In (Biographical) Limbo − Experiencing Ongoing Syrian State Violence in Exile

While there is already extensive literature on approaches to transitional justice for dealing with violent pasts, even in this established academic field, contributions from diasporas are generally underrepresented. Moreover, all these approaches require − by definition − an end to violence. Yet, for the increasing group of internationally displaced persons of protracted conflicts or ongoing dictatorships, this end is often unforeseeable, which requires new strategies to articulate and recognize their suffering.

Based on ethnographic research, narrative interviews and group discussions with Syrian refugees in Germany, this doctoral project asks how exiled Syrians deal with the impacts of ongoing collective experiences of state violence in Syria. It focuses on people who fled the direct threat of violence since 2011, but who remain displaced from their homes for (at least) as long as the violence continues. They find themselves in a complex position between the individual challenges of finding their way in a new country, dealing with past violence they suffered themselves, and the ongoing concern for those remaining exposed to state violence in Syria. This, as an ongoing phenomenon, is hard to integrate into biographical narrations or collective memories.

The data shows that when narrating their experiences, many exiled Syrians refer to living in a "limbo-state" between past individual and current collective experiences of violence. They position themselves dynamically in a temporal (past – present − future) and geographical dimension (Syria – flight – Germany), as well as between individual and collective interpretations of their experiences (myself – family/friends – population).

This paper sheds light on (1) the academically neglected phase of being caught up in limbo due to ongoing acts of collective violence, (2) its social consequences as well as (3) survivors’ ways of dealing with and representing their experiences of being caught up in limbo.