Palestinians in the United Kingdom, commonly called British Palestinians, are people of Palestinian origin born or residing in the United Kingdom.
History
According to Youssef Courbage and Hala Nofal in Palestinians Worldwide: A Demographic Study (2020), Palestinian presence in the United Kingdom predates the Nakba.[2] Dina Matar writes in her 2005 thesis that the well-off and businesspeople arrived as early as the 1930s for education and work reasons.[3]
Still composed mostly of students and professionals, larger waves of Palestinians began migrating to the UK from the 1960s and on, spurred by events such as the Naksa and the Lebanese Civil War (as many Palestinians had previously fled to Lebanon during the Nakba). Since the 1980s, especially after the Second Gulf War, an increasing number of stateless Palestinians have sought asylum in European countries to escape wars and political turmoil in the Middle East.[4]
Demographics
Outlined in Abbas Shiblak's The Palestinian Diaspora in Europe (2005), it was estimated there were 20,000 Palestinians in the UK in 2001, with the number rising after 1991. However, as pointed out by Lina Mahmoud in her essay for the same publication,[1]Ghada Karmi in a 2008 article for This Week Palestine,[5] and Dina Matar in her thesis,[3] the number was impossible to calculate due to a lack of data on British-born Palestinians and Palestinian residents of Britain born in other countries. In 2020, Courbage and Nofal estimated the number was 60,000 in 2017.[2]
From 2004 to 2006 and 2011 to 2012, Stéphanie Loddo (of the EHESS) collected ethnographic data from Palestinians living in Manchester, Oxford, and London and among Palestinian-related organisations. The respondents were both migrants (belonging to various categories – students, professionals, refugees – who arrived at certain intervals in different contexts) and British-born Palestinians.[4] As a result of these migration patterns, the Palestinian community in the UK is diverse in terms of social class, civil and legal status, place of origin, and religious and cultural background.[4][3][5]
Loddo, Courbage and Nofal,[2] and Karmi[5] agreed that Palestinians typically find relative success in the UK. Loddo considered the country a "favourable environment" for Palestinians as a "world leader" in higher education, arts, Arab media, and business.[4]
Organisations and collectives concerning British Palestinians specifically include the British Palestinian Committee (BPC),[6][7] the Association of the Palestinian Community in the UK (APC–UK), the Palestine Community Foundation (PCF),[8][9] and the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB).[10] There is also the Scottish Palestinian Society (SPS).[11]
^ abcMatar, Dina (September 2005). "The Palestinians in Britain"(PDF). News, Memory and Identity: The Palestinians in Britain, and Social Uses of News. p. 108. Retrieved 4 October 2024.
^"British-Palestinians"(PDF). Baseline Research to Assist Research on British-Arab Communities. The Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU). July 2020. p. 77. Retrieved 4 October 2024.
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