Conceiving Citizenship and Statelessness in the Middle East and Sweden: The Experiences of Kurdish Migrants in Sweden

Abstract

This chapter1 engages with processes of ethnic inclusion and exclusion in multiethnic societies in the Middle East and Western Europe. Nation-building processes often include by exclusion and states use a wide range of policies to deal with nonnationals or migrants through accommodation, assimilation, and exclusion (Mylonas 2012). This chapter aims to analyze direct and indirect roles of the states or governments in including or excluding particular ethnic groups that are assumed to be nonnationals or “noncore” groups within their territorial boundaries. In order to illustrate these processes, I have chosen to focus on the narratives of Kurdish migrants in Sweden to analyze the political situations of the Kurds as a stateless nation in a world of nation-states and the various citizenship regimes that they have experienced in the context of four Middle Eastern states—Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey—and a Nordic state, Sweden. While these four Middle Eastern states include Kurdish regions with considerable Kurdish populations that Kurds claim as their historical homelands, Sweden is the country of destination for approximately 100,000 Kurdish migrants who have fled there due to political conflicts and economic deprivation in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.