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Situating Belonging Through Multi-Sited Identities: Community Building Among Middle Eastern Christians In Upstate South Carolina, Amelia Ayoob

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a Human Geography perspective on immigrant identity and integration. Using the case of a diverse, multigenerational Middle Eastern Christian population in the Upstate region of South Carolina, I explore how Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants have negotiated belonging and identity in the United States by simultaneously building new social networks in the Upstate and maintaining ties to the Middle East. The focus on a single case allowed for an in-depth exploration of how geographic and historical contexts have shaped the present-day dynamics of the community (broadly defined) constructed around two Catholic churches, one Latin and one …