A World of Checkpoints : Border Crossing Experiences of Palestinian Refugees from Syria in Lebanon

Sammanfattning: Through violence, war, and persecution millions of people are forced to cross borders to escape death. Yet, worldwide discriminatory state practices daily deny millions of forced migrants access to safe territory. Among those crossing borders are persons without the right to carry travel documents as members of a state. Most often the group of people is known as stateless refugees. Statelessness, borders and border control are produced by states and given meaning through performances of power over territory. The thesis inquires border-crossing experiences of Palestinian refugees from Syria who since 2011 have escaped into Lebanon. The inquiry was conducted following the May 2014 closing of the Lebanese-Syrian border for Palestinian refugees from Syria. Based on oral history recordings with five persons and ethnographic participant observation from April to June 2014, the study contests and renegotiates conventional notions of borders as fixed territorial areas. Through the collected accounts it is shown how border-crossing experiences expand in and beyond border spaces, this gives leeway to uncover intertwined levels of discrimination: locally, nationally and internationally. Additionally, the oral history method illuminate how personal memories of escape from Syria intertwine collective memories of uprooting, displacements, and atrocities since the 1948 Nakbe, and till the current-day Syrian crisis.