Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: INTRODUCTION: LOCATING PALESTINE IN THE ARAB AMERICANS -PART IAs we write these words, the United States has just launched an invasion of Venezuela, resulting in the kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro.Among those observing these events firsthand are Palestinian communities that have long made their home in the Americas.For many people in these diasporic communities, events in Venezuela reinforce a sense of shared historical experience that connects their historical homeland with their adopted countries across the Americas.Since at least the 1960s, Palestinians have framed their struggle for freedom within a global movement against imperialism-a movement in which Latin America has often occupied a central position.This history cannot be flattened into simplified narratives of solidarity: some Palestinians in the Americas have become part of a conservative elite that views anti-imperialist politics with suspicion.And yet, for many Palestinians, the parallels remain clear.At a historical juncture where Palestine is suffering a genocide financed and armed by the United States, the synergies between emancipatory struggles in Palestine and the Americas appear stronger than ever.What position do the Americas occupy in the Palestinian imaginary, and how have diasporic communities connected these distant regions?In September 2024, a group of scholars and writers gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina, to discuss these and related questions.Hosted by the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University, we spent three lively days discussing a vibrant range of perspectives from the Americas, Europe, and West Asia.This issue of Mashriq & Mahjar, the first of two special issues, is the product of those discussions.Collectively, the two special issues offer a snapshot of the latest research on the Palestinian diaspora in the Americas.Within this field, a new generation has set about exploring the rich possibilities that the Americas hold for understandings of Palestine as both a physical homeland and a discursive space.These are young scholars trained in the methods of transnational research: accustomed to working in multilingual contexts, their intellectual formation stems from a fundamental interest in the flow of people and ideas across national and regional spaces.Collectively, they are establishing a new framework for understanding Palestine's historical link with the Americas.Since the late nineteenth century, Palestinians have been migrating to the Americas in large numbers.Over time, the Americas have become a significant component of the global Palestinian community.Today, Palestinians are scattered throughout the Americas where countries like Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador hold some of the largest Palestinian populations in the world.For many years, the study of these migrations was integrated into the broader movement of Arabic-speaking peoples across the Atlantic.Within this field, Palestinians were barely visible amidst the much larger number of Lebanese and Syrian migrants.Beginning in the 1990s, however, more specific studies on Palestinians in the Americas began to proliferate.These studies were characterized by two predominant trends.The first was a concern with affirming the presence and contribution of Palestinians in specific national contexts.Often interested in demonstrating the successful integration of Palestinians into host societies, these studies provided detailed accounts of, for example, the Palestinians in Chile, the Palestinians in Honduras, or the Palestinians in El Salvador.The second predominant characteristic was an interest in the degree to which communities have preserved their Palestinian identity, expressed through language, marriage, religion, food, and other cultural dimensions.While these studies have been important in
Authors: Ricardo Marzuca Butto, Jacob Norris
Institutions: University of Chile, University of Sussex
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7147019554
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