Project MUSE®: Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2013) through current issueLatest Articles: Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies2169-4435Latest articles in Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Undercommons of Beirut
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972261
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The café has no name. There is no sign and no street address, only the colors of the Ethiopian flag painted on rickety steps as the identifying trait: red, yellow, green. Unlike the fluorescent white that floods every other Ethiopian establishment in the neighborhood, it is always dark inside. It has been decorated to resemble a cave, brown paper wrinkled and stapled all over walls and ceiling, roughly painted in dark tones with impressive effect, edges slightly beginning to fray. The tables are plastic, as are the chairs, and all are a cheap, diluted neon assortment of red, yellow, and green. A plastic green ashtray adorns each table and is diligently emptied so that the space is always full of smoke yet never
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallThe Undercommons of Beirut2025-10-24text/htmlen-USThe Undercommons of Beirut2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®1049172026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24A Mobile Boundary: Empires, Nomads, and Refugees Between Tripolitania and Tunisia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972262
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In March 1882, shaykhs, notables, and other kin of the Ilham tribe gathered to pen a petition in Arabic to the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II. Only ten months earlier, the Ilham tribe had sought refuge within Ottoman Tripolitania after experiencing forced exile following the French invasion of Tunisia in May 1881 and the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Bardo, which marked the beginning of the French protectorate over Tunisia. The petitioners' requests informed the sultan that they had abandoned hundreds of fertile farms, their fruit-bearing trees, their two Sufi lodges (iki zaviye), and, most importantly, their homeland (terk-i vatan). During the invasion, the notables of the Ilham tribe explained, French
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallA Mobile Boundary: Empires, Nomads, and Refugees Between Tripolitania and Tunisia2025-10-24text/htmlen-USA Mobile Boundary: Empires, Nomads, and Refugees Between Tripolitania and Tunisia2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®1276512026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24Peasant Families' Journeys from Algeria to the Mashriq (1880s–1890s): Personal Correspondence, Migration Networks, and Resettlement
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972263
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On the first day of Ramadan in 1896, Ali Naqasi b. Umar, an Algerian migrant living in northern Palestine, received a letter from his childhood friend, Umar Nayt Ali. Writing from their home village in Algeria, Umar sought advice about emigrating to the Mashriq, asking for details about the journey and the cost of living. Ali, eager to help, replied with precise information: "If you inquire about the price of wheat, it stands at two without crops. … If you inquire about agriculture, the land is plentiful and free of charge as the sultan has granted us land without any payment."1 Ali's response highlights the personal networks and informal correspondence that shaped Algerians' migration decisions and facilitated
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallPeasant Families' Journeys from Algeria to the Mashriq (1880s–1890s): Personal Correspondence, Migration Networks, and Resettlement2025-10-24text/htmlen-USPeasant Families' Journeys from Algeria to the Mashriq (1880s–1890s): Personal Correspondence, Migration Networks, and Resettlement2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®1354332026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24Transit Beirut: Unhcr, Diaspora Networks, and the Covert Resettlement of Armenians during the Cold War
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972264
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Thousands of Armenians were resettled from Bulgaria and Romania to the United States in the 1950s and 1960s in what was described by representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as "one of the most extraordinary operations."1 The migration scheme was certainly noteworthy. It was part-and-parcel of US anti-communist activities. It was both systematic and discreet. But perhaps most intriguingly, the movement took place through Lebanon. How and why did this small Levantine country become so central in this scheme? And what was the role of UNHCR and the broader refugee regime in this resettlement?The covert resettlement scheme unfolded at a pivotal moment of transition within the global
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallTransit Beirut: Unhcr, Diaspora Networks, and the Covert Resettlement of Armenians during the Cold War2025-10-24text/htmlen-USTransit Beirut: Unhcr, Diaspora Networks, and the Covert Resettlement of Armenians during the Cold War2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®1231852026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24Beyond Transit: Tunisia as Imagined, Experienced, and Negotiated by Migrant Women from West and Central Africa
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972265
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As I turn right to enter Mama Grace's hairdressing salon, nestled on the corner of a large private university, a striking sign immediately catches my attention. It spans the width of the salon, making it impossible for pedestrians to miss. At its center is the image of a Black woman adorned with an indigo turban and large, circular earrings. On either side of the sign, "GRACE BEAUTY" is boldly written in capital letters, while beneath, in smaller font, are the various beauty services offered: "pedicure, nails, wigs, hairstyles, and African braids," along with a Facebook page and contact numbers.This is not my first visit to Grace's salon. She is a tall, slender woman from Côte d'Ivoire who has lived in Tunisia for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallBeyond Transit: Tunisia as Imagined, Experienced, and Negotiated by Migrant Women from West and Central Africa2025-10-24text/htmlen-USBeyond Transit: Tunisia as Imagined, Experienced, and Negotiated by Migrant Women from West and Central Africa2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®898102026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24Migration at the End of Empire: Time and the Politics of Departure between Italy and Egypt by Joseph John Viscomi (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972266
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Joseph John Viscomi's rich and stimulating monograph, Migration at the End of Empire, is the result of extensive research conducted largely between 2009 and 2016. Divided into five chapters along with an introduction and an epilogue, the book richly accomplishes two related goals: first, it presents a history of the "Italians of Egypt" from 1861 to the 1960s with an emphasis on the period during and after World War II; second, it uses this history as a case study to reflect upon the nature of temporality and its relation to historical experience and agency. In the author's own words, the book "puts a microhistorical lens to the departure of 40,000 Italians from Egypt after the Second World War as a starting point
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallMigration at the End of Empire: Time and the Politics of Departure between Italy and Egypt by Joseph John Viscomi (review)2025-10-24text/htmlen-USMigration at the End of Empire: Time and the Politics of Departure between Italy and Egypt by Joseph John Viscomi (review)2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®131252026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24Unsettled Labors: Migrant Care Work in Palestine/Israel by Rachel H. Brown (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972267
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Rachel H. Brown's Unsettled Labors offers a nuanced examination of migrant care work in Palestine/Israel through the dual lens of settler colonialism and neoliberal capitalism. The book's use of Marxist analysis to unpack the exploitation of caregiving workers in Israel is sophisticated. Changes in the Israeli mode of production and subsequent changes in the social relations of production, their impacts and alienation on indigenous Palestinian labor, other discriminated groups within the Israeli society, and migrant (caregiving) laborers are all analyzed within the uniqueness of the Israeli colonial context (6). In the author's own words, the paradox of "unsettled labors" in postneoliberal Israel emerges from "the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallUnsettled Labors: Migrant Care Work in Palestine/Israel by Rachel H. Brown (review)2025-10-24text/htmlen-USUnsettled Labors: Migrant Care Work in Palestine/Israel by Rachel H. Brown (review)2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®109702026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24Sonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World by Sarah Bakker Kellogg (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972268
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In Sonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World, Sarah Bakker Kellogg engages with how first-, second-, and third-generation Syriac Orthodox women navigate between their desire to maintain Syriac Orthodoxy and the requirements of their new Dutch environment. There are approximately 25,000 Syriac Orthodox in the Netherlands. The book highlights the lives and reflections of members of female choirs, a key aspect of Syriac Orthodox revival. The core of Syriac Christianity, according to Bakker Kellogg, is liturgy, which not only constitutes the heart of group cohesion but also works as "a site of reproductive power, in which irreducible relations and the political identities staked upon those
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallSonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World by Sarah Bakker Kellogg (review)2025-10-24text/htmlen-USSonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World by Sarah Bakker Kellogg (review)2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®96942026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class by Stacy D. Fahrenthold (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/972269
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Stacy Fahrenthold's Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class provides an original and compelling labor history of the Syrian American diaspora in the early decades of the twentieth century. The book takes on dominant trends in scholarship on Syrian migrants of the era, arguing that it is important to look beyond the often-romanticized (and resolutely masculine) figure of the pack peddler to truly understand work, gender, race, and class formation among Syrian immigrant communities. Nothing was more central to class identity and consciousness among Syrian migrants, Fahrenthold explains, than the textile industry. But rather than examine the textile industry through any single
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/785/image/coversmallUnmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class by Stacy D. Fahrenthold (review)2025-10-24text/htmlen-USUnmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class by Stacy D. Fahrenthold (review)2025-10-242025TWOProject MUSE®101912026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-10-24