In the summer of 2015, the UN reported that there were more than 60 million refugees worldwide, making the current refugee crisis the largest in history. Though the refugee crisis is global, it has a particular regional and local geography that demands attention.Footnote ¹ As readers of IJMES undoubtedly know, this crisis has disproportionally affected people in the Middle East. Since the end of World War II, a majority of the world's refugees have originated from this region. Five years of war in Syria is the most recent cause of displacement, but the American-led Iraq War in 2003 and the displacement of Palestinians with the establishment of Israel in 1948 have produced tens of millions of refugees.

Geographical concepts and analyses can help to provide relevant insights into the global refugee crisis and the refugee crisis in the Middle East. Geographical inquiries into displacement have examined, for example, geopolitical or environmental factors that have caused wars and displacement; spaces of detention such as offshore, extraterritorial processing centers; the spatiality of refugee camps and the creation of refugee spaces; how natural and built environments change during war and displacement; and the effects of displacement on particular bodies as they move through and settle in different places. In my own work, I have focused on how different experiences, imaginings, and practices of territory intersect with the international refugee system and the daily lives of refugees.

Geography is interdisciplinary. In my own research, I build on work within anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as on work within interdisciplinary fields such as diaspora/transnational studies and gender studies. Likewise, the “spatial turn” of the 1980s helped to bring human geography to the fore of many other disciplines. Scholars across the social sciences and humanities now widely recognize the value and centrality of core geographic concepts such as space, place, and scale for understanding social and political issues such as war and displacement. For example, Asher Kaufman and Christine Leuenberger are two scholars outside of geography who have conducted meaningful spatial analyses in order to understand displacement and geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East.Footnote ²

In the remainder of my commentary, I highlight the point that through the concept of territory we can provide important critiques and understandings of the global refugee crisis and of the refugee crisis in the Middle East. Since the early 1990s, there has been excellent research in the humanities and social sciences on the concept and materialities of territory. Critical geopolitics has been central to these discussions. Rejecting traditional understandings of territory as a clearly defined and delimited area of earth that is exclusively administered, this body of literature has argued that territory is multiscaled, hybrid, and always evolving.Footnote ³ In response to John Agnew's influential critique of the “territorial trap” in 1994,Footnote ⁴ important studies have appeared on the different conceptions, forms, and scales of territory. Yet, as important as this literature has been, most of the critical scholarship on territory has focused on official, elite, and imperialist discourses. In many regards, this focus has ignored the people who actually experience territory and territorial transformations.Footnote ⁵ Scholarship within feminist geopolitics, transnational/diaspora studies, border studies, and anthropology has provided important insights into how people's everyday lives are affected by displacement. Yet this more people-centric body of literature has only touched upon how the discourses and practices of territory have intersected with displacement.

By bringing together conceptual and methodological insights from these different areas of scholarship, microscaled and people-centric critiques can be made of the territorial discourses and practices that undergird the international refugee system. Displaced people disrupt traditional territorial-centric, geopolitical divisions of the world by moving across borders and creating transnational, multiscaled, and hybrid spaces and identities. Displaced people also imagine and experience territories in ways that reflect multiscalar, hybrid, and networked attachments. Yet displacement also simultaneously reifies traditional geopolitical territorial divisions precisely because it is considered a breach of the international ordering of the world and as such is aberrant if not threatening. Moreover, though displaced people create hybrid territorial constructs, they often simultaneously reify traditional territorial divisions by strengthening their connections to a state-territorial homeland through memories, cultural preservation, and performances of identity. Thus, even the aberrant and disruptive movements associated with displacement are ensnared in the “territorial trap.”

State territories in particular remain of central importance to the international refugee system and to the daily lives of displaced people. Though many traditional assumptions about the connections between territory and states have been challenged by globalization, transnationalism, and displacement, territorial and state-centric discourses and practices remain firmly entrenched today. For example, the three “durable solutions” promoted by humanitarian organizations and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees are based on sedentary, territorial formations. These “solutions”—of repatriation, settlement in the place where refuge is first sought, and resettlement in a third state—are state centric, linking territory to citizenship and belonging. Yet as the refugee crisis has demonstrated, these solutions not only have failed to safeguard refugees, but have also been largely rejected by many state leaders and the public.

Within Middle East studies, there has been much research on refugees and displacement. Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarain's recent edited volume and Dawn Chatty's seminal book are both impressive examinations into the subject of diasporas and displacement in the Middle East.Footnote ⁶ There are numerous other books and countless articles on the Jewish Diaspora and Palestinian displacement, as well as on Armenians, Iraqis, and other migrant and displaced groups across the region. Some research on refugees in the Middle East has addressed the role of territory in the emergence of political instability, conflict, and mass displacement. For example, the protracted Israel/Palestinian conflict and the continuing Kurdish issue are both often understood within the context of the post–World War I territorial divisions.

The Middle East has long been a place of migration and movement. Though migrants and refugees have been marginalized and denied political rights throughout the region,Footnote ⁷ today many of the region's borders are porous and many state governments remain relatively tolerant to migration and refugees. The relative openness of borders within the Middle East has helped to create multiscaled, hybrid territorial experiences and networks. For example, though the discourses and practices of Arab unity are tenuous, the idea of the Arab homeland has influenced territorial discourses and practices of both refugees and state governments. In Giles Deleuze's 1998 interview with Elias Sanbar, a Palestinian who had been editing the French journal La Revue d'Études Palestiniennes, Sanbar states that “we haven't been displaced to foreign lands but to the continuation of our own place.” Likewise, in my research with Palestinians in Jordan I found complex, multiscalar ways in which different territories intersect with Jordanian policies as well as Palestinian Jordanians’ experiences and imaginings of territory and homeland. Sophia Hoffman's research on Iraqi refugees in Syria beautifully demonstrates this point as well.Footnote ⁸ She found that whereas Western aid organizations managed refugees through liberal ideologies and biopolitical regimes that were based on state–citizenship connections, the Syrian government did not monitor and control Iraqi bodies and movements in the same manner. Instead, and partly due to a pan-Arab ideology, it maintained laissez-fair practices toward Iraqi refugees, and these relaxed laws helped enable the refugees to resettle.

Research and teaching about refugees and displacement in the Middle East is greatly needed across disciplines. Examining displacement through the lens of multiple territorial experiences and imaginings has allowed me to see how traditional views and practices of territory are both disrupted and reified by displacement. Particularly notable are the relatively open borders in the region and the cross-territorial connections that many displaced people embrace. Such open and hybrid practices and discourses offer much needed alternatives to the state-territorial-based international refugee system, including the largely unsuccessful “durable solutions.”Footnote ⁹ Moreover, a people-centric focus on the experiences and imaginings of territory provides insights into how territorial discourses and practices intersect with everyday lives in very real and dramatic ways, and as a result, can help to humanize refugees. As Dawn Chatty recently stated, “an epistemological change in thinking about forced migrants is urgently required. This means looking beyond the nation-state—the purview of most academic work in this area. . . to give attention to the self-expressions and experiences of forced migrants.”Footnote ¹⁰