Date/Time
Date(s) - 19/06/2018
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Location
Dale Street Methodist Church

Categories No Categories

On June 19, Professor Dawn Chatty will speak on the possible outcomes of the Syrian refugee crisis, the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, drawing on research for her acclaimed new book: Syria – The Making and Unmaking of a Refugee State.

Dawn is an Emerita Fellow of the University of Oxford specialising in anthropology and forced migration. She has recently published a book “Syria, the Making and Unmaking of the Refuge State” that places the current displacement within the context of the widespread migrations that have indelibly marked the region throughout the last 150 years. Syria itself has harboured millions from its neighbouring lands, and Syrian society has been shaped by these diasporas.

Dawn Chatty explores how modern Syria came to be a refuge state, focusing first on the major forced migrations into Syria of Circassians, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians, and Iraqis. Drawing heavily on individual narratives and stories of integration, adaptation, and compromise, she shows that a local cosmopolitanism came to be seen as intrinsic to Syrian society. She examines the current outflow of people from Syria to neighbouring states as individuals and families seek survival with dignity, arguing that though the future remains uncertain, the resilience and strength of Syrian society both displaced internally within Syria and externally across borders bodes well for successful return and reintegration. If there is any hope to be found in the Syrian civil war, it is in this history.