Bringing together different strands of research on Middle Eastern diasporas, the Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas sheds light on diverse approaches to investigating diaspora groups in different national contexts. Asking how diasporans forge connections and means of belonging, the analyses provided turn the reader’s gaze to the multiple forms of belonging to both peoples and places. Rather than seeing diasporans as marginalised groups of people longing to return to a homeland, analyses in this volume demonstrate that Middle East diasporans, like other diasporas and citizens alike, are people who respond to major social change and transformations. Those we count as Middle Eastern diasporans, both in the region and beyond, contribute to transnational social spaces, and new forms of cultural expressions. Chapters included cover how diasporas have been formed, the ways that diasporans make and remake homes, the expressive terrains where diasporas are contested, how class, livelihoods and mobility inflect diasporic practices, the emergence of diasporic sensibilities and, finally, scholarship that draws our attention to the plurilocality of Middle Eastern diasporas. Offering a rich compilation of case studies, this book will appeal to students of Middle Eastern Studies, International Relations, and Sociology, as well as being of interest to policymakers, government departments, and NGOs.

Table of Contents:
1. Coming to and coming from the Middle East: the unfolding of diaspora, Part 1: Forming diasporas, 2. To be denied a homeland: British mandate policy and the making of the Palestinian diaspora in Chile, 3. The AKP government in Turkey and diaspora-making: lobbying, public diplomacy and the erasure of difference, 4. Critical events and the formation of a Coptic diaspora in North America between Al-Khanka and Al-Zāwiya Al-Hamrā, 5. Opportunities here and there: digital diasporas and the Iranian American election moment, 6. The limits of diaspora: double vulnerabilities among Eritreans in Saudi-Arabia, Part 2: Making and remaking homes, 7. The lifecycle of Amazigh diaspora activism in Europe: from institutional pioneers to the new ethnicities of the postmodern age, 8. The diasporic Amazigh movement in France: articulating indigeneity, 9. Valorising some and marginalising others: the diasporic field in the making of Lebanon, 10. Transnational networks in Tunisia’s democratization: Diaspora activism in France and Italy, 11. Secularism, sectarianism and the transnational connectivity of the Lebanese diaspora in Senegal, Part 3: Expressive terrains of contestation, 12. The semantics and substance of contesting Turkishness in the diaspora, 13. De-orientalising queer Iranian diasporic identities, 14. Queering diaspora through queer art: contesting the double binds of homocolonialism and homonationalism, 15. Post-tarab identities in diaspora: a sonic imaginary of Arab Canada, 16. Resisting marginalisation, renegotiating gender: intersectional narratives of diaspora experiences, 17. Creativity as a contested site of identity-making: careers, gender and diaspora for Sydney’s Lebanese Australians, Part 4: Class, livelihood and mobility, 18. Exploring the creative Israeli diaspora: reading class and profession in the diaspora, 19. Making middle class lives: diaspora and belonging among Pakistanis in Dubai, 20. Diasporic before the move: China’s Hui Muslim’s trade and ties with Iran and Muslimness, 21. A Diasporic Balancing Act: Syrian entrepreneurs in Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, 22. Diaspora Syrians and humanitarian aid in the Syrian civil war, Part 5: Diasporic sensibilities, 23. Return migration and repatriation: myths and realities in the interwar Syrian mahjar, 24. The emergence of diasporic sensibilities among Iraqis in London, 25. Healed pasts, multiple belongings and multi-focal engagements: a Danish-Palestinian diaspora tour, 26. Idioms of care: aging and connectivity among older Turkish migrants in Sweden, 27. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey after the 2013 coup: organizational renewal and renegotiation in the diaspora, Part 6: Plurilocal diasporas, rethinking Mahjar, 28. The Hadrami diaspora: a plurilocal mahjar, 29. Hadrami connections with the Malay world: creole histories, transcultural Islam and racialisation, 30. Towards a new mode of reading Muslim diaspora writing: Muslimness and the homing desire in Abu-Jaber’s Crescent and Shafak’s The Saint of Incipient Insanities, 31. The Armenian Middle East: Boundaries, Pathways and Horizons, 32. Negotiating placemaking: private-public spaces and Hinduism in Oman