Introduction

Every diasporic group negotiates the transition from a physically (spatially) rooted national identity to an imagined national affiliation differently, contingent on the circumstances of their exile. In focusing specifically on refugees, one type of diaspora, it becomes possible to recognise particular circumstances of exile, and how the ‘social, imaginative processes’ of constructing national identity are influenced by ‘local, everyday circumstances’. Those everyday circumstances for refugees, like diasporic populations everywhere, are marked by transnationalism, de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation, in a world where identity and culture are no longer rooted to a specific place, and where such populations often come to think of themselves as part of a national community via mediated and mediatised constructions and representations. In addition to the use of global media, one's everyday experience and place in the world, and even within the same city, influences one's imagination of a lost home and homeland, and experience of national identity.

This chapter examines how the particular place called ‘home’ by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon informs their connection to and imagination of their homeland. Discussions with young adult Palestinian refugees, the third generation of refugees now living both in and outside refugee camps in Lebanon, over several visits revealed that the relationship between where these refugees felt at home, and whether they believed in and hoped for a return to their homeland (Palestine) was largely influenced by their surroundings.

While scholarly work on the Palestinians covers a range of multidisciplinary topics, no significant study has addressed how young adult refugees come to imagine and understand Palestine, and negotiate their national identity. This research attempts to fill that lacuna. With no apparent resolution in sight to this refugee problem, which is among the world's largest and longest suffering refugee population, the present research is significant to an understanding of whether and how the homeland continues to be a focal point for a population that has never directly experienced that home.

Refugee Studies provide the conceptual space to analytically demarcate the influence of the everyday experience of exile on refugees’ connection with their homeland. Although ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ are used interchangeably here, it must be highlighted that ‘home’ often refers to a place that is ‘temporary’ and ‘moveable; it can be built, rebuilt, and carried in memory and by acts of imagination’ while ‘homeland’ is more ‘abstract’ and ‘fought for’.