Proximity and Distance: Palestinian Women’s Social Lives in Diaspora

This article focuses on how women in two Palestinian diaspora communities—one in Jordan and the other in Toronto—experience social ties to those they have left behind in the West Bank and to others within their adopted communities. This analysis allows for a synchronic comparison of the nature and effects of these diaspora locations on areas of social life that are central to women’s daily lives. It is my hope that this study will complement other studies that focus on how living in a particular diaspora location diachronically, or across generations, affects an immigrant or exile community’s family and community formations (see, for example, S. Abu-Laban, “Family”; Yousif). My examination here thus draws out how the diversity of diaspora locations shapes, and is shaped by, women’s experiences.