In this article I focus on constructions of diasporic national identities and the nation as active and strategic processes using the case study of Palestinians in Athens. I seek, thereby, to contribute to debates on national identity, the nation and long-distance nationalism, particularly in relation to those in diaspora with a collective cause to advocate. I explore how first- and second-generation Palestinians in Athens construct and narrate Palestinian national identities, the homeland and political unity. I argue that the need to ‘choose’ to be Palestinian, often for political reasons, highlights that the nation is not a ‘given’ entity. This can be a difficult process for those in diaspora to deal with, as there may be tensions between constructions of political unity and attachment to the homeland and feelings of ambivalence and in-between-ness that may be seen as politically counterproductive. However, I stress that ‘messy’ and contradictory narratives and spatialities of diasporic national identities that come about as a result of cross-border or transnational (dis)connections do not necessarily lead to apathy and, therefore, can be important.

/pdf/learning-to-be-palestinian-in-athens-constructing-national-2wg3h0b9nr.pdf

Learning to be Palestinian in Athens: constructing national identities in diaspora

Religion and Ethnicity

Before the flames: a quest for the history of Arab Americans

This thesis is a qualitative investigation of memories of Palestine among exiled Palestinians
and their descendants in Poland and in the UK. Taking the continuous character of
Palestinian dispossession as a point of departure, it examines their modes of remembering,
imagining and relating to Palestine. The thesis seeks to contribute to the sociology of
diaspora by shedding light on the multiplicity of situated trajectories that shape diasporic
Palestinians’ relationships with their ‘ancestral’ homeland. It delineates three generations
of Palestinians in diaspora: those exiled in the 1948 and their descendants born in refugee
camps; those who left as a direct or indirect result of the occupation; and those born as
‘second generation migrants’ in their parent’s countries of exile. It argues that while the
continuing erasure of Palestine informs all of their experiences, each generation produces
memories of ancestral homeland in relation to different geographies, temporalities and set
of imaginings. Tracing these differences, I am concerned with how the plurality of diasporic
memories allows generations of Palestinians to endure and constantly re-create their
relationships with the Palestine despite more than six decades of continuous uprooting.

The research is based on oral history interviews with 33 Palestinians in Poland and the UK,
followed by an ethnographic audio-visual exploration of some of the research participants’
sites of memory. The audio-visual engagements have moved back and forth between stories
narrated in Poland and in the UK and site-specific field visits within today’s Israel and the
Occupied Palestinian Territories. The five ethnographic etudes that accompany the written
part of this thesis strive to restore, at least partially, access to context that was lost with the
participants’ uprooting and to explore the texture and materiality of their dispossession.
This approach contributes to the development of a multi-sensory methodology that seeks to
understand diasporic and exilic experiences by placing the relationship between memory,
time and place at the heart of sociological enquiry.

Remembering Palestine: A multi-media ethnography of generational memories among diaspora Palestinians

of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Mass Communication IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY IN THE WEBLOGS OF MUSLIM WOMEN OF MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN DESCENT LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES By Ashley Dyess Sink May 2006 Chair: Michael Leslie Major Department: Mass Communication In recent years, media attention in the United States increasingly has turned to Arabs and Muslims. But few of the voices speaking are those of the people in question. Muslim women, especially, are seldom heard in the mainstream. However, many of them are speaking, telling their stories to audiences large and small through new technology on the Internet. Weblogs, online personal journals, allow anyone with access to the Internet to become a published author. These sites of dialogue and intimate revelation offer unique insights into their authors’ lives. In this thesis, in-depth qualitative textual analysis was used to examine the weblogs of six Muslim women of Middle Eastern or North African descent (MMENA) living in the United States and writing in English to understand how they use their blogs to negotiate identity and create community. Intercultural communication theories (specifically Ting-Toomey’s identity negotiation theory, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, and Tajfel’s social identity theory), computer-

/pdf/identity-and-community-in-the-weblogs-of-muslim-women-of-30ppow2oux.pdf

Identity and community in the weblogs of muslim women of middle eastern and north african descent living in the united states

The literature on how diasporic communities connect to their (imagined) homelands (countries of origin) often neglects how diasporic individuals might connect with one another across diasporic communities to maintain their culture. This article describes some of the ways in which Palestinian Arabs in the diaspora, largely a by-product of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, practise and thus maintain their culture, beyond contacts with the Arab world via travel and high technology, through their contacts with one another across continents. Maintaining culture involves speaking Arabic and observing Palestinian Arab customs and traditions. This article also discusses identity construction, multiple identities, and the difference between ethnic and national minorities. The types of questions raised in the discussion point out inherent problems with the diaspora framework that need to be addressed in the literature. As James Clifford (1997, 246) notes, \"[d]iasporas also connect multiple communities of a dispersed population\". These connections will be demonstrated by sharing some of my personal experiences in interactions with family and friends in Ecuador, Australia and the United States (US). For the purposes of this article, Hawai'i, where I reside, will be treated as part of the US when describing or discussing interactions with Palestinians in Ecuador or Australia. In all other contexts, it will be treated as separate from the US.

Maintaining culture, reclaiming identity: Palestinian lives in the diaspora

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Maintaining culture, reclaiming identity: Palestinian lives in the diaspora