VOICES FROM PALESTINE: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC TRAJECTORIES OF PALESTINIAN POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS IN ENGLISH HE ĐIỂM CAO

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DOCTORAL THESIS

Voices from Palestine

An Investigation of the Sociolinguistic Trajectories of Palestinian Postgraduate

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Voices from Palestine: An Investigation of the Sociolinguistic Trajectories of Palestinian Postgraduate Students in English HE

By

Rawand Elhour

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD

Department of Media, Culture and Language

University of Roehampton

2022

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Ethics Approval

The research for this project was submitted for ethics consideration under the reference MCL 18/ 043 in the Department of Media, Culture and Language and was approved under the procedures of the University of Roehampton’s Ethics Committee on 11th September 2018.

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Disseminating the Project: Publications Arising from this Thesis

Conference Participation: Refereed Publications

Elhour, R. (2019). Language learning on the boundary: the difference between ‘knowing about’ English and actually ‘living in’ English. In Danjo, C., Meddegama, I., O’Brien, D., Prudhoe, J., Walz, L. and Wicaksono, R. (Eds.), Taking Risks in Applied Linguistics: Online Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics, York St John University, 6-8 September 2018 (pp. 21-23). Retrieved from BAAL2018

fbf6d9e7d03ec8832.pdf

Elhour, R. (2019). Globalised yet inexhaustive: the role of English language education in preparing Palestinian academics for sojourning in the UK [PowerPoint Presentation]. School

of Education Doctoral Research Conference ‘Developing Doctoral Voice: disseminating your research within the Education Community’, 17 May, University of Roehampton.

Elhour, R. (2018). Going mobile yet holding still: Palestinian sojourners, turbulence, and

stillness [PowerPoint Presentation]. 'Taking Inequality Seriously: Economy and Society in the

Age of Inequalities' Workshop, 8 November, University of Sheffield.

Elhour, R. (2018). Giving voice to the unheard: an investigation of the sociolinguistic

trajectories of Palestinian postgraduate students in UK Higher Education [PowerPoint

Presentation]. Annual Research Student Conference 2018: Originality and Innovation in Research: Implications, Practice and Theory, 15 October, University of Roehampton.

Elhour, R (2018). Language learning on the boundary: the difference between ‘knowing

about’ English and actually ‘living in’ English [PowerPoint Presentation]. BAAL 2018

Conference: Taking Risks in Applied Linguistics, 6 September, York St. John University.

Elhour, R. (2018). Voices from Palestine: the difference between 'Knowing' English and

'Living in' English [PowerPoint Presentation]. 5th International Postgraduate Conference on

Modern Foreign Languages, Linguistics & Literature 2018, 1 June, University of Central Lancashire.

Elhour, R. (2018). From immobility to mobility: the Sociolinguistic experiences of Gazan

sojourners in the UK [PowerPoint Presentation]. Language, Translation, and Migration

Conference 2018, 24 May, University of Warwick.

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Invited Talks

Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) (14 June 2021) ‘Studying while under occupation, apartheid, and pandemic: lessons for the digital university’.

 University of Roehampton, MCL Department, Language Issues in Multilingual Settings Undergraduate Module (21 November 2018) ‘Language and Politics: Languages issues in nations-without-states (insights from Palestine).

List of Grants Awarded to Fund this PhD Project

 2017-2020 HESPAL Studentship to fund my PhD in Educational Studies at the University of Roehampton, London.

 2018- 2019 Santander and Ravenscroft £1250 research grant to fund my doctoral fieldwork.

 September 2020 Bseiso Foundation £1950 grant.

 October 2020 Hoping foundation £1000 grant.

 November 2020 Palestine Britain Business Council emergency £780 grant.

 April 2021 British Council partial scholarship (£6000).

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Abstract

Located at the intersection of the fields of study abroad (SA), sociolinguistics, EFL, and mobility, this doctoral project provides a sociolinguistic investigation of the mobility trajectories of study abroad among nine Palestinian postgraduate students in English HE. The purpose of this research is to understand the consequences of mobility on sojourners’ perceptions of their Englishes, identity (trans)formation with specific reference to social class construction, and social practices and networks in the new context. This study springs from the need to qualitatively document the under-researched experiences of Palestinian sojourners in the UK and privilege their voices. Hence, this research adds more diversity to the SA literature which has been criticised for over-representing certain departure zones such as the USA and Europe. Moreover, the research addresses many calls for widening the scope of investigating sojourners’ lives abroad. It attends to Coleman’s (2013) call for embracing a holistic perspective towards sojourners’ experiences, viewing them as ‘whole people with whole lives’. Also, the study responds to calls which stress the importance of sojourners’ histories and contextual antecedents (Surtees, 2016) by touching on participants’ language history, motivations, statuses, and im/mobilities back home to provide a thorough understanding of their journeys to and in the UK. To this end, data were longitudinally collected over a period of nine months through two initial focus groups and three waves of individual interviews, resulting in a total of 27 interviews.

Thematic Analysis (TA) was devised to interpret the nine cases under study. TA generated commonalities as well as singularities/differences in the sample. Findings revealed that participants’ perceptions of their Englishes were affected by crossing borders and changing contexts. While sojourners perceived their linguistic repertoires as competent by virtue of their successful language histories back home, their views on their Englishes were subject to

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ongoing negotiation and reconceptualisation upon mobility. Participants started to view their Englishes as ‘less distinguished’ and ‘not enough’ in the UK. Sojourners’ perceived linguistic limitation (relatively) disturbed their perceptions of themselves as EFL/ESL speakers, thus leading to forming new reflexive linguistic identities. Other reflexive identities, such as ‘foreigner identity’ were triggered as a result of participants’ mobility and its encounters. Class-mediated constructions were complex and fluctuating, but they generally featured more moments of moving down (i.e., declassing) than elevating up. Participants’ socialisation practises centred around their co-national circles which provided the necessary support, security, and familiarity, although other outer social spheres were mentioned by some participants towards the middle of the sojourn. Sojourners’ accounts also featured supportive and obstructive factors underpinning their decisions to establish social connections, such as sharing cultural habits and intense academic work, respectively. Both sets of factors contributed to a sort of ‘ghettoisation’ which was perceived in this study as a necessary strategy for coping and handling complexity, strangeness, and difference in the UK.

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Table of Contents

Ethics Approval ... i

Disseminating the Project: Publications Arising from this Thesis ... ii

Conference Participation: Refereed Publications... ii

Invited Talks ... iii

List of Grants Awarded to Fund this PhD Project ... iii

Setting the Stage: Background and Rationale of the Study ... 1

1.1 My Sociolinguistic and Mobility Trajectory: A Bio-note on My Language and Travel

History ... 2

1.2 Situating the Research in its Academic Background: Identifying Gaps, Problems, and Needs in SA? ... 9

1.3 Research Aim and Objectives ... 11

1.4 Introducing the Research Questions ... 11

1.5 Outline of the Study ... 12

Chapter Two ... 16

The Study Contexts: Palestine and the UK ... 16

2.1 The Palestinian Contexts ... 17

2.1.1 Geography, History, and Political Conditions... 17

2.1.2 Sociolinguistic Depictions from the Palestinian Contexts ... 22

2.1.3 Trends in Palestinian Students’ Academic Sojourning ... 26

2.2 International Students in UK HE and Immigration Policies ... 30

Chapter Three ... 39

Literature Review... 39

3.1 English Language in an Era of Globalisation ... 39

3.1.1 English Language as a (Post)Colonial Legacy: A Historical Glimpse ... 39

3.1.2 English Language Learning and Discourses in an Era of Globalisation... 41

3.2 Sociolinguistics of (Im)Mobility ... 56

3.2.1 Divided We Move: Mobility as a Marker of Stratification ... 56

3.2.2 Language in Motion: What Happens When Individuals and their Resources Go Mobile, Cross Borders, and Relocate? ... 58

Structure and Agency in Mobility Contexts ... 63

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3.3 Experiences of Study Abroad: Motives, Intercultural Encounters, and Identity Work .... 68

3.3.1 Motives for Crossing Borders and Studying Abroad ... 70

3.3.2 Cross-cultural Interaction and Social Circles in Study Abroad Settings ... 74

3.3.3 Identity Performance in Study Abroad Contexts ... 79

3.4 Conclusion and Summary ... 83

4.3.1 Qualitative Approach: Rationale and Challenges ... 97

4.3.1.1 A Note on the Trustworthiness and Credibility of this Study ... 99

4.3.2 Situating the Study in a Research Paradigm ... 100

4.3.2.1 Why a ‘Case Study’? ... 100

Merits of Case Study ... 102

4.3.3 The Longitudinal Dimension ... 103

4.4 ‘Have been there’, ‘have done that’, ‘that happened to me’: Notes on Researching from Inside ... 105

4.4.1 Researcher-Participant Relationship Highlighted ... 109

4.5 Research Practicalities ... 111

4.5.1 Preparing the Ground: Participant Recruitment ... 111

4.5.1.1 Introducing Research Participants... 116

4.5.2 Data Generation Methods... 117

4.5.2.1 Focus Groups to ‘Start the Ball Rolling’ and ‘Round-Up’ ... 118

4.5.2.2 Individual Interviews for More ‘Personal’ Data... 119

4.5.2.3 Representation: Notes on the (Multi)Language(s) and Voice(s) of Interviews ... 121

4.5.3 Thematic Data Analysis ... 125

4.6 Ethical Considerations ... 127

4.7 Conclusion ... 130

Chapter Five ... 131

English Language ‘on the Move’: Expectations and Encounters ... 131

5.1 Language History: Pre-departure Trajectories ... 132

5.1.1 Compulsory English Learning ... 132

5.1.2 Private Investment in English ... 134

5.1.3 From Investment to Opportunities: What English Had to Offer ... 135

5.2 Why the UK? ... 139

5.2.1 UK HE System as an Incentive to Study Abroad ... 140

5.2.2 Other Reasons ... 145

5.2.2.1 The Tourist Student: Leisure and Consumption ... 146

5.2.2.2 Crossing Borders as Interim Release... 149

5.2.3 Concluding Remarks... 153

5.3 Moving Across Geopolitical Borders: From ‘Knowing’ English to ‘Living in’ English ... 155

5.3.1 (Re)conceptualising English Language on the Move: A Panoramic View ... 160

5.3.2 Relocating: ‘My English is Not Enough Here’ ... 163

5.3.3 English ‘(Un)moored’: ‘The Diversity is Crazy!’ ... 170

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5.3.4 Un-imagining ‘Imagined Communities’: Meeting Different Members ... 174

5.3.5 Sociolinguistics of Palestinian Students’ Mobility Trajectories: Towards a More Context-sensitive Approach ... 178

5.4 Conclusion ... 182

Chapter Six ... 184

Identity Work in a Study Abroad Context ... 184

6.1 Identity Performance in a Context of Mobility: Setting the Stage ... 185

6.2 L2-mediated Identity: Linguistic Dimensions... 186

6.2.1 Changing Relationships and Perceptions: New Linguistic Identities ... 187

Contextual Layer: Different Interactants ... 188

Intersectional Layers to Linguistic Identity Work ... 193

6.2.2 Foreigner Identity ... 200

Mobility as a Trigger of ‘Foreignness’ ... 201

Non-nativeness as a Facet of Foreignness: Linguistic Perceptions as Triggers of a Non-native Identity ... 203

English-mediated Interactions as Triggers of Foreignness ... 205

6.3 Personal Growth: More Self-awareness and Different World Views ... 211

6.4 Social Class ... 219

6.4.1 Pre-sojourn Subjective Class Positionings of Participants ... 219

‘Scholar for a Year, Chevener for Life’: Notes on Constructing Class Through the Scholarship/ Sojourn ... 220

6.4.2 ‘Déclassement’, ‘Reclassement’: Class Construction in a Study Abroad Context ... 223

Aspiring ‘Up’ But Moving ‘Down’: Trajectories of Declassing in UK HE ... 224

‘Classement’ Through Consumption ... 227

6.5 Conclusion ... 230

Chapter Seven ... 231

Sojourners’ Social Practices and Networks in the UK ... 231

7.1 ‘Whole People with Whole Lives’: Aspects of Sojourners’ Social Life in the UK ... 231

7.2 Factors Underpinning Sojourners’ Socialisation Practices ... 235

7.2.1 Sharing Cultural Backgrounds and Habits ... 235

7.2.2 Micro-geographies and Mobilities of Sojourners’ Social Encounters ... 238

7.2.3 Sojourners’ Personal Goals, Interests, and Criteria ... 241

7.2.4 The Study and the Scholarship ... 242

7.3 Barriers to Social Interaction: Brought Along or Brought About? ... 244

7.3.1 Academic Barriers: Sojourners’ Perceptions of their Studies and Campus Dynamics ... 245

7.3.2 Participants’ Stereotyping of the British Society ... 249

7.3.3 Religious Attitudes... 253

7.3.4 Temporality of the Sojourn ... 256

7.4 Is it Necessary for 'Birds of a Feather' to 'Flock Together'? Remarks on ‘Student Ghettoisation’ ... 257

7.5 Conclusion ... 261

Chapter Eight ... 263

Conclusion ... 263

8.1 Introduction: Thesis Summary ... 263

8.2 Research Questions Revisited: Key Findings... 263

8.2.1 Moving Beyond the RQs: Sociolinguistics of Study Abroad Mobility ... 275

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8.2.2 Going Mobile Yet Holding Still: What Does it Mean to Be a Palestinian Crossing Borders for

Appendix 1. Interview Guides... 309

First Round of Individual Interviews ... 309

Second Round of Individual Interview Questions ... 311

Third Round of Individual Interview Questions... 315

Appendix 2. Consent Form ... 319

Appendix 3. Participant Information Sheet ... 321

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List of Tables

Table 4.1 Research participants’ background data

Table 5.1 Snapshots of participants’ changing perceptions of their English

throughout their sojourn

Table 6.1 Differences in how both gender groups perceive themselves linguistically

List of FiguresFigure 2.1 Map of the besieged Gaza Strip and its crossings

Figure 2.2 Map of the West Bank and the Israeli checkpoints

Figure 2.3 Israeli multi-tiered hierarchy of Palestinians

Figure 7.1 Participants’ patterns of socialisation

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Acknowledgments

Through this space, I extend my thanks to all those who accompanied me through this journey. I owe appreciation to my supervisory team, Dr. Eva Eppler and Dr. Marie-Pierre Moreau for their invaluable support, guidance, and advice. Thank you both for being there whenever I needed you. Your professional and intellectual guidance and commitment to this project motivated me to walk through and finish this route while setting my standards high. I have learned a lot from you, and you are the example I would like to be in the future. May the

Lord bless and reward you, 'Jazakom Allah Kheir'.

I owe my thanks to the British Council and the HESPAL scheme and the funders who believed in me and sponsored my project. I also thank the other funders who contributed to facilitating the research process and paving the way to its completion. Thank you all. I thought that stars go astray and lose their way to the 'Camp', but your support and generosity helped me 'witch my wagon to the stars'. I also thank my academic institution, the University of Roehampton, for offering me the opportunity of studying and being a member of its

community. I am honoured for having been a student learning and researching in such a supportive and inclusive environment and beautiful campus/es. At Roehampton, I got to meet beautiful and amazing souls who I am also indebted to their existence in my life. My

colleagues and friends, Sahar Al-Shobaki, Dr. Samson Tsegay, and Fernanda Puentes-Rodriguez (Fernie), thank you for the support, stimulating discussions, and laughs. May our friendship prosper and last forever.

Special thanks go to my family: Ahmed, thanks my dear for the love, exciting conversations, food, laughs, and giving me the time to write this thesis. My dear parents, Amal and Abed, who I have not seen since September 2017, words cannot describe how I miss and love you. You have been my source of strength, determination, and hope. My siblings, I am grateful for your love, humour and kindness. Grandma (Sarah), I hope you are proud of me now. Thanks for your unconditional love and sorry for being away from home for such a long time.

Last but not least, I am indebted to my two dears, Sarah Ferner and Samar Salamah. Thank you for instilling feelings of hope, safety, and happiness in me during my hard times in the UK. I am forever humbled by your outpouring love, help, and hospitality. May your good deeds come back to you.

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Chapter One

Setting the Stage: Background and Rationale of the Study

Opening Scene

[The Sea Traders] [..] became the first to provide a link between the culture of the ancient Near East and that of the uncharted world of the West…They went not for conquest as the Babylonians and Assyrians did, but for trade. Profit rather than plunder was their policy (Pritchard, 1974, p.7).

It is an established fact in ancient Mediterranean history and Phoenician chronologies that the Phoenicians, a distinct Canaanite group that settled in the Levant region (Sanford, 2008), were (among) the first world globalists (eg. see Scott, 2018, 2019). Since the dawn of history, ‘the purple people’ criss-crossed the Mediterranean Sea westward in a far-flung quest for silver and other riches. Flowing out of their Levantine coasts and guided by the North Star, the first seafarers initiated a cultural interaction with the Occident that spanned two millennia (Scott, 2018). As their ships sailed across the waters of the Mediterranean turning it into ‘a Phoenician pool’, they carried and transfused goods, individuals, ideas, and innovations to ancient Europe.

This PhD is a project about unmooring ships and navigating westward into unfamiliar shores. This venture is undertaken by current Levantine descendants of Canaanites who also pursue profit, as they traverse the expanses of sea/space between the shores of the Levant and the West. Their voyaging tells a story of moving from the imagined and crossing the borders of the real, of the difference and complexity that remain salient in their narratives, and the effects thereof on their perceptions of their languages, selves, and others/ strangers. Through this academic space, nine Palestinian sojourners in English HE have been invited and encouraged to communicate their voices as they reflect on and engage with their trajectories

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of mobility, crossing borders and maintaining uncrossable ones, sojourning, and the turbulence that persists in these trajectories.

This introductory chapter is set to provide a general overview of the study. I start by presenting a personal note on my sociolinguistic and mobility journey, including the routes that led to this research investigation. Then, I locate the study in its academic context, highlighting gaps, problems, and needs. This leads to specifying the research objectives and questions. The chapter concludes by outlining the chapters and their organisation in the thesis.

1.1 My Sociolinguistic and Mobility Trajectory: A Bio-note on My Language and Travel

History

We need all our words to tell the whole story. And in the end, we can only stand upon our stories. We do ourselves and our disciplines no service by only telling half-tales, by only reporting finished analyses in temperate voice, by suppressing wonder or perplexity or dread (Charmaz and Mitchell, 1996, p.300).

To define ‘who I am’ is to define how I see myself, what I do, what I aspire to, and how I interpret the world around me. I have been shaped by my ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ (following Gilroy, 1993), i.e., the different life paths I went through, be they social, academic, linguistic, professional, economic, or/and political. Amongst many things, I am a Palestinian academic sojourner in UK higher education. This depiction features my nationality, academic, linguistic, and mobile status, as well as geographical and institutional location. I share these specific ‘roots and routes’ with my research participants who are also Palestinian sojourners in English HE.

I was born in Nuseirat Camp, The Gaza Strip, Palestine where I lived all my childhood, teenage years, and early twenties until I got the chance to pursue my education in the UK.

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My father’s family is originally from the suburbs of Ramla City in Central Occupied Palestine. My grandfather became a refugee after he was forced to leave his village in the

Palestinian Catastrophe, Nakba, of 1948 and settled in Gaza. My family speak rural

Palestinian Arabic, and I was raised to speak that same variety. I still remember how I would feel in my early childhood when one of my classmates would ask me to pass her the

pencil, for example, saying, “hati elAlam” - the urban variety which is perceived to be ‘classier’ back home, not “hati elGalam” as my family members and I would usually

pronounce it. I learnt that people speak differently and that some dialects tend to be viewed as ‘more prestigious, elegant, or favourable’.

I started learning English at the age of 11. I was both anxious and excited about that new language that I used to hear on TV when my parents watched films or series. I found out I was doing well at it, as a main school subject, with the proof of full marks, until one of my teachers embarrassed me when she asked for a conversation exercise to be done. I could not speak fluently. Then, I was alarmed that my English was not actually as good as what the exams’ marks indicated. When language learning became more serious and demanding in secondary school, a distinction was made between two accents: American and British. I decided to go for American English. I guess it was/is a trend among teenagers back home to pursue American varieties because they were associated with modernity, prestige, songs, Hollywood films, and were seen as accessible and easy.

I enjoyed being a good user of English. As I enrolled in the department of English language at the Islamic University of Gaza, I used to hear comments like: ‘you’re almost native-like’, which made me confident. Later, I decided to switch to the ‘British accent’ as I planned to pursue my higher academic studies in the UK. I looked for integration by

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sounding ‘British’ before I lived in my 'imagined' place. While this signals an awareness that language can be a site of both integration and exclusion in contexts of difference, I still took my language, among other identity aspects, for granted and did not realise the hurdles that would be triggered by my difference before I left Palestine to study in the UK in November 2015.

During the first weeks of my MA course, classmates commented on how British I sounded to them. Some of them expressed their astonishment upon knowing it was my first time ever visiting an English-speaking country. That was indeed encouraging to someone who was away from home for the first time. However, I was challenged by the vernacular English’ used in the street. A worker in a dry cleaner's shop commented on my English joking, ‘speaking to you is like speaking to a dictionary!’. My choice of words and structures sounded odd to his ear, as he said. He was not a linguist to make that judgment, but ‘dictionary English’ was the way he used to refer to the strangeness of my language in an informal context. These words echoed in my head, and I cannot deny they disturbed me a little. Such judgments shape the way we perceive ourselves and our competencies. I agree with Baker (2011, p.133) who argues that learning a language is about ‘who we are, what we want to become, and what we are allowed, by first language speakers, to become’.

My academic journey was successful having gained a master’s degree with distinction, and I returned home in September 2016 to work as a university lecturer. I taught English poetry to third-year undergraduates. For them, my English sounded British, with some of them complaining about my pronunciation, and that I ‘swallow’ some sounds. I decided to

articulate that /r/ and not use the glottal stop, which was not a feature of Standard British

English. And then I was perplexed. Do I even have to sound British? Why cannot I mix or

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speak English that is not necessarily categorised under certain labels? These labels seemed to be at play everywhere, including in my country. Can I not just be perceived as a Palestinian girl who can speak English well? Who decides, though, what it means to be a good speaker of English? These negotiations became part of a continued ‘discursive practice’ (Foucault, 1982) as I tried to understand and evaluate my status and position being both an English learner/user and teacher.

In 2017, I returned to the UK for another academic degree (doctorate) with a clearer vision this time, aware of the complexities surrounding my position and the shift it would undergo by virtue of crossing borders and relocating. My previous sojourn experience equipped me with realistic knowledge to expect the kind of discourses I will encounter this time, unlike the new arrivals who will have to grapple with them for the first time ever maybe.

During my PhD time, I dealt and worked with international sojourners in many contexts. For example, I taught basic English skills in Summer 2019 to a group of Italian teenage students. I also taught the ‘Language Change’ module to both ‘home’ and ‘international’ students at Roehampton University along with occasional guest-lecturing to other groups. These professional encounters I gained during my PhD journey made me aware of my shifting status and positionality; inside the teaching classroom, I am the expert language teacher, and once I leave the teaching setting, I am the international, non-native L2 speaker and learner. These experiences coupled with the rich empirical and theoretical insights arising from this research investigation have made me passionate about researching sojourning trajectories among my fellow Palestinian postgraduate students. My journey paths intersected with theirs. Sometimes, mine provided guidance, relevance and

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reassurance, while many other times, their trajectories gave me meaning and insights into various encounters and critical moments in my own sojourn trajectory. In this research project, I am indeed both a process and an outcome.

I knew I had an academic ambition towards acquiring a doctoral degree since I learned that a PhD was the highest academic degree one could obtain in Palestine. However, how I came to research this topic was not only attributed to this aspiration or to sharing many life trajectories with the research participants. In fact, the focus and topic of this research stemmed from a painful and tumultuous mobility experience back in late 2015 as I was planning to venture outside my local Palestinian world to discover a new land and capacities. This critical experience sparked an interest in knowing more about the flows of Palestinian sojourners in specific and whether they all experience the same hardships I went through on my way to the UK. As I expected, some of this research participants’ hard experiences of travel echo mine in several ways.

In 2015, after I was awarded a scholarship to pursue my postgraduate studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, I knew I had a long way to go through applying for the UK student visa, Israeli and Jordanian permits/visas to pass through their security controlled and monitored spaces to my destination country. The severe restriction in mobility imposed on those travelling in and out of Gaza was the context of my first-ever border crossing experience. I was able to secure my UK visa two months after submitting my application. There was a delay because I was inexperienced in visa applications and lacked guidance to complete the complex document, so I had to amend the application form. The visa was issued in September when the academic year usually starts in most UK universities. Two more visas needed to be secured so that I could join my course at

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Goldsmiths. I applied for both, and the long wait started. The course started, and my university contacted me for a clarification of my physical absence. I tried to explain the difficult political situation in my local place, the siege on Gaza, and severe immobility to the officer who seemed perplexed by what I told her. I was the first international student she dealt with from that corner of the world, so it was sort of ‘expected’ that she did not know how to handle this unique situation. Neither did I. ‘We are an academic institution. We do not have the political power to impose on Israel to issue you a travel permit’, she wrote in one of the email correspondences between us. I had to deal with this alone. I had to act and draw on my own individual agency in the face of all the power asymmetry surrounding my situation and context; otherwise, I would lose the scholarship. I started my education online. I did the essential readings and even completed an assignment from my ‘stilled’ position in Gaza. At that time, my Jordanian visa was rejected on the basis I had no Israeli travel permit. Gloominess and depression started to creep into my mind. I remembered, though, that I was working for the UNRWA1 as a school teacher. The UNRWA is a powerful international institution that could probably aid me with this, which was voluntary on their side. After a couple of visits to the main headquarter in Gaza and explaining my situation to the head of the Education Programme, he agreed to let his office secretary apply for an Israeli travel permit on my behalf so that I could travel through the Erez Crossing border to Amman and then the UK. I retained a sense of hope and positivity. September and October passed, though, and I heard no word from any of the authorities that were supposed to let me travel. It is now November, and I was expecting an email notifying me of scholarship suspension/withdrawal at any moment. The notification came. I was alarmed that my student visa was to be curtailed (due to failure in attending my course of studies) if I did not make it to the UK by the end of the

1UNRWA stands for The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

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first week of November. The anger, fear, powerlessness, lack of support,, and discrimination I felt were indescribable. On 5th November, I received a phone call informing me that my travel permit was issued and that I had to go to the Erez Crossing early the next day to travel. It was a short notice, but a long-awaited one. Hastily, I bid farewell to my family and friends and started a long journey that lasted for more than 12 hours and was inflicted with too many security checks and inspections, exhaustion, worry, tears, and uncertainty. The programme convenor commented as she welcomed me into the last sessions of the Autumn term, ‘You are the last student to join us here’.

Reflecting on the chronicles of the Canaanites/Phoenicians, in the opening scene of this chapter, it is sad (and sometimes ironically striking) to realise how different and paradoxical our mobility trajectories are considering our ages. While it appears that there is no way to strike a comparison between our times in terms of advancement and the levels of civilisation we have achieved, our ancestors’ trajectories of mobility and freedom prevail in this comparison; with theirs moving forward to penetrate new spaces and ours going backward to more restrictions in movement and space. Those people led lives that centred on the freedom of mobility and expansion, while a contemporary population of their offspring are being held still in their tight corners of the world, with their horizon blocked and space restrained and/or closed. Having said that, the memory and trauma of my turbulent journey remained with me throughout the entire sojourn and affected my perception of travel and mobility as sites of struggle and stratification differentially accessed by individuals. Whenever I read about the ‘flows’ of individuals, my mind would digress to re-conceptualise these ‘flows’ as ruptured, intermittent, and never smooth. I, then, developed a desire to ‘objectify’ and document these difficult experiences through systematic academic research. I wanted to privilege Palestinian sojourners’ views and

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amplify and deliver their muted voices to the world that seemed to either ignore or lack knowledge about them. Therefore, I combined elements of my academic and professional interest and speciality (English Language Teaching/ Sociolinguistics) with my personal thorny trajectory of movement to ignite and articulate this research inquiry.

1.2 Situating the Research in its Academic Background: Identifying Gaps, Problems,

and Needs in SA?

Experiences of study abroad students are established and documented in abundance in Study Abroad (SA) research. However, this research has been criticised for being selective in its population and reductionist in theoretical perspectives. Coleman (2013) and Kinginger (2009) argue that the SA field has been preoccupied with focusing on certain departure contexts, i.e., Europe and North America. Students from other countries are less represented in SA research because their sojourns are likely to take other migratory routes, as Kinginger (2015) explains, unlike students from the USA, Canada, or Australia whose sojourn trajectories are often more predictable with pre-defined periods. Thus, the sojourns of students coming from less researched backgrounds are usually positioned and theorised in light of broader migration studies and/or second language acquisition and social integration (ibid).

The theoretical approaches and focus of the SA research have also been subject to criticism. Coleman (2013) calls for a departure from studying and assessing the language acquisition of L2 learners during their sojourn to see them as full rounded human beings. He introduced the concept of ‘whole people with whole lives’ as a new approach to researching SA student experiences and documenting them in full. More calls for (and responses to) a holistic treatment of sojourners’ trajectories abroad followed. For instance, Beaven and Borghetti (2016) argue that a new trend that focuses on students’ intercultural relations and

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development is emerging in SA research. This interest in the intercultural aspect can be seen as being embedded in the general paradigm shift in Applied Linguistics that was called for by David Block (2003), i.e. ‘The Social Turn’. Other scholars focused on the effects of the sojourn on students’ self-formation and identity work. In this regard, Marginson (2014) calls for a shift from ‘adjustment processes’ to a focus on exploring the self-formation journeys of students.

This study deviates from both the traditional population and theoretical approaches dominating SA research. To this end, it addresses the trajectories of an under-researched population of sojourners in English HE and adopts a holistic approach which views them as full human beings, with complex and multi-layered identities, leading full lives that stretch beyond the walls of campus. Here, the study is premised on the understanding that these full, diverse, complex, and fluid lives/trajectories should not be reduced to certain limited and limiting discourses or approaches. Meanwhile, the study is bound by a moral commitment to document and provide space to the unheard stories of Palestinian students in English HE. Doing so, it attempts to achieve some (academic) justice to these sojourners by highlighting their narratives and accentuating their subjectivities and agency. Within this rubric of understanding, the study is set to investigate several areas in the sociolinguistic trajectories of Palestinian sojourners in English HE. To specify, the study seeks to understand the consequences of mobility on sojourners’ perceptions of their linguistic resources, identity work, and social practices in the new context. In order to attend to the rich details and narratives arising from these issues, the study embraces a transdisciplinary approach as it invites several theoretical constructs from different but interrelated fields including Study Abroad, Mobility, Sociolinguistics, ELT, and Cultural/Human Geography. At the methodological level, data have been generated through a qualitative, longitudinal

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investigation, which has been conducted through two initial focus groups and three waves of individual, in-depth interviews with nine Palestinian postgraduate students studying at different UK universities, over a period of nine months in the academic year 2018/19

1.3 Research Aim and Objectives

The main aim of this research is to investigate, trace, and document the sociolinguistic experiences of Palestinian sojourners who crossed borders to pursue their postgraduate degrees in English HE. The specific objectives are as follows:

 Providing a space to a highly under-represented population in SA research and empowering them to reflect on and interact with their residence abroad experiences.  Documenting the im/mobility experiences of those coming from non-traditional

contexts and showcasing moments of disturbance, agency, singularity, and universality.

 Giving insights into what happens to individuals’ language resources, competencies, and identities when they go mobile, and how they gain new meanings and statuses.  Exploring the difference between ‘knowing’ English and ‘living in’ or performing

English, the difference between the imagined Britain and the real one, as well as the expected of and the experienced in the sojourn.

1.4 Introducing the Research Questions

With reference to this study, the overarching guiding research question is:

What effect/s does mobility (moving from the local to the global) have on Palestinian

sojourners’ sociolinguistic trajectories in the UK?

More specifically, the question above is addressed through unpacking it into three sub-questions:

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1. What is the effect of mobility on Palestinian postgraduate students’ conceptualisation and perception of English language?

2. What is the effect of mobility on Palestinian postgraduate students’ identity (trans)formation, with specific reference to social class?

3. What is the effect of the sojourn encounters on sojourners’ social practices and friendship-making in the UK?

1.5 Outline of the Study

This thesis is organised into eight chapters. This introductory chapter has set the stage for the study; it has presented its academic/empirical background, rationale, focus, purpose, and questions. I have highlighted the study focus as an attempt to understand the lived sociolinguistic experiences and consequences of Palestinian sojourners’ SA mobilities in the

UK on their perceptions of their linguistic repertoires, selves, and host society. Chapter Two

extends setting the stage by shining some light on the contexts involved in this study. It provides some information on the political situation in participants’ local contexts (of departure), i.e., Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The chapter also includes some sociolinguistic aspects from the Palestinian context, and then it reviews some trends in Palestinian academic sojourning. This is where the discussion is led to addressing participants’ situation, as international students, in their new institutional and political contexts (UK/ English HE and immigration policies).

Chapter Three engages with the relevant literature which theoretically informs, provides

language to and guides the study. Thereby, and against a wider background of a mobility picture, it tackles these issues: English language learning and discourses in an era of globalisation, approaches to and trends in Sociolinguistics of mobility/ globalisation, and

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finally Study-abroad and its cross-cultural encounters within contexts of mobility, difference, and diversity and their effects on sojourners’ identity work.

Chapter Four moves to address the research practice and methodological framework of the

study. As such, it provides a chronologically ordered documentation of the methodological decisions, justifications, and procedures followed to collect and manage/analyse data. The chapter also includes my epistemological and ontological stances and practical challenges. Moreover, I reflect on my positionality as an ‘insider’ researcher. The chapter touches on methodological practice from the prism of mobility and how this is considered and applied in the practice and design of this research.

Chapters Five, Six, and Seven present the empirical findings and theoretical analysis/

discussion of the data yielded through a longitudinal investigation. Each chapter deals with a

specific research question (above). Chapter Five investigates the linguistic aspect of the

sojourn. It endorses a mobile and chronological trajectory approach to track participants’ experiences and views of their Englishes, starting from their language histories, and moving to the role of English in their pre-sojourn arrangements. Following that, the chapter engages with the data coming from participants’ sojourn settings, featuring the consequences of crossing borders, relocating, and contextual encounters on their perceptions of their linguistic repertoires, and the changes and continuities in these perceptions.

Chapter Six focuses on sojourners’ identity performance in their study-abroad contexts. The

chapter tracks participants' identity (trans)formation throughout the sojourn period at multiple (intersecting) levels, among which are language, gender, and social class. Data show how sojourners are able to negotiate and discursively reflect on their identity (re)construction

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abroad in their most frequent contexts of interaction. Participants’ depictions and evaluations of their identities vary depending on their different encounters and intersectional experiences; they are sometimes negative when identity-making is a site of struggle and contestation; while they are positive and aspirational when participants’ identities are perceived as enhanced. Furthermore, this chapter attempts to narrow down a gap in research by tackling the class-mediated experiences of sojourners in the UK. Their trajectories of classing and declassing are approached (mainly in contexts of HE) in light of participants’ capitals, competencies, and resources and their (changing) status within mobility contexts as well as consumption practices.

Chapter Seven turns its attention to the social aspects of sojourners’ lives in the UK. Again,

within a mobile trajectory understanding, the chapter traces participants’ patterns of socialisation and networking as it looks at their social circles of interaction in the UK. Doing so, the chapter features both supportive and obstructive factors underpinning sojourners’ social interaction and grouping in the UK. One marked feature/phenomenon can be noticed through these underpinnings: 'student ghettoisation' (clinging to and clustering around co-national groups). Thus, an engaging discussion on Palestinian students’ ghettoisation in the UK is presented. This discussion deviates from dominant debates on student ghettoisation as it provides a more complex and diverse perspective to it.

Chapter Eight rounds up the story of this project. To this end, it revisits the research

questions to highlight key findings and goes beyond them to zoom out and present a more comprehensive view of Palestinian sojourners’ sociolinguistic trajectories in their mobility contexts. This is achieved by bringing together the various, different but interrelated, threads in the rich sociolinguistic tapestry of those sojourners to highlight how fluid, diverse, unique,

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and dynamic their mobilities are. Meanwhile, and to extend the scope of the study to a more holistic and rounded depiction and understanding of sojourners’ SA trajectories, the chapter touches on Palestinian students’ disturbances in their journeys. Here, experiences of the pre-sojourn enforced restricted mobility are brought to the scene to accentuate the peculiarity and difference surrounding Palestinian sojourners’ experiences of border-crossing. Following this, the chapter discusses the contributions, limitations, implications, and possibilities for future research.

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Chapter Two

The Study Contexts: Palestine and the UK

Introduction

This chapter provides a starting point for strengthening the understanding of Palestinian sojourners’ sociolinguistic experiences in the UK by shedding some light on the contexts involved. This chapter is divided into two parts as it addresses two main contexts: the departure zone (Palestinian contexts) and the destination context of English HE. In the first part, I start by providing vignettes on the geographical, historical, and political conditions in the Palestinian context. The political contextualisation offers some background only to Gaza and the West Bank (where the research participants come from) and mainly focuses on restrictions in movement in these contexts (among many other injustices enveloping Palestinian lives). As such, the chapter excludes Palestinians from other contexts such as: 48-Palestinians and Druz (i.e those who have remained within Israel's 1948 borders after the Nakba events), Palestinians of diaspora, and Jerusalemites. Following this, I move to depict some sociolinguistic realities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), where I touch on the languages spoken and English language teaching (ELT) situation in Palestinian schools and universities. This part ends with discussing Palestinian historical and recent trends in study abroad/ academic sojourning. The second part contextualises the study from the

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destination end, i.e., the UK, as it looks at the positioning of international students in the UK HE sector2, specifically England, and immigration policies.

2.1 The Palestinian Contexts3

2.1.1 Geography, History, and Political Conditions

Historical Palestine, or Palestinian Occupied Territories, is the name of the 27,000 km land that is geographically located at the very western edge of Asia, stretching between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Throughout history, the region was a conflict zone to many conquering powers including Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians, and Mamelukes. The region fell under Ottoman rule between 1517 and 1917. Following the Ottomans’ defeat in WW1, the British took control of Palestine (British Mandate), which facilitated establishing a Jewish ‘homeland’ in Palestine in 1948. This year (of Nakba) is a marked one in the collective memory of Palestinians as it is associated with displacement and losing land, thus opening a new chapter in the history of struggle between ‘Jews’/’Israel’ and Palestinians. By the end of the 1948 events, the Jews took control over more than two-thirds of the former British Mandate, while Jordan administered the West Bank, and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip. These lands, along with other lands belonging to neighbouring Arab countries, were also taken by Israeli forces

In 1998/9, the responsibility of HE was transferred/devolved to the legislative powers in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This has enabled the three devolved countries to reshape their educational policies according to their national priorities (Bruce, 2012). Since devolution, issues of convergence and divergence in HE policies across the four countries/systems have been discussed. Raffe (2013) argues that the interdependence between the four systems, exacerbated by the pressures of internationalisation and the wider market, constrain divergence. With England dominating as ‘the elephant in the room of the devolved HE systems’ (ibid, p.16), the UK HE ‘remains a single market for students, staff and resources’ (Bruce, 2012, p.1). Hence, I use the term 'English HE’ throughout the thesis to refer to participants’ academic institutions which are all located in England. The broad UK HE is used to refer generally to commonalities in all UK HE sectors or experiences/issues faced by international students in general.

I use ‘contexts’ in its plural form to denote and stress the diversity of Palestinian contexts.

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by the end of the six-day war in 1967. This war resulted in continued conflicts in the region which has lasted for decades. In 1993, a peace initiative/process was proposed and signed to stop the ongoing violence, known as ‘the Oslo Accord’, where an interim Palestinian authority was to be created in Gaza and the West Bank. Ultimately, the Oslo Accord failed to achieve its target of bringing peace to the region, and the conflict continued.

In 2005, the Israeli Army evacuated their troops, and around 7000 Jewish settlers withdrew from Gaza, which became the only territory free of Israeli physical existence in Palestine. Hamas (an Islamist military faction) won the legislative elections in 2006. This sparked a civil fight over ruling Gaza between the Palestinian Authority (PA, Fattah) and Hamas in 2007 that led to the defeat of PA in Gaza. Hamas’ control over Gaza was not welcomed by the international community which viewed/s it as a ‘terrorist organisation’ and refused to acknowledge it as a legitimate representative of the people who elected it. The international community, under the pressure of Israel and the US, quickly moved to impose strengthened sanctions on the Hamas-led government in Gaza which placed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, severely restricting exports and imports and banning (almost) all forms of mobility and travel by Gazans. The restrictions included basic necessities such as gas, fuel, medical supplies, construction materials, toilet paper, spices, and clothes which were blocked from moving into the besieged Strip. This ‘collective punishment’, according to the UN (Middle East Eye staff, 2020) coupled with multiple Israeli military operations/attacks (in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021) worsened the humanitarian situation in the besieged Gaza Strip. The devastating impacts of the blockade are manifested clearly through the numbers and figures4 coming from that area:

 Both the Rafah and Erez Crossings (to Egypt and Israel respectively) were shut for

I rely on the BBC article published on 20 May 2021

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240 days and opened for 125 only in 2020.  80% of Gaza residents rely on international aid.

 Gaza has the highest unemployment rates in the world, with youth unemployment reaching 70% in 2020.

 Damaged electrical infrastructure resulted in power cuts for up to 16 hours per day.  Water is highly contaminated. Meanwhile, 70% of the population received running

water for six to eight hours every four days in 2017.

 More than 100 million litres of untreated and partially treated sewage are dumped into the Mediterranean every day, while treatment facilities are banned from entering Gaza.  64% of 275 UNRWA schools run a double-shift system, one school in the morning

and another in the afternoon. At wartime, these schools become triple-shift schools as some of them turn into shelters for people fleeing shelling.

 An average class size was 41 pupils in 2019.

These shocking statistics have persisted, and continue to persist, for over a decade in Gaza. This compelled the UN to release an alarming report in 2012 in which they predicted that if the prevailing economic, environmental, and political circumstances continued, the besieged coastal enclave would become ‘unlivable by 2020’ (UN News, 2015). For the two million Gazans crammed in the world’s ‘largest open-air prison’, Gaza has been uninhabitable for years.

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Figure 2.1 Map of the besieged Gaza Strip and its crossings

The situation in the West Bank relatively echoes that in Gaza. Restricting residents’ movement is not caused by a siege, though. Rather, it is a result of checkpoints, whether permanent or flying, and constant closures (especially during Jewish holidays). The checkpoints control many forms of movement inside the West Bank, between the WB and Israel, and between the WB and Gaza. According to the Israeli Ministry of Justice, these checkpoints are put to ensure safe passages to the Israeli settlers who fear the threat of Palestinian attacks. On the other hand, these checkpoints divide the WB into separate cantons and complicate Palestinians’ lives, making it difficult for them to travel to work, reach medical services, transport goods, or/and reach their academic institutions. According to B’Tselem, an Israeli organisation promoting human rights in the Occupied Territories, these checkpoints usually require permits to be crossed. ‘When travel permits are required by Israel, they are given through a lengthy, non-transparent, and arbitrary bureaucratic process’ (B’Tselem, 2017). This has contributed to perpetuating a state of uncertainty where Palestinians find it difficult to perform simple tasks or plan their lives. Recently, these

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checkpoints have functioned as sites of life suspension, quite literally, where dozens of Palestinians have been killed. Israeli checkpoints have become ‘death traps’ for Palestinians where ‘mere suspicion of Palestinian wrongdoing could lead to immediate killing’, according to the ‘Euro-Med Monitor, 2020).

Figure 2.1 Map of the West Bank and the Israeli checkpoints

In a nutshell, under Israeli control, Palestinians are stratified into different tiers with different levels of rights, depending on which geographic unit they are born in. Palestinians born in the heartland and Jerusalem receive the Blue ID which grants them the highest tier of rights a Palestinian can get (for example crossing to the WB and Israeli cities without a military permit), but still lower than Jewish Israelis because of their ethnicity. Palestinians born in the West Bank and Gaza are issued with green IDs, an even lower tier with few rights. This ID subjects them to harsh restrictions in every aspect of their daily lives, as has been demonstrated above, hence the use of ‘Palestinian contexts’ in its plural form in this section.

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The hierarchy below shows the Israeli multi-tiered system stratifying Palestinians (and their rights) according to their geographical origin. This study is solely concerned with those Palestinians positioned at the bottom of the Israeli hierarchy of rights (or lack thereof).

Figure 2.3 Israeli multi-tiered hierarchy of Palestinians

2.1.2 Sociolinguistic Depictions from the Palestinian Contexts

Arabic is the dominant language in Gaza and the West Bank. Hebrew is more frequently used by Palestinians in the West Bank than in Gaza due to the spread of illegal Israeli settlements and contact between the Israelis and Palestinians there. Hebrew is a second language for certain Palestinians who work/ed in Israeli towns as manual labourers or those who are/were political prisoners (Horesh, 2021). The multi-glossic nature of Arabic prevails in Palestinian contexts (like other Arab contexts), namely Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Dialectal Arabic (Palestinian Arabic variety). Hary (1992, p.28) views multiglossia in Arabic as

[a] system [which] includes a continuum with two extreme ends: the acrolect, or Standard Arabic, and the basilect, or ColloqUial Arabic. In the middle, the mesolect, one finds countless varieties, or lects, used by native speakers on different occasions and under various circumstances.

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Classical Arabic is an old/historic variety of Arabic, sometimes referred to as Quranic Arabic. Being the language of the Holy Quran, it unifies millions of Muslims and serves as a lingua-franca for the Muslim nations. Members of these communities are not unified by tribal affiliations, but by the holy script. This variety is only used/spoken when reciting Quran or

classical Arabic poetry ‘Jahili’, but its religious associations have rendered it emotion-laden

for Muslims all over the world (Marranci, 2007).

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a descendant, simplified variety of Classical Arabic. It also has no native speakers, but it is the modern lingua franca taught in schools across all the Arab world and used in formal speech such as news, written texts and reports, orations, presentations, etc. The expansion of free education in the Arab world has led to the spread of Standard Arabic as the main medium of literacy and eloquence (Ennaji, 1999).

Palestinian Arabic Variety is the local vernacular form of MSA ‘Ammyia’ spoken by

Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, inside the Green Line of 1948/Israel, and the diaspora. This variety is a result of historical processes of Arabisation and nativisation of

Classical/Standard Arabic ‘Fusha’ in Palestine. As such, this variety has layers and traces of

the indigenous tongues which were spoken in the region before the advent of Arabic, mainly Aramaic, Canaanite, Classical Hebrew, Latin and Greek (Bassal, 2012; Hopkins, 1995).

Recently, Palestinian Arabic has a range of regional sub-varieties such as urban ‘madani’, rural ‘fallahi’, and Bedouin ‘badawi’. The way each Palestinian area or group speaks is a

crucial identity marker distinguishing between cities, towns, villages, refugee camps as well as social classes. Even in places which might be seemingly perceived as linguistically homogenous, the sociolinguistic scene is more complex and diverse. For example, a distinction can be easily made between the Gaza dialect, which Horesh (2021, p.668)

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describes as ‘an interesting mixture of urban Palestinian, Bedouin and Egyptian elements’, and the dialects of other non-Gazan Palestinians, i.e., refugees. Horesh (2021) argues that if an accurate dialectal geography is to be created, the intricacies of dialectal variation, language choice, and language contact in the contexts of Palestinian Arabic varieties will produce ‘a very messy’ atlas/ linguistic map considering the historical, political, social, and economic contexts at play. It is worth mentioning that these varieties have grown in importance in the age of social media as younger generations have tended to use their colloquial varieties in writing, thus giving it more legitimacy.

English is the most dominant foreign language in the Occupied Territories. The British Mandate period paved the way for the establishment of English as a language of power in Palestine. Even when another language was brought into the dynamic sociolinguistic scene (Hebrew) as of 1948, English has endured both as a colonial legacy and a window onto the wider world (Bianchi and Abdel Razeq, 2017). Currently, English is the most widely known and used foreign language in Gaza and the West Bank. Amara (2003, p.221) maintains that ‘knowledge of English is a powerful status symbol and class marker’ in the Palestinian society. This is not surprising because colonial powers did not only introduce and establish their foreign languages within the communities/nations they controlled. They also spread and promoted certain ideologies which portrayed these languages in shiny colours, eg. as languages of power, elitism, education, civilisation and prestige. English language ideologies remain at the heart of societal and institutional perceptions. Therefore, it can be argued that the esteemed status of English in Palestinian society is embedded in hegemonic discourses and ideologies that advantage and favour those who master English. This attracts more individuals who aspire to attain this privilege/advantage. Once they attest to the power and

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opportunities offered by English, they become part of the ideological loop which reproduces and perpetuates the favourable status/perceptions of English and its speakers.

At the institutional level, acknowledging the importance of English is reflected in the

Palestinian ELT curriculum. English for Palestine, the result of a collaboration between the Palestinian Ministry of Education and HE and McMillan Education, is the title given to a

series of textbooks taught in the government/public, UNRWA, and private schools in Gaza and the West Bank (Bianchi and Abdel Razeq, 2017). English is taught starting from the first grade (age of six) as a core subject. Despite this valuing of the important role of language education in the future of students, ELT in Palestine continues to attract criticism given the challenges both within the educational system and the outside context which hinders the learning/teaching process (ibid). Among these persisting challenges, which profoundly affect the quality of ELT are: large class sizes, lack of technology use, teaching in ‘a cultural vacuum’ (Shehadeh and Dwaik, 2013), lack of educational materials and resources, limited proficiency in English among EFL teachers (as observed by Abdel Razeq, 2017), dearth of group work and cooperative learning methods (Al Mazloum and Qeshta, 2007), teaching to pass the tests, overemphasis on grammar (Fennel, 2007), lack of extracurricular material and activities, lack of teachers’ motivation due to low wages (Yamchi, 2006), reliance on ‘Standard British English’, and living under the Israeli occupation where frequent closures, strikes, demonstrations, and incursions challenge any educational system. Given these conditions, Bianchi and Abdel Razeq (2017) state that a large number of high school graduates enter higher education with mediocre English proficiency, except for those minority students who graduate from private schools where English is the medium of instruction. At the university level, all students are required to study and learn English either

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as a medium of instruction and reading or as a requirement course regardless of students’ majors.

I concur with Bianchi and Abdel Razeq (2017) when they wonder how Palestinian students are even able to gain an education in light of the logistical limitations, demographic realities, and the contextual factors of conflict which all conspire to constantly impede the learning process. However, many of those students continue to draw on the resources they can reach and their individual ‘investment’ (Norton, 1995) in the language as they aspire to be proficient speakers of the English language. One way of investing in English, and indeed a result of diligent investment, is studying abroad in an English-speaking country. The following section traces trends in academic sojourning among Palestinian students.

2.1.3 Trends in Palestinian Students’ Academic Sojourning

Travelling to pursue higher education abroad is not a new phenomenon among Palestinian learners (Arar and Haj Yehia, 2020). The mobility of Palestinian students to other countries has its origins in Arab and Islamic cultural history (Haj Yehia and Arar, 2014). Towards the end of the Ottoman rule, Palestinian students from wealthy backgrounds oriented to Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo, and even Paris to attain academic degrees (Arar and Haj Yehia, 2020). Under the British Mandate, opportunities to study abroad were limited, with 91 students studying at the American University in Beirut and Al-Azhar and Dar Al-Olum in Cairo (ibid). According to Tibawi (1956), in 1948, the number of sojourners reached 1,133, distributed between Beirut, Cairo, the USA, and the UK. The emergence of the USA and UK as destinations for sojourning is indicative of the influence of globalisation forces back then, as the global north/west started to attract students from the south/east, including Palestinians.

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Recent statistics indicate that the number of Palestinian students studying abroad has significantly increased, making OPT among the top five Arab source countries of student mobility. In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic and the year of this research data collection, the number of Palestinian students reached 24,518, distributed as: 17,500 in Arab countries, 5,023 in Europe, 1,400 in Asia, and 595 in the USA (Badran et al., 2020). It is important to highlight that Palestinian students usually orient to Arab countries for undergraduate studies, while there tends to be a preference for Europe (particularly the UK) and the US to pursue postgraduate studies. Undergraduate studies take four to six years to complete in most Arab academic institutions, therefore Arab destinations, which are close in geography and culture, are preferred to Palestinian families5 when they decide to send their 18-year-olds for lengthy periods of study abroad. On the contrary, postgraduate studies are of relatively short durations; between one to two years in the UK and USA, respectively. These are usually fully funded for Palestinian students who have become full-fledged and mature adults (at least from the standpoint of their families) by the time they decide to venture outside their comfort zones to other new continents.

Arar and Haj Yehia (2020) argue that while a considerable percentage of Arab sojourners (54%, according to the UNDP 2014 report) do not return to their countries after finishing their studies abroad due to political conditions and instability, Palestinian minority students of Israel (Palestinians/Arabs of 1948) tend to have ‘circular’ mobilities. This means that those students return to ‘Israel’ with degrees that usually enable them to participate in the labour market. Despite the fact that the majority of the participants in this project (eight out of nine)

5

The decision of academic mobility among Palestinian students/sojourners is strongly influenced by their social ties, especially parents and other family members. This research supports such an argument and resonates with Brooks and Waters’ (2010) findings that UK students’ sojourn experiences are socially embedded and grounded within networks of family and friends.

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