Introduction

The post-2003 flow of refugees from Iraq has been one of the largest forced displacements within the Middle East since the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that at least two million people left Iraq from 2003, the year of the US-led invasion, to 2006, when an unprecedented outbreak of violence targeting civilians redesigned the geographies of the country along sectarian lines. Although outward flows significantly decreased after 2008, migration from Iraq continues to the present day, associated with persistent, widespread political violence and lack of economic opportunities. At the time of writing, the number of Iraqis living outside of their country remains high, and durable solutions to displacement are still unavailable to many.

Yet, in spite of the unprecedented proportions of the post-2003 migration, Iraqis can hardly be considered a new diaspora. Outward migration flows have characterised the country since its independence, in particular as a consequence of the destabilising social effects of the campaign of economic liberalisation (infitah) implemented in the 1970s, the systematic political oppression under the Saddam Hussein regime, the UN-imposed regime of sanctions and the 1991 Gulf War. Well-established Iraqi communities can be found all over Europe, particularly in the UK, Germany and Sweden.

However, Iraqi migration within the Middle East has received relatively scarce academic attention, and existing studies tend to be policy-driven and sociopolitically and historically decontextualised.

In her book Cartographies of Diaspora, Avtar Brah argues that it is only when embedded in the historical specificities that tie migrant groups to discourses, socio-economic processes, state policies and subjective identities, that the concept of diaspora acquires its meaning. Following this approach, this chapter aims to re-contextualise the study of Iraqi migration within analyses of social change in the contemporary Middle East. In doing so, it adopts a very specific perspective. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Egypt in 2011 among young Iraqis – both refugees and students – living in a suburb of Cairo, it focuses on the experiences of waiting that mark their daily lives and perceptions of the future.

Over the last few years, the relation between migration, waiting and immobility has attracted growing academic attention. In this regard, Jean-François Bayart's historical sociology of globalisation represents a particularly significant contribution.