Table Of ContentContesting Kurdish Identities
in Sweden
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Contesting Kurdish Identities
in Sweden
Quest for Belonging among
Middle Eastern Youth
Barzoo Eliassi
contesting kurdish identities in sweden
Copyright © Barzoo Eliassi 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-28207-1
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United
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ISBN 978-1-349-44848-7 ISBN 978-1-137-28208-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137282088
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 The Kurdish Diaspora and the Retreat of Multiculturalism in
Western Europe 1
2 Kurdish Identities and Political Struggle in the Middle East 21
3 Theorizing Belonging and Citizenship in Ethnically Divided
Societies 37
4 Historical Injustices, Uneven Nationalisms, and Reproduction
of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Diaspora 69
5 Unequal Citizenship, Home(land)s, and Strategies of Dealing
with Ethnic Discrimination in Sweden 99
6 Orientalization of the Kurds and Reproduction of Colonial
Categorization by Kurdish Youth in Sweden 141
7 Conclusion: The Struggle for Social Justice and Citizenship Rights 175
References 193
Index 215
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all research participants for their individual and collective
contribution to the research project that resulted in this book. I am especially
thankful to Dr. Farideh Koohi-K amali (editorial director at Palgrave Macmil-
lan) for endorsing and believing in this project. My most sincere thanks to her!
Likewise, I am thankful to Sara Doskow for guiding me through this book
project with a wealth of invaluable information. I gratefully acknowledge the
academic and friendly support of Professor Lory Dance, who urged me to trans-
form this research into a book. Many thanks to Dr. Dan-E rik Andersson and
Professor Leif Stenberg for their support and encouragement. Equally, I thank
Max Novick at Routledge / Taylor & Francis for giving me permission to use
my book chapter.1 Last but not least, I am thankful to my family for their
ubiquitous warm presence in my life. I am deeply indebted to their support and
patience while I wrote this book.
1. Eliassi, Barzoo. (2012). “Political Terrains of Writing Belonging, Memory and Homeland.” In
Mona Livholtfs (Ed.),Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies, 83–9 7. New York:
Routledge.
CHAPTER 1
The Kurdish Diaspora and the Retreat
of Multiculturalism in Western Europe
Introduction
What does it mean to be a young Kurdish immigrant and belong to
a stateless diaspora in the age of a reassertion of national identities
in western Europe juxtaposed with intellectual visions and dreams
about a cosmopolitan order beyond nationalism? How do you form your iden-
tity when you experience exclusionary practices in your country of origin and
the country in which you were born or now live? What kind of accommoda-
tion and resistance strategies do you develop to deal with racist and nationalist
practices in everyday life? How do stateless Kurdish immigrants relate to home
and homeland? How are national and political conflicts in the Middle East
reproduced and reinforced by Middle Eastern youth in Sweden? What kinds
of discursive and labeling strategies do young Kurds use to make internal and
external differentiations regarding maintenance, crossing, and erosion of ethnic
boundaries? How do young Kurdish women and men relate to the Orientalist
fantasies and practices of the part of Swedish society that is engaged in a process
of defining the Kurds as perpetrators of patriarchal gender violence such as
“honor- related violence” and forced marriages? This book addresses these ques-
tions that engage the politics of belonging among young Kurdish immigrants
in Sweden.
The study of Kurdish immigrants as a diasporic formation is relatively new
in the European context. The formation of Kurdish identities within various
European countries has recently been addressed through a number of studies
in the United Kingdom (Enneli, Modood, & Bradley, 2005; Griffith, 2002;
Uguris, 2004; Wahlbeck, 1999), Sweden (Ahmedi, 2006; Alinia, 2004; Eli-
assi, 2010, 2012b; Emanuelsson, 2005; Khayati, 2008; Sheikhmous, 2000;
Sheikhmous & Wernefeldt, 1999; Taloyan, 2008), Finland (Wahlbeck, 1999),
2 (cid:79)(cid:3) Contesting Kurdish Identities in Sweden
Germany (Eccarius- Kelly, 2002, 2010; Leggewie, 1996; Østergaard- Nielsen,
2002), France (Guyot, 2011; Mohséni, 2002), the Netherlands (Kanie, 2005),
and Denmark (Petersen, 2010). The focus of these studies has mainly been
the migratory experiences of first-g eneration Kurdish immigrants and refugees.
The analytical concepts used in these studies are mainly the diaspora and trans-
nationalism with a strong focus on nationalism and the experience of social
and political exclusion in the Middle East and the countries of settlement.
The concept of the diaspora has traditionally been deployed to describe the
Jewish dispersion around the world and their continuous emotional, politi-
cal, and cultural ties with a Jewish homeland. The formation of a diaspora has
been conceptualized as a triadic relationship among the country of origin, the
country of settlement, and the ethnic group dispersed across different states
(Anthias, 2002b; Cohen, 2008; Safran, 1991, 2005; Sheffer, 2003; Vertovec,
1997). Nevertheless, the concept of the diaspora is deployed and conceptual-
ized in different ways by different scholars with regard to social, cultural, and
political activities among Kurdish immigrants. According to Brubaker (2005),
the concept of the diaspora has lost its semantic, conceptual, and analytical
power since it is used in a nondiscriminatory way to embrace a wide range of
identities. In order to avoid the conceptual and semantic trap Brubaker high-
lights, I will define Kurdish immigrants as a stateless diaspora for the purpose of
attaining the specificity of Kurdish experiences and identity formations. Along
the same lines, Sheffer (2003) distinguishes between state- linked diasporas and
stateless diasporas such as Kurds, Tamils, Tibetans, and Palestinians. Members
of stateless diasporas may live outside of their traditional homelands as a result
of such events as forced migration, political oppression, economic deprivation,
and religious persecution. When it comes to the Kurds, the bonding feature
of the Kurdish diaspora tends to be its politicized transnational activism and
practices. For instance, the Kurdish diaspora has been defined in terms of a
transnational social organization (Wahlbeck, 1999), transnational social move-
ment (Alinia, 2004), transnational community (Uguris, 2004), transborder cit-
izenship (Khayati, 2008), or transnational networks (Emanuelsson, 2005; van
Bruinessen, 2000). These studies show that the Kurdish diaspora is involved
in various forms of activism to alter the subordinated political situation of the
Kurds in the Middle East (Adamson, 2002; Ayata, 2011; Eccarius- Kelly, 2002;
Emanuelsson, 2005; Khayati, 2008; Natali, 2007; Østergaard-N ielsen, 2002;
Rumelili, Keyman, & Isyar, 2011; Soguk, 2008; Uçarlar, 2009). The Kurdish
diaspora in western Europe has also become an influential actor in challeng-
ing the official versions of the “Kurdish problem” or “question” in the Middle
East (Adamson & Demetriou, 2007; Demir, 2012; Hassanpour, 2003). In this
respect, Østergaard- Nielsen (2002) points out that the Kurdish diaspora as a
nonstate actor is embedded in local, national, and global processes and engages
