Refugee Camps and the Spatialization of Assyrian Nationalism in Iraq in Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere: Jews and Christians in the Middle East

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Author: Laura Robson

Publisher/Publication: Brill

DOI/ISBN: 10.1163/9789004323285_010

This chapter examines how the creation of Assyrian and Armenian refugee camps contributed to the minoritization of these communities, but also of spaces, in interwar Iraq. The decision to group displaced Assyrians and Armenians in “refugee camps” instead of resettling them, was a manifestation of Britain’s and the League of Nation’s commitment to national sovereignty, even if the creation of Assyrian and Armenian nation-states had already being rejected. The camps were propagated as national spaces to preserve the “race”, and assisted in the dissemination of a national Assyrian identity among the refugees. The author concludes that the model of operation in the refugee camps, and the subsequent settlements created a separate political and geographic entity, supported by an external power, thus transforming Assyrian and Armenian population itno a threat to the concept of Iraqi sovereignty.