Decentring state categories: diaspora within a Palestinian geopolitical assemblage in Nicosia, Cyprus

Abstract

With over 50% of Palestinians in diaspora, global constructions of what is Palestinian are central to Palestinian geopolitics. This article examines how the meanings and implications of the label “Palestinian” in diaspora are produced as Palestinians negotiate the politics of migration and citizenship while living in Cyprus. Using the concept of a geopolitical assemblage incorporates the role of state immigration control into a critical discussion of diaspora. Cyprus provides a complex context in which the momentary constructions of a Palestinian diaspora in relation to other geopolitical entities affects Palestinians despite their immigration or citizenship status in Cyprus.

Keywords:

• Cyprus
• Palestine
• diaspora
• geopolitical assemblage
• asylum

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Drs Amy Mills and Anna Secor for their mentorship and valuable input. Thank you too to Dr Patricia Ehrkamp, Jessa Loomis, Malene Jacobsen, Kelsy Yeargain, Daniel Cockayne and Leif Johnson for their feedback during our workshop. And finally, an eternal thank you to all of the participants who took the time to speak to me and made this paper possible. All errors and shortcomings are purely my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Brittany Cook Barrineau http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4016-8938

Notes

1 I use Palestine here as a shorthand the Palestinian mandate, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinian Territories and the State of Palestine.

2 Discussions regarding the occupation and future statehood are outside the scope of this project. But certainly, as I mention later, the politics of diaspora are central to debates about future statehood.

3 Larnaca is a town on the southern coast and is about 28.5 miles from Nicosia.

4 In 2010, there were 1857 Palestinian citizens living in Cyprus and between 2003 and 2011, there were between 35 and 1020 Palestinian asylum applicants each year (Eurostat, 2011). While these numbers are useful for understanding the general context, my definition of Palestinian is not limited to citizenship or last place of residence.

5 Cyprus Mail is one of the most read English language newspapers and was often discussed in my interviews with migrants and Cypriots.

6 Feminist geopolitical scholarship includes, but is not limited to, analyses of gender. The majority of my interviewees were men; and thus, I do not have enough data to analyse issues related to gender.

7 Entities is used instead of things, objects or actants because it refers to both the present and the absent; to ‘“objects” such as affects, virtual memories, hauntings, and atmospheres’ (Anderson & Harrison, 2010, p. 16).

8 All names are pseudonyms to protect people's identities. Likewise, some biographical facts are changed and one person's details may not fully correspond with one pseudonym.

9 Cyprus upgraded the Diplomatic Mission to Embassy in 2013.

10 An official at the Diplomatic Mission of Palestine told me that it becomes increasingly harder after the age of 5 and then more so after the age of 16.

11 Her parents came to Cyprus in 1948 since Cyprus and Palestine were both British territories, making travel to Cyprus easy. Her parents saw it as a temporary move their entire lives.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Walker Institute of International and Area Studies and by the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina.