EDITORIAL FOREWORD

Together, they address two key facets of the representation of Arab peoples in both the Middle East and its diasporas: 1) contested and evolving academic discourses of Orientalism, and 2) boilerplate representations of the Middle East/North Africa region and its peoples beyond the academe. Because these developments in the field of Arab American Studies are intimately linked to new directions in the field of Middle East Migration Studies (as exemplified in previous issues of this journal by authors such as Pauline Homsi Vinson, Laura Robson, Linda Jacobs, Silvia C. Ferreira, or Matthew Jaber Stiffler), we believe that readers of Mashriq & Mahjar will likely see here many reflections of questions and debates that have, since its inception, been central to this publication. The end result is an argument for moving beyond tropes of kinship as the defining bonds of diasporic groups, and toward the articulation of a coalitional identity in these authors' configuration of self and their kith-kin ethnic community. On the one hand, diasporic activism, and the influence of returnee language and political platforms, has led to the rise of new discourses of "Tunisanité," or the provision of networks of international support that counter domestic attempts at political closure. Taken together with Guignard's article, in all three case studies, we witness something akin to Nina Glick Schiller and Georges Fouron's notion of "Long-Distance Nationalism," and are able to observe the diverse outcomes of this phenomenon coming home to roost.2 Guignard rounds out this section with his article on Palestinian returnee flows that ensued after the Oslo Accords, and contributed to the state-building process.