100 books like Placeless People

Berger published this in 1975 at a time when Turkish, Greek, and Portuguese guest workers were arriving in Western Europe, having been recruited by employers to fill vacancies in factories during the years of sustained economic growth. Berger succeeds in humanising these workers, helped by photos taken by his long-term collaborator, the Swiss photographer Jean Mohr. Berger could not anticipate that these young men would later be joined by their families and put down roots. His book speaks of adventure and opportunity, but also of exploitation and humiliation. Numerous memorable vignettes stick in my mind, including his observation about migrant workers from Portugal, governed by the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar:

Before leaving they had their photographs taken. They tore the photograph in half, giving one half to their ‘guide’ and keeping the other themselves. When they reached France, they sent their half of the photograph back to their… show more.

The history of refugees in twentieth-century Britain is hardly known. A map at the beginning of Unsettled reveals how many places in Britain feature in this history, all given the title ‘refugee camp’. Accommodation was in tents or in facilities that were repurposed including workhouses, holiday camps, wartime barracks, internment camps, air bases, and prisoner-of-war camps. Unsettled tells the story of life in these camps and is also about the impact of refugees and camps on local communities and the contexts in which refugees and local populations encountered each other. A striking finding is that homeless Britons sometimes lived in the camps alongside refugees. Unsettled is an unsettling read—it challenges the widespread forgettings of refugee camps in Britain and records a time before the state had the power to detain asylum seekers and deprive them of the right to work. 

Thinking about camps and incarceration brings me to Voices from the ‘Jungle’: Stories from the Calais Refugee Camp. I choose this book because it offers insights into the lives and aspirations of refugees who congregated in the refugee camp in the coastal town of Calais in northern France. As such, it is an antidote to much contemporary reportage of refugees as a faceless and anonymous mass. Their vivid first-person accounts testify to the violence and persecution from which they escaped, whether in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, or Syria, and their subsequent adventures and odysseys, including endless waiting for official decisions or for the opportunity to make their way to the UK to join family or friends. The camp and its residents have been much photographed, but most of these images give little idea of the extent to which the “jungle” became a vibrant community; juxtaposing images and words, as in… show more.

Making Refuge focuses on Somali Bantu refugees who were resettled in the town of Lewiston, Maine in the early 2000s. These refugees had been the focus of Besteman’s earlier research in Somalia in the 1980s. About a decade after Somalia plunged into civil war, Somali Bantus were being resettled in the United States, enabling Besteman to physically reconnect with them. One of the strengths of this book is that it provides rich historical context, giving the reader an overview of the different stages of the refugee experience: the events leading to war and displacement, life in refugee camps in Kenya, and resettlement in the United States.

Making Refuge is also one of the few books that gives ethnographic insight into the refugee resettlement process in the United States. Through its focus on the challenges faced by resettled Somali Bantus, who are Black and Muslim, it questions the assumptions underlying the… show more.

Economics does not always make easy reading, so stories are best told by listening to how privation is felt in everyday life. Sandra Fahy’s book is a terrific recent addition. An anthropologist, Fahy interviews famine refugees, who tell their tales. A common theme was that they worked hard and many believed at least to some extent in the regime. But they became disillusioned and defected not only because of economic conditions but for professional reasons; that they were prevented from putting their expertise and skills to use.

Syrian Women Refugees is a good complement to the other books on this list because the stories that make up the book move beyond the violence, trauma, and suffering that the reader might expect from a book on refugees displaced by war. The book reads more like a story of nine Syrian women, who also happen to have been displaced by the Syrian war and to have become refugees. The women’s narratives take us into their childhood, their everyday life in pre-war Syria, and their experiences adapting to their new host countries. Through these women’s stories, which focus on topics like religion, family life, and gender dynamics, the reader gets rich cultural insight into life in Syria as well as in the host country. The reader also gets insight into the women’s own self-understanding and the extent to which war and forced displacement have impacted this understanding.

Because the broader… show more.

This very involving story centers on two boys who find themselves in Brussels. Max’s American family is here for his dad’s posting with NATO; Ahmed, a young Syrian, is broke and alone after losing his family in the civil war. Getting to know Ahmed brings a sense of purpose to Max’s life—but one he has to hide from almost everyone. Nowhere Boy pulls us in as its characters struggle and everyone is swamped by the confusing tension that the flood of Muslim refugees has brought to Europe. There are no simple answers here, but one simple truth: The vast majority of refugees are just people and families, not furthering violence but seeking safety from it.

Connecting nation, migration, and narration, Stacy’s debut is a corrective to what we know about Arabs in the Americas at a time when their homeland transitioned from the Ottoman regime to the European mandate. It strikes with global strokes and fine details whether it is about women at a Brooklyn factory, a French consulate spy chasing an anti-German diplomat-turned-traitor, or some mysteriously disappearing witnesses on sight.

I was in high school when the Viêt Nam War ended. I grew up watching news reports and seeing photographs on the front page of The New York Times. I remember when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. I read David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest. I wish there had been books like this one for me to read. I am cheating a tiny bit with this choice as it does not take place during wartime. It is set six years after the Viêt Nam War in Texas, yet is about the ravages of war and how one goes on after unimaginable loss. I love this book because it is exquisitely written. It is equally painful and joyous. And I don’t think you can find a stronger character than Hằng.

Pnin, a Russian émigré teaching at a not-wonderful college, is a remarkably endearing protagonist. I would welcome him into my home. Constantly swimming upstream, he is resolute yet humble. He takes on life in America with thoughtful determination and becomes victorious even in defeat. A stellar individual. Nabokov’s deftness with the English language enriches this short and highly accessible novel.