What visibility conceals. Re-embedding Refugee Migration from Iraq

"This chapter aims at reconnecting the mass refugee migration from Iraq that has followed the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein in April-May 2003 with previous and concomitant social and spatial migratory trends from Iraq through a combination of disciplinary approaches from the fields of the sociology of migration and social anthropology. Focusing on the case of refugee migration from Iraq to Jordan between 1990 and 2008, it is argued that the international humanitarian engagement with the post-2003 Iraq refugee crisis conceals previous dynamics of forced-migration from Iraq that have long taken a regional and global scope, the embededness of current refugee migration in other types of migration mouvements from and to Iraq, regional dynamics than span Iraq and the neighbouring countries that have played hosts to the majority of refugees from Iraq pre and post- 2003, and the variegated experiences, self-perceptions and expectations of the refugees themselves."