Refugees’ professed desire to return fades once they urbanize

Evidence

Whereas Hezbollah’s stated goal remains the elimination of the State of Israel (and thus full restitution), recent studies have seriously questioned the extent to which Palestinian refugees would desire so extreme a course in the event of Palestinian statehood. From his vantage point as director of the Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center, Sari Hanai has found that many Palestinian refugees actually possess little desire to “go home”: Having become urban dwellers, few would be able to relate to the rural locales that they or their ancestors had come from, especially as many of the old dwellings have since been destroyed; in a recent survey “40 per cent declared themselves unwilling to return, if a family home no longer exists.” — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 1635

Categorization

• XREF: Offers comparative evidence for the reader’s conviction-divergence question — elites’ stated restitution goals diverge sharply from refugees’ actual expressed preferences. — connects to: Mass membership coexisted with fading desire to actually return home — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 503; Returning migrants must renegotiate a homeland that has itself been transformed — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 766; Modern displacement integrates people into globalised communities rather than estranging them — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 341 (+1 more)
• CANDY: The startling fact that 40% of refugees would not return if their family home no longer exists challenges the standard claimed-goal framing.

Broader Connections

• Migrants’ original intentions poorly predict their actual settlement behavior #corroborates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3829
• Returning migrants must renegotiate a homeland that has itself been transformed #complicates (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 766
• Modern displacement integrates people into globalised communities rather than estranging them #expands (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 341