Outcasts among Undesirables: Palestinian Refugees in Brazil between Humanitarianism and Nationalism

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19831683
• Date: 01 May 2019
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Author: Leonardo Schiocchet
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19831683

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 226, Vol. 46 No. 3, May 2019, 84–101

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19831683

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

84

Outcasts among Undesirables

Palestinian Refugees in Brazil between Humanitarianism

and Nationalism

by

Leonardo Schiocchet

The plan for the resettlement of 117 Palestinian refugees from Iraq in Brazil in 2007

involved the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Brazilian

government, and so-called civil society, including international nongovernmental orga-

nizations. These refugees had already developed a reputation in the Rwayshed refugee

camp for being “undesirable” in comparison with other local refugees and unfit for refuge

elsewhere. Examination of the principles of integration and tutelage in the light of this

double rejection places in perspective the supposed apolitical character of humanitarian-

ism and shows how mythical-ideological notions of Brazilianness helped to reinforce and

reproduce stereotypes associated with Palestinians.

El plan para el reasentamiento de 117 refugiados palestinos de Irak en Brasil involucró

al Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados, el gobierno brasileño y

la llamada sociedad civil, incluidas las organizaciones internacionales no gubernamen-

tales. Estos refugiados ya habían adquirido una reputación en el campo de refugiados de

Rwayshed por ser “indeseables” en comparación con otros refugiados locales y no aptos

para refugiarse en otros lugares. El examen de los principios de integración y tutela a la

luz de este doble rechazo pone en perspectiva el supuesto carácter apolítico del humanita-

rismo y muestra cómo las nociones mítico-ideológicas de lo brasileño ayudaron a reforzar

y reproducir los estereotipos asociados con los palestinos.

Keywords: Palestinian refugees, Brazil, Resettlement, Humanitarianism and national-

ism, Integration

This article discusses a resettlement plan for a group of 117 Palestinian refu-

gees from Iraq that involved the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR), the Brazilian government, and so-called civil society

(including international nongovernmental organizations [NGOs]). Because it

is based on two years of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork (2010–2012), it would

be virtually impossible for it to account in detail for the experiences of all par-

ties. Instead, it aims to highlight the refugees’ experiences as they interacted

with the other social actors. This perspective gives us access to the way the

Brazilian nation-state navigated its meanders and allows us to question broad

assumptions about humanitarianism.

Leonardo Schiocchet is a researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences Institute for Social

Anthropology (ISA) and a postdoctoral researcher/principal investigator at the Austrian Science

Fund (FWF).

831683LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19831683LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESSchiocchet / PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN BRAZIL

research-article2019

Schiocchet / PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN BRAZIL 85

The Palestinians had left Iraq for Brazil because of the war. Most of them had

been born in Iraq, and only a few had ever set foot in their ancestral homeland,

since except in very special cases Israel does not allow Palestinian refugees to

enter its territory. Among them were men, women, and children of all ages.

Virtually all of them belonged to the urban middle class, and many had worked

for the Iraqi government bureaucracy at some point. Prior to coming to Brazil,

almost all of them had been temporarily lodged in Rwayshed, a refugee camp

in the Jordanian desert close to the border with Iraq. There they had developed

a reputation for being “undesirable” even in comparison with other local refu-

gees and unfit for refuge elsewhere. Along with another group of Palestinian

refugees that was sent to Chile at around the same time, they were among the

last to find refuge prior to the camp’s closing. Once in Brazil they were again

deemed undesirable, this time primarily because of a mythical national narra-

tive. This double rejection as outcasts among undesirables worked against

these Palestinians’ perceived “integration.” This article seeks to understand

how this characterization was socially constructed, reappropriated, and mobi-

lized by different social actors working on the resettlement plan, how it influ-

enced the resettlement itself, and especially how it influenced the refugees’

understanding of their situation and their responses to it. Through this case

study the article questions the entailments of the principle of “integration,”

which in Brazil is a condition imposed by the government in conceding citizen-

ship to refugees and thus arguably the most important mechanism of inclu-

sion/exclusion of refugees not only in “the West,” as Talal Asad has suggested

(Azad, 2015), but also in places such as Brazil.

From 2003 until President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016, the

Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) government in Brazil had

striven to diminish Brazil’s enormous class, gender, and economic inequalities.

While it succeeded in this endeavor to some extent, it failed in connection with

the country’s policies on minorities.1 Brazil’s internationally celebrated anti-

class-inequality policies have frequently been at odds with those on economic

development, with the country’s economy most often being privileged. An

important component of its developmental project had been to increase Brazil’s

visibility in international politics, and this new international orientation, in

turn, had demanded humanitarian action. The resettlement plan discussed

here unfolded within this larger context and, more specifically, that of Brazil’s

interest in securing a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council,

which called for dealing with the world’s refugees. As stated on the United

Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

(UNRWA) website, “Brazil contributed US$9.2 million worth of donations to

UNRWA in 2014, in the form of rice for vulnerable and food-insecure refugees.

Brazil also contributed $8 million to UNRWA between 2012 and 2013” (UNRWA,

2015). However, it was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

and not the UNRWA that was involved in the resettlement plan described here,

and the reality of the Palestinian refugees in Brazil was far more precarious

than these numbers suggest.

While much is debated in Brazil about the country’s indigenous-minority

policies, much less is known about Brazil’s policies regarding nonindigenous

minorities, particularly refugees. This article argues that Brazil treated the