‘A stranger from this homeland’: deportation and the ruin of lives and livelihoods during the Palestine Mandate

This article explores Mandate Palestine’s immigration policy through the stories of migrants and settled residents who attempted to resist government-issued deportation orders for their removal from the territory. Individuals who lived in and crossed the borders and frontiers of interwar Palestine without the necessary permissions from the mandate government began to negotiate their relationship with the state once they received deportation orders, had their identity documents revoked, or found themselves under arrest. Through a close reading of archival sources including petitions, letters court case extracts and police correspondence, the article argues that Palestine’s immigration and deportation policies caused and exacerbated precarity and dislocation, all of which represented elements of the modern experience of colonial citizenship.