Introduction

THE THREE PAPERS that comprise this dossier explore the intraregional and intercontinental mobilities of Palestinians during the late Ottoman period and the British Mandate. While several studies have focused on both the processes of integration and diasporization of Palestinian migrants in their host countries, the papers in this dossier address the political and cultural implications of this migration for Palestinian society in Palestine, from the 1920s until theestablishment of Israel in 1948. Although emigration from Ottoman and Mandate-era Palestine was proportionally much smaller than that from Lebanon and Syria, the three articles provide an insightful contribution to Palestinian social history, in particular for the pre-1948 period, which has aroused unabated interest in Palestinian historiography since the 1990s. The authors—all historians—have carried out groundbreaking research that sheds light on the Palestinian nationbuilding process from an original and lesser-known point of view, that of migrants. This decentered observation lens proves remarkably relevant to thinking about the political, social, and cultural changes that supported the construction of a modern national consciousness in Palestine.