Giulia El-Dardiry, PhD candidate, Anthropology
giulia.eldardiry [at] mcgill.ca (Email)
Project Title: A place of hospitable engagements: Displacement, integration and livelihoods of Iraqi refugees in Jordan
Research interests: forced displacement; Iraq; transnationalism; hospitality; place and belonging
Geographic Focus: Middle East; Mediterannean
Main supervisor: Dr. John Galaty
Project Description: Studies of refugees have disproportionately focused on encamped populations, betraying a policy-bias toward the study of dependent refugee populations, humanitarian organisations and experiences of loss, which has precluded nuanced understandings of displacement in contexts of protracted conflict. This bias has made invisible the significant number of self-settled urban refugees who are dramatically altering the landscapes of major cities of the global South. In the case of Iraq, this bias has made it particularly difficult to properly explicate the complex dynamics of the largely urban post-2003 displacement, in a region profoundly marked by protracted conflict, an extensive labour migration regime, as well as meta-regional ideologies, such as pan-Arabism, that provide for concepts of belonging across boundaries. Specifically, the experiences of Iraqi refugees in Jordan, and the ways in which they been accommodated by urban host communities, have been obscured. In exploring the situation of Iraqis in Jordan through the lens of strategies of living, this study hopes to act as a corrective to the above bias, and to contribute to understandings of forced migration, refugee livelihoods, host-refugee relations and the politics of place.
Previous education:
MHSc, Health Sciences, University of Toronto
BA Anthropology, McGill University