Palestinian Migrants in the US: A Sociological Study of Silencing

• In Event: 20452 - MENA Global Migration and Identities

Abstract

Numerous studies have demonstrated that Arabs and Muslims in the US (migrants and native born) face systematic racism and discrimination. Palestinians enter this picture as a subgroup of these larger groups. Although the term “anti-Palestinian racism” has recently entered the public lexicon, few sociological studies have attempted to map out whether and how Palestinians, as Palestinians, experience specific types of discrimination or unique forms of racism distinct from that encountered by Arabs and Muslims writ large. Media, NGO reports, and conversations among Palestinians suggest that a fruitful avenue of analysis should focus on the epistemic violence of silencing. Spivack (1988) focused our gaze on the subaltern, the one who is voiceless and silenced in the process of constructing the colonial Other (Said 1978). Subsequent studies by scholars such as Hill Collins, Hornsby, Crenshaw and Dotson have made it clear that impairing a group’s ability to speak is a systematic form of oppression. Yet, according to Dotson (2011, 237) “relatively little has been done to provide an on-the-ground account” of the different ways members of oppressed groups are silenced.”

This study examines whether US Palestinians experience the epistemic violence of silencing, defined as systematic social action that renders them voiceless across a range of social contexts. Through qualitative interviews, silencing is measured through documentation of instances where Palestinian speakers perceived they could not voice their views or feelings (self-silencing) or where they perceived that their words so voiced had been quieted, smothered, or assaulted. We pay attention to whether these actions occur in specific social contexts and are absent in others, offering the identification of spaces and places where Palestinians meet with racialized hostility and conversely, where they find safety, refuge, and belonging. The paper I will present at MESA is based on Phase one data collected, currently in progress.

Author

• Louise Cainkar, Marquette University