ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the displacement of under-researched minority populations of Iraq who were targeted after regime change in 2003. It shows how the Palestinians of Iraq were portrayed—rightly or wrongly—to be loyal to the old order; while the Sabaean Mandaeans, an ancient religious minority, were marginalised and regularly targeted in post-Saddam Iraq, and what the implications were for displacement. The chapter makes a conceptual contribution with the notion of systemically discarded populations: groups deemed to be superfluous or threatening to a nascent political order that emerges after acute systemic transformations. Being systemically discarded is a process that involves exclusion and displacement. Displacement is not equated with forced migration, rather it is a process through which the displaced are subjected to increased constraints and threats in their daily lives. Forced migration is a possible outcome of this process. The chapter’s additional scholarly contribution is the introduction of concepts from moral philosophy to explain the coercive elements of the displacement process. The process is conceptualised as one with phases and counter-phases, during which the discarded and displaced populations use material and other resources available to them to resist exclusion and evade threat. The chapter is based on extended interviews with Iraqis who were resident in Syria during 2010 and 2011.
