What visibility conceals. Re-embedding Refugee Migration from Iraq

Geraldine Chatelard (1)

1 IFPO - Institut Français du Proche-Orient

This book chapter aims at reconnecting the mass refugee migration from Iraq that has followed the fall of
the regime of Saddam Hussein in April-May 2003 with previous and concomitant social and spatial
migratory trends from Iraq through a combination of disciplinary approaches from the fields of the
sociology of migration and social anthropology. Focusing on the case of refugee migration from
Iraq to Jordan between 1990 and 2008, it is argued that the international humanitarian engagement
with the post-2003 Iraq refugee crisis conceals previous dynamics of forced-migration from Iraq
that have long taken a regional and global scope, the embededness of current refugee migration in
other types of migration mouvements from and to Iraq, regional dynamics than span Iraq and the
neighbouring countries that have played hosts to the majority of refugees from Iraq pre and post-
2003, and the variegated experiences, self-perceptions and expectations of the refugees themselves.

Mots clés: Migration; refugees; Iraq; Jordan

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Geraldine Chatelard. What visibility conceals. Re-embedding Refugee Migration from Iraq. Chatty, D. et Finlayson, B. (eds.) Dispossession and Displacement: Forced Migration in the Middle East and North Africa., Oxford University Press, pp.17-44, 2010. ⟨halshs-00370980⟩