Hope & Home: Voices from the Syrian Diaspora

Home is not a place so much as a project: an ongoing effort to stitch together memory, belonging, and the promise of a future. This panel traces that project across a decade of Syrian exile and the fresh uncertainties opened by the fall of the Assad regime in spring 2025. Drawing on hundreds of life-history interviews and new research on diaspora political engagement, our conversation follows Syrians as they cross borders, recreate kinship and community, and navigate host societies that alternately welcome, tolerate, or push them to the margins. Together with Sarah Bassisseh and Wendy Pearlman, we discuss how legacies of repression travel with refugees, how they shape the possibilities of activism abroad, and how the prospect of return—long deferred, suddenly thinkable—reorients the very idea of home.

The discussion converges on the emotional and practical dilemmas that arise when one finds oneself between homes, compelled to rebuild while haunted by what was lost. Hakam, a protagonist in the testimonies under review, joins the two scholars on stage to ground the conversation in lived experience and to reflect on the solidarities that have emerged between research and activism.

The evening closes with a performance by Jaffa Trio in the garden of the INTERACT Centre, whose Levant-centered folk repertoire carries listeners across the soundscape of displacement and return, reminding us that music can sustain a sense of place even when geography cannot.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Sarah Bassisseh is a Ph.D. student at the institute of political science, the University of Tübingen. She is also a junior lecturer and research associate with the research group: Middle East and Comparative Political Science. Her research interests are the transformations of state-society relations in digital dictatorships, contentious politics, physical and digital repression, political participation and political trust. 

Wendy Pearlman is the Jane Long Pro­fessor of Arts and Scien­ces and professor of po­litical science at North­western University, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Perspec­tives on Poli­tics”. A scholar of Middle East poli­tics, social move­ments, conflict processes, and forced mi­gration, she is the author of six books and more than 40 journal articles or book chapters. 

In her most recent book  “The Home I Worked to Make: Voi­ces from the New Syrian Dias­pora," the author ex­plores how vio­lence not only forced millions of Sy­rians from their homes but also com­pelled them to re­think the meaning of home it­self. As follow-up to her book “We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voi­ces from Syria”, this new collec­tion is based on origi­nal inter­views with more than 500 dis­placed Syrians on five conti­nents. The book is a tapes­try of testi­monials that begins with sto­ries of leaving Syria and follows refu­gees’ journeys around the world as they re­flect on losing home, sear­ching for home, and de­riving broader lessons about mi­gration, iden­tity, and belonging. In sharing and re­flecting on a selec­tion of these personal stories, this presen­tation puts the current Syrian political tran­sition in a broader con­text and reminds us what is at stake, in human terms.

ABOUT THE BAND:

Jaffa trio is a band that uses music to empower voices, tell stories and create cultural awareness. The music focuses on Middle Eastern folk and traditional songs, with an emphasis on the Levant region. We believe this genre captures the essence of the rich and diverse cultures it represents. For us, music transcends language barriers and fosters dialogue where none previously existed.

The band consists of Adam (Oud), Layla (Percussion), and Sarah (Vocals). The three first met in June 2023 and officially formed Jaffa Trio in May 2024.