National Narratives and Migration: Discursive Strategies of Inclusion and Exclusion in Jordan and Lebanon

Abstract

National narratives play a key role in state consolidation and identity construction. This article proposes four factors that may affect how a regime chooses to portray the role of migrants and migration in official historical narratives: the relationship of emigrants to the colonial versus the post-independence state; the relationship between migration and sending state economic development; and the relationship between migrants and the home state elite – either benign neglect or instrumentalization. Taking Jordan and Lebanon as cases, the presentation examines school textbooks as key sources of the national narrative to discern their treatment of major population movements. It concludes with an evaluation of the four factors, finding greatest support for that of instrumentalization.