Based on extensive research (January 2006 - January 2008) among Palestinian refugees living within United Nations Relief and Works Agency camps in Amman, Jordan, my dissertation examines how the contingencies of local and transnational politics constitute particular forms of identification that underscore the possibilities and limits of Palestinian ethnicity and nationhood. My dissertation underscores three critical issues within the process of ethno-national identification among diaspora Palestinians. First, my research shows how Palestinian ethno-national identifications reflect two critical issues: (1) the exclusionary discourse and practices of Transjordanian nationalists and the Jordanian State and (2) the desire to identify as Palestinians, not Jordanians. To challenge their marginalization in Jordan, Palestinians rely on pan-Arab and religious identifications that emphasize their ethno-religious commonality with Jordanians while preserving their distinct ethno-national identification as Palestinians. Second, my research demonstrates how categories of national and religious identification among refugees indicate the intersections between local concerns and transnational politics. I show how the idioms of religious nationalism articulated by refugees concerning the homeland reflect the significance of Palestinian homeland politics in Jordanian camps and offer Palestinians an opportunity to assert national identifications in a context where Palestinian nationalism is strictly controlled. Finally, my dissertation examines how the unique experience and meaning of life as a refugee in Jordan facilitates national identifications defined in terms of displacement and exile. As I show, refugee status constitutes a central point of identification among Palestinians that enables specific forms of ethnic and national belonging grounded in the experience of prolonged displacement and the myth of return.This dissertation reflects a central concern over the impact of transnational migration and displacement upon the formation and meaning of ethno-national communities and their location within the nation-state. My work examines how ethnic and national categories, whether at the level of the state, national elites, or everyday people, are produced within the nexus of local and transnational struggles that underscore the often contentious position of migrant communities within host states and homeland politics. By recognizing that the process of identification among displaced peoples reflects transnational realities, my research highlights the instability of social categories and the conditions under which they are represented, resisted, and claimed.
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