Yazidis on the Margins of Humanity

In 2014, the so-called Islamic State attacked the Shingal region of northern Iraq, forcing almost the entire Yazidi community to seek refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. Since then, they have been suspended in humanitarian limbo: Their status as internally displaced persons (IDPs) excludes them from full citizenship of either Iraq or Kurdistan, and humanitarian actors have not recognized them as refugees since they remain within Iraq's national borders. As a result, displaced Yazidis have had to struggle as they wait for a new beginning, which would involve either having their rights as Iraqi citizens restored or their abandoning their national aspirations for resettlement abroad.
Yazidis on the Margins of Humanity addresses the question of what the interstitial status of a "displaced minority" tells us about the notions of citizenship, statelessness, and narratives of suffering. How do displaced Yazidis experience and inhabit the temporal crossroads of being a citizen and a refugee? And how is displacement regulated by humanitarian organizations and the state? Author Houman Oliaei begins to answer these questions by showing that, for displaced Yazidis, camps and internal displacement are temporal as well as spatial configurations. The Yazidis are temporally marginalized just as much as they are spatially—no matter which direction they choose, they're stuck in a waiting game before a new status becomes effective.
Through a critical analysis of the unique juncture between Iraq's sectarian politics and transnational regimes of care, Yazidis on the Margins of Humanity challenges the temporal, linear logic through which displacement is typically conceptualized as a transitory state.

Houman Oliaei is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Babson College.