Many Diasporas, One Valley: Middle Eastern Refugee Resettlement and the Politics of Community in California's Central Valley

California’s central valley has been a favored site for resettlement of refugees from the Middle East for a century, beginning with Armenians and Assyrians displaced by the genocides of World War I and continuing with new waves of Palestinian, Iraqi, Iranian, and now Syrian refugees. Many of the local aid societies working with refugees from Syria and Iraq themselves represent historical refugee populations in the region, and they collaborate with federal agencies to foster local networks for care provision extending beyond basic subsistence. The complex ways in which the politics of community introduces conflict within resettled communities, however, poses a persistent challenge and must be negotiated by scholars working in refugee history. What does it mean, for instance, when recently-resettled refugees fit themselves into older ethnic communities that do not recognize them as co-ethnics? How do the politics of wars in Syria and Iraq follow the resettled to the U.S.? Employing two case studies—Syrians resettled in Fresno, California and Iraqi Assyrians resettled in Turlock and Modesto, California—this paper argues two things. First, it argues that community-engaged scholarship can be of service to the recently-resettled by helping them claim a historical space within a valley culture that is deeply imbricated with historical post-displacement experiences. And second, it cautions that community-engaged and public historical scholarship must be sensitive towards the ways in which “new” and “old” refugee communities do—and do not—recognize one another. The paper concludes with a critique of “refugee” as a catch-all category; with many diasporas in one valley, the category’s comparative utility comes at the expense of regional particularisms.