Dr Ben White won the 2017 Khayrallah Prize for the best published article in Middle East migration studies, for his article on ‘Refugees and the definition of Syria, 1920-1939’.  

Further details

The Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies is awarded each year to “outstanding scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on Middle East migration and diasporas”

In “Refugees and the Definition of Syria, 1920-1939,” Benjamin White has produced a compelling study of the constitutive role that refugees played in Syrian state formation between the French occupation in 1920 and World War II. Through careful engagement with both secondary literature and original research, the article shows how the modern state was formed around, and against, processes of forced migration and displacement. As Kurdish, Assyrian, and Armenian refugees arrived in Syria, the refugee issue provided opportunities for French authorities to assert mandate authority, and in turn for Syrian nationalists to assert national claims. By situating processes of migration and displacement as the linchpin to the history of Syrian state formation, White elucidates the ways in which, over time, discrete groups sought to define the nation by either the inclusion or exclusion of refugee populations. The article deftly concludes with White’s overview of other moments in the history of twentieth century western Eurasia during which displaced populations drove state formation, and in response, nation-states responded to the presence of refugee populations by attempting to incorporate, expel, or instrumentalize them. Through adopting what he terms an ‘itinerant perspective’ on this moment in Syrian history, White encourages us to see displacement (in and beyond the Middle East) as having the ability to recast our understanding of the modern world.

First published: 9 November 2020

<< Prizes awarded