Int. J. Middle East Stud. 49 (2017), 645–660
doi:10.1017/S0020743817000630
Nefissa Naguib
MIDDLE EAST ENCOUNTERS 69 DEGREES NORTH
LATITUDE: SYRIAN REFUGEES AND EVERYDAY
HUMANITARIANISM IN THE ARCTIC
Abstract
In late 2015, approximately 2,000 Syrian asylum seekers made their way into Norway via the
Arctic passage from Russia. What ensued are “global moments,” breakthrough events that have
reshaped lives and futures for both the refugees and those who aided them, and it is the latter group
on which this article focuses. As refugees began arriving in Arctic Norway, Refugees Welcome to
the Arctic, an ad hoc grassroots organization, was formed to assist them. This group of ordinary
people, most of them with no previous humanitarian experience, took action in defiance of
Norwegian government policies, and providing food became the focus of their efforts. Refugees
Welcome to the Arctic members often described being motived to act by their own traumatic
memories of the region’s experience of World War II, a time of deprivation and brutality suffered
at the hands of the retreating German army. Food, as an enactment of compassion, is shown
to be a powerful means through which people connect in very personal, concrete ways to the
humanitarian enterprise.
Keywords: anthropology; Arctic; food; humanitarianism; Syria
To give, to-be-for-another, despite oneself, but in interrupting the for-oneself,is to take the bread
out of one’s own mouth, to nourish the hunger of another with one’s own fasting.
Otherwise than Being: Or, beyond Essence, Emmanuel Levinas
1
In the fall and winter of 2015, nearly 2,000 Syrian refugees crossed into Norway from
Russia, via the Arctic passage, to the border town of Kirkenes, population 3,500. What
unfolded over those weeks and months in the interactions between the refugees and
those who took them in allows us to explore what I will term “global moments”
2
or
“global encounters”—those breakthrough events that reshape lives and futures. These
are encounters that reach across time and space, bringing together people of disparate
histories and experiences, leaving them all changed. Although the Arctic provided
global encounters for both the refugees and the local population, and both sides of
that relationship are worthy of study, here I want to focus on those providing aid, and
specifically on the members of the ad hoc, loosely organized group Refugees Welcome
to the Arctic (RWTA), ordinary people seeking to right, in whatever small way they
Nefissa Naguib is a Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;
e-mail: nefissa.naguib@sai.uio.no
© Cambridge University Press 2017 0020-7438/17
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