A transit state

Abstract

AbstractFor Iraqi refugees in Cairo, third‐country resettlement offers a possible alternative to conditions of exile that they describe as “living in transit.” Yet resettlement—in which refugees are “selected and transferred” by a third country that offers them residence and, usually, citizenship—is available to less than 1 percent of refugees. A scholarly focus on already‐resettled refugees obscures the resettlement process's larger social and political effects in places where seeking resettlement may take years, shaping life in exile and simultaneously rendering mobility, and citizenship, both possible and unlikely. Ethnographically, this article follows refugees from the US‐led war in Iraq as they navigate the resettlement process, a process that places contradictory demands on them and evokes its own ambivalences. Centering Iraqis’ experiences of seeking resettlement troubles its designation as a “durable solution” and reveals ambivalence not only about bureaucratic processes but also about the very possibility of humanitarian solutions to displacement. [refugees, resettlement, humanitarianism, displacement, ambivalence, Iraq, Egypt]