Paper short abstract:

The disruption of migration has triggered formation of ethnically constituted 'community centers' among Darfurians in Israel. This paper will address how centers reflect continuity with homeland or social innovations and are a coping strategy within the larger social and political context.

Paper long abstract:

Some 3500 asylum seekers from Darfur, Sudan reside in Israel - many for over 10 years. They are socially and politically marginalized with no clear path to asylum and limited ability to build a future. In the absence of both the Israeli and Sudanese states, and in order to deal with this extended liminality and rupture, they have established community-based organizations including, primarily, 'community centers' which are ethnically constituted. Envisioned as representing continuity with Sudan, community centers strive to recreate a sense of home, belonging and social life in exile. Nevertheless, the significant disruption caused by the migration process and the specific Israeli context have generated innovations and new social constructions. This paper will examine these community centers through the lens of consistencies and contradictions, home and exile, continuities and disruptions and history and ingenuity and, thus, reflect a hybridity of Israel and Sudan.