert their attachment to the land of Palestine and the villages and towns their grandparents were forced to leave. Latif seeks to determine why this attachment has persisted over three generations and how Palestinian national identity has been produced and maintained in the process. The researcher lived in Bourj el-Barajneh for over a year (2003-2004, and 2006). Her research methods have included participant observation, event analysis, unstructured interviewing, life histories of key informants, and genealogical interviewing. She also has conducted archival research in the libraries of the American University of Beirut and the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut. She will complete the research by analyzing almost 200 hundred hours of taped interviews with the refugees and investigating the founding and early years of the camp through archival research at the International Red Cross Headquarters in Geneva, and the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in Amman, Jordan, The research project will contribute to social science theory concerning the production of national identity under conditions of displacement and marginalisation, and the role of everyday practices and social relationships in this process. Because of the controversies surrounding the refugees' assertions of the right to return and the socio-political opposition to their assimilation into Lebanese society, this project is of social as well as scientific interest. The research also will contribute to the training of a social scientist.