A Loop of Conflict and Mobility: The Case of the Kurdish Diaspora in Switzerland

This research investigates the loop of conflict and mobility by focusing on people who fled their country of origin due to conflict, and experienced conflict after the replacement in the arrival country. To reveal how conflict is reconstructed and reembodied within translocal, transcultural, and transnational spaces we conducted qualitative research (ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews). We recruited 12 Kurdish refugees (6 women, age ranges from 23 to 55 years old) from four dislocation regions (Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran) who applied for asylum in Bern (Switzerland). Preliminary results of the reflexive thematic analysis showed that people with different dislocation backgrounds have different conflict experiences in their homeland: political repression and armed conflict in Turkey, war and occupation of lands in Syria, the Islamist regime in Iran, and inter-group conflict in Iraq. Participants narrated translocal (between cities and towns), transcultural (between religious and political groups), and transnational (between different nation-states) conflicts. They made spatial (four parts of the Kurdish homeland), temporal (before and after the war, occupation, refuge, etc.), and intergroup comparisons (between different Kurdish groups). Furthermore, representation claims (e.g., “We are real Kurds”, “we fought against the enemy in the homeland”, and “We struggled most for refugee rights in the arrival country”) were made. Finally, a common ingroup identity against “outsiders” (“We all Kurds”) has been expressed.