Refugee communities consist of groups of individuals who form communities through their common backgrounds and shared experiences. Previous research on refugee communities has tended to focus on international political dimensions, with special emphasis given to the states from which refugees have emanated and sometimes to the locales where they have sought refuge. This state-centric emphasis has obscured important problems and issues associated with the social processes through which refugees reform their communities in new locales. This doctoral dissertation research project will examine how self-identified Kurdish refugees overcome social, cultural, and historical differences and participate in a larger Kurdish-identity movement. The geopolitical implications of the Kurdish-identity movement concern current conflicts within and among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria as well as their relations with western states. This project focuses on the processes through which refugees have mobilized a politicized Kurdish identity. Developing concepts from refugee studies, anthropology, and geography, a life-course methodology will be used to explain how refugees relate their experiences within communities. Qualitative and quantitative methods will provide information about how both individual refugees and the refugee community form and nourish a politicized identity despite diasporic forces. A comparative case study of two Kurdish refugee communities in Nashville, Tennessee, and London, England, will employ a research protocol of in-depth interviews and surveys. Analyses of the data collected using these methods will help explain how communities overcome differences among members to mobilize a politicized identity and how they relate and map a diasporic Kurdish identity onto international politics. This research will contribute new empirical information to broader research on Kurdish issues. Through its examination of the life-course model and refugees as political actors, this research will also contribute to theoretical and conceptual work in refugee studies, as well as political geography and critical geopolitics. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.
