‘I MUST BE FROM SOMEWHERE. I’M NOT FROM THE
MOON’: NAVIGATING THE POLITICS OF LABELLING
FOR STATELESS PALESTINIAN REFUGEES FROM SYRIA
JASON TUCKER * AND HAQQI BAHRAM **
This article explores the relationship between statelessness and refugeeness over time and space.
It does so by drawing on how Palestinian refugees from Syria in Sweden navigate the various
stateless and refugee labels imposed upon them before, during and after their flight from Syria to
Sweden. Standpoint theory was deployed as the basis for understanding how this group of stateless
refugees related to these labels. While the research found that, even though the labelling process
was largely non-participatory, both as a manifestation for epistemic agency and a vehicle for
epistemic justice in statelessness and refugee research, standpoint theory has offered an
indispensable lens through which we have accessed the multiple strategies that the interviewees
adopted to accept, reject, resist or negotiate their re/de-labelling throughout their journey.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction........................................................................................................... 330
Palestinian Syrians ................................................................................................ 332
Palestinian Refugees under International Law ..................................................... 333
Bureaucratic Labels and Stateless Refugee Standpoints....................................... 334
Methodology ......................................................................................................... 336
Being Palestinian Syrian ....................................................................................... 337
A Denizenship Plus/Citizenship Lite in Syria .............................................. 337
B The Palestinian Camps as Home and Homeland ...................................... 338
C Leaving Syria............................................................................................ 339
Syria’s Neighbouring States and the Wider Region ............................................. 339
A Obscuring Their Palestinianness .............................................................. 339
B Contesting Their Exceptionalism as Palestinian Refugees ....................... 340
C Contesting the Fractioning of the Palestinian Refugee Label .................. 340
D Risk Taking Behaviour and ‘Illegality’ as a Consequence of Their
Exceptionalism ......................................................................................... 341
Entering and Moving through Europe .................................................................. 342
Negotiating Re-Labelling within Sweden ............................................................. 344
Becoming Swedish and the Bureaucratic Erasure of the Stateless Refugee Labels
.............................................................................................................................. 344
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 345
INTRODUCTION
Prior to the drafting of the contemporary international legal regimes for refugees
and stateless persons, statelessness and ‘refugeeness’ were seen as so heavily
intertwined that making a distinction between the two was not deemed necessary
or, indeed, even possible. The adoption of the 1951 Convention Relating to the
*
**
Jason Tucker is an Associate Senior Lecturer in Global Political Studies, Malmö University,
Sweden. His research explores the governance of statelessness and forced migration.
Haqqi Bahram is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and
Society, Linköping University, Sweden. His research explores the intersection of
statelessness and identity in contexts of forced migration.