States of Displacement: Middle Eastern Refugees, Internally Displaced Persons and Asylum Seekers in Global Context

The plight of forcibly displaced persons may have lost the spotlight in the  global  news  cycle  due  to  the  COVID-19  pandemic,  but  the  Middle  Eastern  refugee crisis has continued unabated. Nearly 80 million people have been forcibly displaced, including millions of Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, and Yemenis. In  this  special  issue,  anthropologists  highlight  different  states  of  displacement  –  protracted, repeated and recent – amongst Middle Eastern populations that have fled to Germany, Greece, Jordan and Turkey. Amidst profound precarity, refugees manage to negotiate new geographies of displacement, re-create a sense of home, plan their reproductive futures, organise protests to claim their asylum rights, and engage  in  activism  and  solidarity.  Featuring  nuanced  ethnographic  studies,  this  special issue bears witness to refugees’ fortitude and resilience.

DOI:  10.3167/ame.2021.160101