Kurdish generational diasporic identities Perceptions of ‘home’ and ‘sense of belonging’ within families among Iraqi Kurds in the UK

Author: Ali M. Zalme

This thesis examines the concept of ‘home’ and ‘sense of belonging’ according to the
experiences of Iraqi-Kurdish diasporic communities in the United Kingdom. It aims to
explore the extent to which those in the Kurdish diaspora constructed their ‘identity’ in
relation to their experiences and perceptions of ‘home’. It considers the concept of ‘home’
and ‘sense of belonging’ as two contested and negotiated concepts among immigrant
communities and Iraqi Kurdish communities in Britain in particular. The study also seeks to
discover connections between the family as home and that of institutional home (i.e. the
country of origin and the country of settlement) and experiences of living between two
cultures.
It aims to obtain empirically grounded insights from the generational perspectives of the
Kurdish immigrants and their children in terms of their sense of belonging and integration
into UK society. It also aims to provide insights from the perspective of gender and
conceptualise the Kurdish male/female experiences in the diaspora. The study will also
investigate the ways in which memories of ‘back home’ narrated by parents, influence and
interweave with their children’s constructions and experiences of ‘home’ in the UK. The
current study is distinctive in at least two ways. It provides new insights from different
generational and gender perspectives among Kurdish communities that are essential to the
field conceptually; its empirical focus is characterised by ethnographic study. The study
aspires to not only understand why this particular group thinks in that way but also to
investigate how they experience their life-world. It deploys a combination of research into
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lived experiences and the reflexive experience of the researcher. Through its
autoethnographical approach it contributes to the development of research methods in the
field. This study’s distinctive features take into account lived experiences from the Kurdish
community; the research is bottom-up rather than focusing solely on the political activist or
the political elite. Furthermore, it considers generational differences and transnational family
experiences in the age of globalisation and the intensity of people’s migratory.
The thesis’ findings conclude that the Iraqi-Kurdish diaspora is experiencing a triadic identity
and belonging; this is taking place in the context of the family home, host country and
country of origin. As a consequence, there is a focus on heterogeneity enabling an
understanding of the diaspora’s multiple identifications with different places, times and
cultural formations. The study promotes perspectives from an individual’s experience (Alina,
2004) and also its social practice; it is not just an apolitical domain. This necessitates
challenging the essentialist and nationalist approach that is, unfortunately, dominant in
diasporic community research and in the Kurdish diaspora in particular. The thesis has
concluded that the second generation do not behave in a manner similar to their parents in
terms of their experiences of their ancestral home; they are just not a continuation of the first
generation. They need, instead, to be treated as a complex phenomenon in their own right.