CHAPTER 3 Who/What Is Doing What? Dwelling and Homing Practices in Syrian Refugee Camps – The Kurdistan Region of Iraq Layla Zibar, Nurhan Abujidi & Bruno de Meulder Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany, KU Leuven, Belgium | Zuyd University, The Netherlands | KU Leuven, Belgium “This is your home, and we welcome you with open arms” In November 2019, the Turkish government initiated the ‘Peace-Spring’ mili- tary operation against Kurdish forces in Rojava, controlling the north-east parts of Syria. 1 Consequently, this attack produced waves of forcibly displaced popu- lations crossing nation-state borders to seek refuge in adjacent countries. Tese waves, preceded by many since the Syrian confict erupted in 2011, landed in the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq (KR-I) 2 and many displacees found shelter in camps in Duhok governorate. 3 In his ofcial visit to this Bardarsh camp 4 , Masrour Barzani, the Prime Minister (PM) of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), announced a commitment to “providing humanitarian aid and everyday needs”: he emphasised the ‘international partners’ whose ‘respon- sibility’ it is to ‘support’ his regional government’s eforts to ‘shelter’ people in need in this ‘global crisis’. PM Barzani addressed the newly displaced Kurds on Twitter following the visit: “Tis is your home, and we welcome you with open arms” (RUDAW, 2019). Tis ofcial statements, promising a ‘welcoming home’ to the extended families to ‘shelter’ and to aid the vulnerable, signify perplex- ing ‘hospitability’ policies of the KRG regarding these arrivals: how do these temporary camps become homes for refuges recently ruptured from another? Historically tracing this specifc geographic zone on a map, one can trace the (dis)appearance of interconnected geopolitical narratives of the Kurdish inhabitants’ continuous presence in regions of departure and destination. Te (imagined)Fatherland: 5 Kurdistan (Homeland of the Kurds), ‘[t]rapped be-