State, Migration and Borders' Fabric in the Middle East

Abstract

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Middle Eastern geography has been dramatically transformed with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new states. In the Middle East, the definition of territories remains problematic as shown by the permanence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and national affiliations remain sometimes problematic, the Kurdish example being the most symptomatic. The analysis of migration and state building in the region contributes to give a non-static reading of boundaries and helps to understand the multiple meanings of the term (state borders, communitarian borders, categorizations processes, local variations of borders in places of settlement).