Sayed’s Journey to Encampment: Examining Sites and Scenes of Economic Migrant Displacement in Mandate Palestine

Abstract

Using the framework of microhistory, the following article explores the notion of ‘encampment’ in relation to economically displaced labourers who crossed into Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. It considers what a new reading of ‘encampment’ might offer to the historical and inter-disciplinary studies of refugeehood, migration, borders, and forced displacement. The article traces the story of one such labourer, displaced from Egypt to the port city of Haifa. Using this man’s archival record, the article analyses how historians might depict other such men and women as ‘encamped’ by the nature of their economic displacement and their inability to return to the places from which they came. These migrants often fell into the categorization of ‘forcibly displaced’ twice: they were forced by economic circumstances to migrate, and many were subsequently deported from Palestine because they had no authorization to have entered the country.