Introduction: Layers of Spatial Rupture among Syrians in Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Syria

Abstract How is conflict reshaped by and through the displacement of millions of people into neighboring countries? Does conflict follow displaced people and how does this spatial rupture reconfigure conflict itself? Based on ethnographies of Syrians in Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, this introduction to a special section on displaced conflict argues that displacement, generating a spatial rupture between people and the state, layers conflict by embedding state level competitions over power in intimate relationships. Moreover, displacement inscribes the altered stakes of everyday social life into state level politics. In displacement, the Syrian conflict re-emerges as a layer of decision about, for instance, where and how to bury the deceased, just as shifting forms of solidarity between Syrians and Lebanese becomes one layer of what the conflict is all about. As such, comprehending the conflict and the transformations it instigates in people's lifeworlds requires attention to the layering induced by spatial rupture.