International law, government policy, and a range of academic disciplines all demonstrate different approaches to the task of defining who is a refugee. Yet how do refugees define themselves? When, how, and why do they come to identify with this term, or not? This essay offers reflections on these questions based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians in the Middle East and Europe from 2012 to 2018. Syrian experiences illustrate how individuals’ self-understandings as refugees evolve over time as a contingent process not necessarily coterminous with actual physical displacement. I trace how these self-understandings are generated as shifts in three indicative relationships: displaced persons’ relationships to their expectations of return to their homeland; their relationships to their pre-flight lives; and their relationships to the word “refugee” itself. This focus on the bottom-up, organic development of a new subjectivity suggests how one's self-definition as a refugee might be less a quality or state that exists synonymously with forced migration than it is an identity that comes into existence gradually over time. That is, it is the product of a process of “becoming” more than “being.”

中文翻译：

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成为难民：从叙利亚案例中对流离失所的自我理解的思考

国际法、政府政策和一系列学科都展示了确定谁是难民的不同方法。然而，难民如何定义自己？他们何时、如何以及为什么会认同或不认同这个词？本文基于 2012 年至 2018 年对中东和欧洲数百名流离失所的叙利亚人的采访，对这些问题进行了思考。叙利亚的经历说明了个人作为难民的自我理解如何随着时间的推移而演变为一个偶然的过程，不一定与实际的身体移位。我追溯了这些自我理解是如何通过三种指示性关系的转变产生的：流离失所者与他们返回家园的期望之间的关系；他们与飞行前生活的关系；以及他们与“难民”这个词本身的关系。这种对新主体性自下而上的有机发展的关注表明，一个人作为难民的自我定义与其说是一种与强迫移民同义的品质或状态，不如说是一种随着时间的推移逐渐形成的身份。也就是说，它是“成为”而不是“存在”过程的产物。