Syria

Nearly half of Syria's people have been uprooted from their homes, a displacement that Dawn Chatty describes as the largest refugee movement since the Second World War. She sets this upheaval against the mass migrations that have reshaped the Middle East over the past century and a half. Syria has long taken in populations from neighbouring lands, and those diasporas have helped form Syrian society. The book traces how the country became a refuge state, beginning with the large forced migrations of Circassians, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians and Iraqis into Syria. Chatty builds her account from personal histories of settling in, adjusting and making compromises, and shows how a local cosmopolitanism came to be treated as a core part of Syrian life. She then turns to the present exodus, in which people leave for neighbouring countries in search of a dignified way to survive. Although the future is unclear, she argues that the strength of Syrian society, among those displaced inside the country and beyond its borders, gives reason to hope for a return and a successful reintegration.