Forced Displacement

Coerced Migration: Mobility Under Siege in Gaza

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 50(10): 2359–2383 (2024)

This article, based on field research conducted between 2018 and 2019 centres the role of Israeli state coercion in the migration of young Palestinians from Gaza. In recent years, migration from Gaza has been described by journalists and policy analysts as an ‘emerging phenomenon’, with many Palestinians leaving with the intention to seek asylum in Europe and beyond. In this article, I map existing data on international migration from Gaza, which has been under siege since 2007. I then draw from qualitative data gathered during fieldwork in Gaza to explain how migration in a context of a siege can best be understood. I apply a framework of coercion to explain the migration decisions of young people in Gaza, arguing that the siege has created an environment so coercive that it forces them to leave, while limiting them primarily to dangerous routes in doing so. Circumstances for leaving remain key to accessing international protection regimes. This article therefore contributes to the current debate of definitions and ways of understanding migration, in the context of Gaza.

Refugee Status, Permanent Residency, and Citizenship: The re-making of categories among Palestinian youth in East Jerusalem

Journal of Refugee Studies, 36(1): 65–83 (2023)

This article ethnographically explores ways that young Palestinian refugees seek to strengthen their claims to residency in Jerusalem. It describes the complex layers of colonial subjugation faced by these young people and the ways they attune their everyday life choices in this context of long-term insecurity. I argue that through situations forced upon them in efforts by the Israeli government to reduce the Palestinian demographic of the city, young people are re-making the categories they live under, away from their bureaucratic and assumed political meaning. This article explores different examples of engagement with Israeli state institutions as tactics undertaken to mitigate the increasing uncertainty surrounding residency revocation and subsequent forcible transfer of Palestinians from Jerusalem. I argue that the reason young people are re-attributing meaning of these categories is to safeguard their futures, in light of the failure of international frameworks to do the same.

“In Gaza, There is no Tomorrow”: Youth Participation in Gaza’s Great March of Return

Chapter 19 in Bocco, R. and Said, I. Decolonising the Question of Palestine. Geneva: IHEID Press

This chapter is based on interviews with young people in Gaza who took part in the Great March of Return. It draws from a period of ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in Gaza over ten months between 2018 and 2019. While many accounts, particularly in the early weeks and months of the march described this moment in time as a political awakening, and as a unifying force throughout Gaza, others shed light on different kinds of struggle. The evolution of the march has been extensively documented by journalists, human rights groups, and humanitarian organisations. Yet narratives of participants and their reasons for and against participating in the march in the context of the extremely violent response of the Israeli Defense Force towards protestors, have not yet been explored. Doing so helps to move beyond the ‘moment’ of the march itself, and to look instead at how the experience of 73 years of settler colonialism, intensified by 15 years of blockade, manifests in the decision-making of young people in Gaza. 

Conceptualising and challenging child neglect in humanitarian action: Protecting displaced children in Jordan and Palestine

(with Mohammed Al-Rozzi, Jason Hart & Kirsten Pontalti)

Child Abuse and Neglect 147 (2024)

Humanitarian organisations commonly identify neglect as a specific form of harm from which children should be protected. However, lack of debate about the aetiology of child neglect has left intact a tendency to assume that it is due to a failure of caregivers. Obscured by this assumption are the role of the humanitarian system in supporting or, indeed, undermining the efforts of primary caregivers. This study brings together insights from the literature on child neglect in humanitarian settings with findings from empirical research in the Middle East. Fieldwork involved 38 ‘peer researchers’ from five refugee communities: Sudanese, Somali, Iraqi, Syrian (in Jordan) and Palestinian (in Gaza). These researchers undertook enquiry with a total of around 300 people across their respective communities. Fieldwork revealed neglect in three distinct areas: educational participation, access to healthcare, and physical safety. This neglect can be related to the humanitarian system, (including humanitarian agencies, host government, donors, etc.), that is both directly neglectful and undermining of caregivers' efforts. Caregivers in our study illustrated the impossibility of exercising constant vigilance over children within conditions of extreme social and economic marginalization. Thoroughgoing debate about child neglect is needed to address this situation and ensure that caregivers receive adequate support to meet their children's needs. Such support should be offered in a manner that upholds the dignity of displaced people - adults and children alike.

COVID-19 in Gaza: Refugee Community Perspectives on the Pandemic

(with Jason Hart, Mohammed Al-Rozzi, Luigi Achilli, Nur Abdelkhaliq Zamora, Luisa Enria, Christina Torsein and Scott Cameron)

ELRHA Interactive Research Report (2021)

This report presents findings of a study into the responses of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to medical and public health measures since the on-set of COVID-19. This study was funded by an ELRHA R2HC Rapid Research grant on COVID-19 in humanitarian settings. It has been designed and undertaken
to inform and support the on-going humanitarian response in Gaza, and was conduced online by an international team between July and December 2020. This qualitative study included 68 individuals from locations across the Gaza Strip and a variety of methods. Despite widespread understanding of the virus, our research revealed that the population often see the measures needed to manage the pandemic as worse than the disease itself. Thus, when people have symptoms, many do not get tested/disclose this information because they do not want their household to be quarantined. People with symptoms often self-isolate to the extent they can afford to. Although there is a high level of knowledge and understanding of the virus, some assert that COVID can be treated with herbal remedies or teas. Such reactions and coping strategies should be seen in the context of a popular perception of abandonment by authorities and the international community, and the consequent need for individuals and communities to be self-reliant. This has long applied to managing everyday life under siege in Gaza, and now is relevant to managing COVID-19.