Children of Palestine: Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East

Front Cover
Dawn Chatty, Gillian Lewando Hundt
Berghahn Books, 2005 - Social Science - 274 pages

Palestinian children and young people living both within and outside of refugee camps in the Middle East are the focus of this book. For more than half a century these children and their caregivers have lived a temporary existence in the dramatic and politically volatile landscape that is the Middle East. These children have been captive to various sorts of stereotyping, both academic and popular. They have been objectified, much as their parents and grandparents, as passive victims without the benefit of international protection. And they have become the beneficiaries of numerous humanitarian aid packages which presume the primacy of the Western model of child development as well as the psycho-social approach to intervention. Giving voice to individual children, in the context of their households and their community, this book aims to move beyond the stereotypes and Western-based models to explore the impact that forced migration and prolonged conflict have had, and continue to have, on the lives of these refugee children.

 

Contents

Palestinian Refugee Children and Caregivers in Lebanon
35
Palestinian Refugee Children and Caregivers in Syria
58
Palestinian Refugee Children and Caregivers in Jordan
87
Palestinian Refugee Children and Caregivers in
122
Palestinian Refugee Children and Caregivers in
149
Policy Implications and Summary of Main Findings
173
Literature Review
196
Glossary
266
Copyright

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About the author (2005)

Dawn Chatty is University Reader in Anthropology and Forced Migration and Deputy Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. She is a social anthropologist with long experience in the Middle East as a university teacher, development practitioner, and advocate for indigenous rights. She has taught at the Universities of California at Santa Barbara, at the American University of Beirut, at the University of Damascus, and at Sultan Qaboos University. She has worked with various international agencies including UNDP, UNICEF, FAO, IFAD, and USAID. She is also co-editor (with Marcus Colchester) of Conservation and Mobile Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development (Berghahn Books, 2002). Gillian Lewando Hundt is Professor of Social Sciences in Health and Director of the Health Institute, University of Warwick. Her work addresses global issues of power, discrimination and inequity in different local contexts through a focus on health and illness. Currently she is conducting research in England and South Africa and has spent many years living and working in the Middle East where she conducted research on health issues of Palestinians.