Linguistic citizenship and transformational spaces

Linguistic citizenship was first introduced within a critique of the discourse of rights related to language educational equality. It highlights the importance of practices whereby ‘people use a variety of (self-authored) linguistic (and multimodal) practices to sculpt alternative political and ethical, religious and epistemological subjectivities to what is otherwise given’ (Stroud Reference Stroud, Lim, Stroud and Wee2018:5). LC offers an understanding of acts of citizenship as not necessarily related to notions of nation-state citizenship (i.e. the wielding of a passport) but rather to ‘practices whereby new actors, seeking recognition in the public space in order to determine a new course of events, shift the location of agency and voice’ (Stroud Reference Stroud, Lim, Stroud and Wee2018:21). By stressing the importance of grassroots activity, LC emphasizes cultural and political voice and agency while seeking to shift the analytical and activist gear from ‘affirmative’ to ‘transformative’ strategies (Fraser Reference Fraser1995; Stroud Reference Stroud2001). This focus on transformation aligns with Bierria's (Reference Bierria2014) use of ‘transformative agency’ as a useful analytical tool to discern how minoritized youth cultivate and exercise their agency to resist and negotiate the institutional erasure of their identity.

Within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zones, an important rationale for using LC is that it addresses semiotically the problem of co-habitation across difference (Milani, Awayed-Bishara, Gafter, & Levon Reference Milani, Awayed-Bishara, Gafter and Levon2022), where questions of ethical responsibility of others are pivotal (Todd Reference Todd2015), and individual freedom and agency is dependent on engaging with plural others. Thus, LC comprises semiotic acts in marginal spaces (e.g. non-institutional, non-normative spaces) that are generative of new political subjectivities concomitant with re-formed collectivities, rather than recognition and adaptation to the status quo in mainstream arenas. Through this focus on agency and political speakerhood in marginal Southern spaces, this article employs LC as a useful lens for understanding sumud as a pedagogical act of transformation. In so doing, this study heeds recent calls for rethinking sociolinguistics from a Southern perspective and circulating ‘[S]outhern expertise and knowledge of pluriversal views of humanity in communalities of being, knowing, and believing’ (Heugh, Stroud, Taylor-Leech, & De Costa Reference Heugh, Stroud, Taylor-Leech, De Costa, Heugh, Stroud, Taylor-Leech and De Costa2021:2). Focusing on Southern epistemologies ‘concerns the production and validation of knowledges anchored in the experiences of resistance of all those social groups that have systematically suffered injustice, oppression, colonialism, and patriarchy’ (Santos Reference Santos2014:1). Speaking from a Southern locus of enunciation brings to the fore the revolutionary sense of sumud as it is manifested in language and other semiotic practices Palestinians use to express their great refusal to recognize and surrender to the power structures of colonialism, specifically those operated in their colonized education.

Sumud in Palestinian colonized education

A growing corpus of research has developed versatile understandings of sumud as a key concept in intellectual debates about the strategies Palestinians develop under colonial conditions (e.g. Tawil-Souri Reference Tawil-Souri2009; Meari Reference Meari2014; Rijke & van Teeffelen Reference Rijke and Van Teeffelen2014; Ryan Reference Ryan2015; Shehadeh Reference Shehadeh2015; Fassetta, Imperiale, Aldegheri, & Al-Masri Reference Fassetta, Imperiale;, Aldegheri; and Al-Masri2020). Mindful of how the notion of sumud may be applied in different Palestinian contexts, this article casts a spotlight on Palestinians who remained ‘inside’ and constitute some 21% of Israel's population.Footnote ¹ Here, the sumud practices are adapted to the specific circumstances of living as an actively marginalized minority, and as second-class citizens in a country that defines itself first as Jewish and then as democratic. Israel's prioritization of its Jewishness over its democratic nature (Smooha Reference Smooha2002) was manifested most substantially in July 2018 when the Knesset (Israeli parliament) passed the Nation State Law that defines Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people alone. The law not only reinforced the second-class status of its Palestinian citizens, but also transformed the status of Arabic from an official language into a language with a ‘special’ status.

Notwithstanding Arabic's continued use as the medium of instruction in Arab schools, the scholarship has consistently observed the misrecognition of the Palestinian collective identity (e.g. Peled-Elhanan Reference Peled-Elhanan2012; Awayed-Bishara Reference Awayed-Bishara2020, Reference Awayed-Bishara2021a,b). To ensure the denationalization of Palestinians, fear was instilled within the Palestinian localities through a sophisticated system of surveillance (Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury Reference Rouhana and Sabbagh-Khoury2014). Direct surveillance prevailed during the military rule that Israel imposed on the Palestinian community between 1948 and 1966 (Robinson Reference Robinson2013), while an indirect system of control remains in the form of colonized education (Awayed-Bishara et al. Reference Awayed-Bishara, Netz and Milani2022). Colonized education captures how Israel had designed Arab education to denationalize, and particularly to de-Palestinize Arab students. For example, in one English-as-a-foreign-language class reported in our study, the teacher mentioned the Arabic word for revolution, thawra, with the goal of apolitically discussing revolutionary schools in the US. The word thawra immediately evoked in the students a sense of belonging to their Palestinian identities as they started to call out the word falasteen ‘Palestine’. In response to students’ articulation of perhaps the most ‘un-sayable’ word, falasteen, the teacher utilized policing (even silencing) discursive strategies until she completely depoliticized the discussion of thawra in class.

Being subjected to a colonized form of education has indeed interpellated and contained many Palestinians within the logic of colonial politics. At the same time, it has also driven many others to ‘require different discourses of cultural opposition’ (Karkabi Reference Karkabi2018:1182). Previous studies have underpinned linguistic citizenship as a route through which Palestinians develop new modes of political speakerhood against Israel's continuous attempts to erase their Palestinian identity and eradicate their sense of Palestinian belonging and collectiveness (Awayed-Bishara Reference Awayed-Bishara2020, Reference Awayed-Bishara2021a,b; Awayed-Bishara et al. Reference Awayed-Bishara, Netz and Milani2022). It is precisely within these alternative modes of speakerhood, and resistance, operating outside the discursive space of formal educational politics that I underpin pedagogy of sumud as a LC practice.

Underpinning pedagogy of sumud as a linguistic citizenship practice

Approaching modes of political speakerhood from the perspective of sumud entails reading the colonial power structure of Palestinian education from the perspective of youth who are concurrently subjected to it but also challenging and destabilizing its terms. Under conditions of oppression, sumud ‘is a constant revolutionary becoming, opening up a possibility for an alternative regime of being’, and ‘for an ethical-political relational self’ (Meari Reference Meari2014:549). This article looks at sumud as a particular revolutionary and liberating Palestinian mode of being that encodes a liberational potential for humanity (as per Freire Reference Freire1970/2005). The humanizing essence of sumud is embedded in the aspiration of Palestinians not merely to survive and endure as a nation but also to contribute ‘to the protection and maintenance of the human values of freedom and liberation’ (Jaradat Reference Jaradat2010, as cited in Meari Reference Meari2014:554–55). Thus, sumud pedagogy comprises a processional form of becoming that is never finished or fixed, but rather dynamic and continuous. Sumud involves reorganizing the Palestinian revolutionary self (Meari Reference Meari2014) and developing Palestinian political agency, which ‘is not given but achieved on the basis of practices that alter the subject’ (Feldman Reference Feldman1991:1). With its focus on transformative practices for crafting autonomous subjectivities (Stroud Reference Stroud, Lim, Stroud and Wee2018), LC offers a useful bridging concept for studies looking at particular cases of individuals and communities applying practices of sumud.

Pedagogy of sumud is inherently transformative, as it entails the acknowledgement of Palestinian everyday struggle as an important practice against colonialism (Santos Reference Santos2014). In conjunction with decolonial struggles elsewhere, sumud is often also ‘acknowledged as such by an invested community of actors, and … [as] a part of an emerging sociality, community, or an alternative citizenship’ (Stroud & Kerfoot Reference Stroud and Kerfoot2020:9). In this sense, the actualization of sumud requires continuous cultivation and nurturing processes that are often mobilized through linguistic and multimodal articulation in chants and hip-hop songs, in particular. Notably, the qualifier ‘linguistic’ (in LC) should not be interpreted as indicating spoken and written codes, but rather refers to all meaning-making resources including visuality, bodily expression and materiality (see also Milani Reference Milani2015; Peck & Stroud Reference Peck and Stroud2015; Mpendukana & Stroud Reference Mpendukana, Stroud, Peck, Stroud and Williams2019), which social actors employ to make themselves seen and heard. In the literature drawing on LC, chants and hip-hop lyrics are typical examples ‘of how forms of semiosis are creatively deployed to create a disruptive space for “citizen” engagement for those whose voices are habitually silenced’ (Stroud Reference Stroud, Lim, Stroud and Wee2018:4). In their study of the role Palestinian hip-hop and rap play in the lives of Palestinian youth, Maira & Shihade (Reference Maira and Magid2012:18) quote a young Palestinian solo rapper who identifies hip-hop as a pedagogical tool for her generation.

Against this backdrop, I posit that in response to colonial denationalizing forces, the sociolinguistic and semiotic practices that young Palestinians perform outside the formal educational system function as ‘a powerful means of reaching out to the Palestinian community, of nationalizing and defining resistance, and of forging political allegiances’ (McDonald Reference McDonald2013:6, emphasis added). Before demonstrating how this is actualized in practice, I provide some methodological reflections.

Research methods and cases studied

This qualitative linguistic ethnography employs research methods suitable for accessing sensitive issues and engaging with individual and social understanding. Applying linguistic ethnography methods allowed me to add the element of reflexivity about my role as a Southern researcher in studying meaning-making processes as they happen in society (as per Tusting Reference Tusting and Tusting2020). Notably, Rampton, Maybin, & Roberts (Reference Rampton, Maybin, Roberts, Snell, Shaw and Copland2015) highlight how linguistic ethnography entails attention to people's emic perspectives; sensitivity to multiple understandings of particular contexts; and openness to complexity, contradiction, and re-interpretation over time. Hence, data reported in this article are drawn from: (i) an ethnographic study I conducted shortly after the May 2021 incidents (in June 2021), which included semistructured interviews with six members of the Haifa Youth Movement; and (ii) a critical analysis of a particular genre of Palestinian hip-hop produced by Big Sam and an interview that I held with him in Haifa (in February 2022). In this article, I focus only on the statements made in interviews by two of the HYM's co-founders: Sama (she) and Adi (he). Both Sama and Adi were in their early twenties at the time of the interviews, and they both granted me permission to use their first names. I show interview excerpts in Arabic alongside English translations. My conscious choice as a Palestinian scholar to do so comprises an act of resistance against the Nation State Law that demoted Arabic from an official language to one with ‘special status’ (see section above), and as part of my engagement with Southern epistemologies.

Setting: Focus on Haifa

Haifa is Israel's third largest city, with a mix of Jewish and Palestinian Arab residents. It is often regarded as the last residence option available for young Palestinians from villages and towns in the Galilee and Triangle who seek an urban Palestinian lifestyle (Karkabi Reference Karkabi2018). This urbanization process resulted in increasing numbers of Palestinian civic organizations, university graduates, and professionals leading to the city's accelerated cultural revival (Eqieq Reference Eqieq2019) and to imagining Haifa as the Palestinian cultural capital in Israel (Karkabi Reference Karkabi2018).

As the imagined Palestinian cultural capital, Haifa also plays a central role in the development of the Palestinian music scene (Karkabi Reference Karkabi2018). In the last two decades or so, several Haifa-based bands have fused local music styles with international global genres. Big Sam offers a particular example of such musicians. Born in the US to Palestinian parents—a father from Gaza and a mother from Yafa (Jaffa)—Big Sam moved to Haifa after spending several years in Qatar armed with rich cultural, linguistic, and musical repertoires. When asked why he chose Haifa, he answered: “Haifa is coastal just like Gaza. Being in a city of sea and sand is as close to my father's home town as I could ever get.” Using a mix of rural spoken Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, Big Sam offers a distinctive genre of Palestinian hip-hop that has been gaining momentum among many Palestinians.

The Haifa Youth Movement (HYM), founded in 2014, also features in Haifa's cultural scene:

My analysis seeks to identify the extent to which the cultural ideals cultivated by Big Sam's music and young members of the HYM might constitute counterhegemonic pedagogical practices for contesting Palestinian denationalization.

The unmuting of young Palestinians’ linguistic and national voices

Big Sam is a Palestinian hip-hop artist whose protest music has been capturing the attention of many Arabic-speaking listeners, both locally and globally, as manifested by his tremendous popularity and high number of followers on Facebook and Instagram. His musical identity and hip-hop lyrics seem to open up a space for political speakerhood outside the regimented educational institution (Stroud Reference Stroud, Lim, Stroud and Wee2018). As ‘a site of cultural production, knowledge production, and activism where aesthetics are inextricably linked to politics and pedagogy’ (Alim, Williams, Haupt, & Jansen Reference Alim, Williams, Haupt and Jansen2021:209), hip-hop culture is potentially political and pedagogical (Haupt, Williams, Alim, & Jansen Reference Haupt, Williams, Alim and Jansen2019; Williams Reference Williams2021), encouraging a critical and dialogical engagement in colonial and oppressive contexts (e.g. South Africa or the US; Alim et al. Reference Alim, Williams, Haupt and Jansen2021). Dialogical engagement in these contexts is pedagogically achieved through the explicit philosophy of ‘Each one, teach one’ (Alim et al. Reference Alim, Williams, Haupt and Jansen2021:209). Situating himself and his music within this political-pedagogical hip-hop culture, Big Sam states:

Big Sam asserts that his calling as a Palestinian artist is to speak against and contest the oppression of his people ‘here’ just as Black artists are doing ‘there’ in the US. While locating himself as a hip-hop artist within the African-American hip-hop struggle against anti-Black systemic racism (“inspiration came from there”), Big Sam notes the efforts he invests in making his own people cognizant of the Black struggle. Like much hip-hop in the US and South Africa that engages in dialogue with anti-poor, anti-Black, and anti-Indigenous contexts (Alim et al. Reference Alim, Williams, Haupt and Jansen2021), Palestinian hip-hop speaks back to anti-Palestinian systemic racism (“speak about people dying in Jerusalem or at checkpoints”). “Speaking about what is happening in Palestine” is motivated by a sense of responsibility with which Big Sam distinguishes himself from popular artists such as Omar Diab and Tamir Hussni. This notion of responsibility aligns with the overarching principles of linguistic citizenship as a case of a speaker exercising agency and participation through multimodal means to break the silence in sociocultural arenas (Stroud Reference Stroud, Lim, Stroud and Wee2018; Milani et al. Reference Milani, Awayed-Bishara, Gafter and Levon2022).

Moreover, cognizant of hip-hop's political nature, Big Sam is also aware that his art is potentially pedagogical:

Big Sam's citation of his mother's description of his role as a ‘teacher’, alongside his perception of her words a ‘warning’, reinforce his sense of pedagogical responsibility towards Palestinian youth. He manifests this responsibility tangibly in his lyrics and in the ‘teaching strategies’ he uses for writing them:

The above excerpt indicates that the use of Palestinian-related terms such as istitan, qadiyya,Footnote ⁴ or ħaq il-ʕawda enables Big Sam to contest and decolonize the regimented sphere of speakable discourses that operate within the official educational system (Awayed-Bishara et al. Reference Awayed-Bishara, Netz and Milani2022). To ensure that the younger generation will first receive and then also participate in decolonizing processes, Big Sam seems to apply the principles of culturally relevant pedagogies (Ladson-Billings Reference Ladson-Billings1995; Awayed-Bishara Reference Awayed-Bishara2021a): namely, that discussing issues derived from the learners’ own lived experiences (e.g. love, passion, and relationships) raises their critical consciousness and increases their receptivity of the offered content. The fact that Big Sam's music reaches a large number of Palestinian youth in Israel indicates that despite the colonized educational system to which they are subjected, these youngsters are offered a new discursive space for sculpting alternative subjectivities outside formal educational domains. This is a core dimension of linguistic citizenship—constructing new constituencies that go beyond and against those that are institutionally designated or recognized by those who hold the official discourses of power (Stroud Reference Stroud, Lim, Stroud and Wee2018).

In another song entitled Layssa Bayti Footnote ⁵ ‘Not my home’, Big Sam describes the agony refugee parents experience when losing a child. He reports that this song was inspired by how a Syrian friend of his lost his daughter while trying to flee to Europe during the war. Deeply moved by the agony his friend's wife was feeling, Big Sam wrote Layssa Bayti to raise attention to the refugee crisis in its broader sense and to bring Palestinian youth closer to their Pan-Arab identity. Repeating the word bideesh which in spoken Arabic means ‘I refuse’, Big Sam agentively speaks against the oppressing and silencing of younger generations and calls for the unmuting and freeing of their voices.

1. (1) 1 بديش أكون مربوط

   ‘I refuse to be constrained’

   2 بديش يعم سكوت

   ‘I refuse that silence prevails’

   3 بديش العمر يفوت

   ‘I refuse to see life passing’

   4 بلا ما نعطي دافع لجيل يعيش

   ‘without giving motivation to a generation’

   5 حُر واعي مش مكبوت

   ‘who will live free and conscious, not oppressed’

Clearly, Big Sam holds himself responsible for intervening in the process of educating the younger generation to become “free and conscious”. His cognizant refusal to be “silent” and “constrained” about the oppression of young Palestinians offers a counter educational model to those commonly seen within formal educational systems (Awayed-Bishara et al. Reference Awayed-Bishara, Netz and Milani2022). Namely, his pedagogical responsibility to encourage the future generations of Palestinians to become free speaking agents could be contrasted to the way most Palestinian teachers and educators are contained within the colonial regulations imposed on them in their colonized education (as we have seen in the English classroom and from an incident that Sama shares in the next section). Following the gestures of agency that he performs in lines 1–5 in rap rhythm in spoken Arabic, Big Sam moves in lines 6–11 into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Here, he sounds more like a Sufi poet making use of melodic hymns and chants of devotional poetry. Sufism is known to grant ordinary people an entry point to experience a higher state of consciousness and to manage their social and psychological problems (Levin Reference Levin2008). This connection becomes evident in the way Big Sam directly speaks to his oppressors.

1. (2) 6 يا من سلبتم حريتي

   ‘To those who stole my freedom’

   7 يا من رميتموني على شواطئ الغريب

   ‘To those who threw me at the stranger's shores’

   8 أين بيتي وقضيتي

   ‘Where is my home and my [Palestinian] problem’

   9 هذا ركامٌ لا ملاذ

   ‘This is rubble not refuge’

   10 هذا حطامٌ لا وطن

   ‘This is ruins not nation’

   11  هذا ليس بيتي

   ‘This is not my home’

The use of MSA is significant. Big Sam explains that the Quran is his source of inspiration when it comes to selecting a rich form of Arabic that reaches as many listeners as possible and that might, in his own words, “encourage the use of less Hebrew in the everyday speech of the [Arab] people who live in Israel”. Yet, he asserts that he speaks spiritually, intending to appeal to everyone, regardless of their religious affiliation. Here again his Sufi influences emerge, enabling him ‘to communicate intensive mystical emotion through the medium of language’ to his audience, so they ‘experience the affective state which engendered them’ (Frishkopf Reference Frishkopf2000:2). He explains that some of the less commonly known words that he uses—for example, aradeen (plural for ‘land’, ard) or nayareen (plural for ‘fire’, nar)—often become debated issues amongst his fans. A critical examination of such debates indeed constitutes a rich research site for future research. He speaks of these linguistic discussions around the richness of the Arabic language with great satisfaction, specifically in the aftermath of the Nation State Law that cancelled the official status of Arabic. This embedding of Arabic into the sociopolitical realities of the Palestinians in Israel comprises an important feature of linguistic citizenship (Stroud Reference Stroud2015).

Lastly, and importantly, the notion of sumud encompasses an overarching umbrella term for the pedagogical mission that Big Sam commits himself to. Specifically, Big Sam offers a new understanding of how sumud pedagogy not only aligns with but also expands the transformative framework of linguistic citizenship.

Mindful of the hardships, challenges, agonies, and even despair, Big Sam offers a hopeful pedagogy of sumud that allows Palestinians to live freely and mainly, un-silently. This might be achieved by exercising linguistic citizenship, which grants agency by: (i) challenging the politics of silencing and erasure and reinserting their voice (Stroud & Williams Reference Stroud and Williams2017); and (ii) learning to unlearn colonial fear. Challenging the politics of silencing entails learning how to become liberated Palestinians through unlearning colonial practices of de-Palestinization, as the following section illustrates.

Undoing colonial fear

I found that young Palestinians use ‘the undoing of colonial fear’ (Meari Reference Meari2014) to liberate themselves from the shackles of institutional fear or surveillance, through the use of various discursive tools. Notably, they associate ‘fear’ to speak up against the Israeli institution with previous generations, not their own. Almost all participants explicitly claimed that their parents, and more generally older Palestinians, are still dominated and summoned by colonial fear. In this regard, Adi declares, “we crossed the barrier of fear”, although admits that they might not be ready for upcoming stages of struggle. He also differentiates younger and older generations by their understanding and exercising of sumud.

Adi critiques the way Palestinians of what he calls “the Nakba generation” often perceive sumud as the ability to stay put and preserve one's own home and family. This conception of sumud, he claims, is limiting (within one's own home) and overlooks the need to enable broader, more encompassing modes of steadfastness (“all around historic Palestine”). A broader understanding of sumud enables a shift from modes of resilience to modes of resistance, extending throughout “all historic Palestine”. In this sense, Adi links the construction of space (“This is what enables us to build our future in this land”) to the reorganization of the Palestinian self (“sumud without fear”) through a redefinition of sumud as an anticolonial mode of resistance (in one's home, neighborhood, and everywhere). Sumud without fear must go beyond a concerted or individual effort to protect one's own home or family, mainly by keeping silent (i.e. “quietly”) about the colonial conditions that Palestinians experience (see Ryan Reference Ryan2015). By offering a committed, agentive, and fearless notion of sumud, Adi articulates a hopeful perception of Palestinians’ ability to construct their future in this land.

Moreover, the undoing of colonial fear entails learning how to become liberated Palestinians through unlearning colonial practices of de-Palestinization. In this regard, Sama (now in her early twenties) discusses an experience she had in the eighth grade, when she and her classmates were punished and sent home by the school administration for hanging Mahmoud Darwish's poems on the corridor walls in their school and for wearing keffiyehs in an honor of his death (see Awayed-Bishara et al. Reference Awayed-Bishara, Netz and Milani2022). She states:

This excerpt further demonstrates how more recent acts of solidarity (in May 2021) and expression (students screaming falasteen in the English classroom) are situated across a long and continuous line of struggle Palestinian youth have been forging against an educational discursive regime that bans their political and national speakerhood. The experiences shared by Sama and other Palestinian school kids capture how the politics of military rule still operate in Arab schools to censor and constrain the sphere of the Palestinian ‘sayable’ (Awayed-Bishara et al. Reference Awayed-Bishara, Netz and Milani2022). Against the constraining forces operating inside the formal educational system, however, Palestinian youth seem determined to voice alternative knowledges and craft new political subjectivities to compensate for those otherwise erased. Sama's ‘current’ realization is that today, she and other youth are still intentionally prevented from constructing their national sense of self and belonging, just like they were during her childhood. Yet, instead of submitting to these oppressive systems of erasure, she agentively works on their deconstruction. While this is indeed evident in her activist role as a HYM member, her activities are also linked to a different, even radical, notion of sumud:

Sama emphasizes how sumud as a particular liberating Palestinian mode of being requires a different type of consciousness. Sama's description of the kinds of struggle in which she is involved alludes to her spirit of agency and defiance, manifested in her ability as a young Palestinian woman to balance her struggles for liberation along more than one axis at a time (Atshan Reference Atshan2020). Stating that her Palestinian struggle today is not merely a struggle against colonialism but also against patriarchy indicates that Sama espouses intersectional resistance to oppression. While Sama offers a pivotal contribution to our understanding of the intersectionality of Palestinian resistance by underscoring the role of feminist movements, the literature on queer Palestinian movements also underscores their role in redefining the terms of Palestinian struggles in recent decades (see Atshan Reference Atshan2020 for an extensive overview of Palestinian queer movements’ struggle alongside that of the feminist movements that Sama names above). In short, the multiplicity of voices that currently engage in the discourse of Palestinian struggle are becoming the decolonial way for ‘overcoming the surveillance and disenfranchisement—both discursive and embodied—that [Palestinians] face from many directions’ (Atshan Reference Atshan2020:216). Thus, Sama's everyday acts of struggle are acts of linguistic citizenship, which engage pluriversality by lifting the voices of ‘individuals and groups historically captured in circuits of invisibilization, to demand recognition and lay claims to dignity’ (Stroud & Kerfoot Reference Stroud and Kerfoot2020:11).

To conclude, perspectives offered by HYM members suggest that young Palestinians are constituting new forms of political agency for revealing as well as contesting the colonial forces that aim to erase their identity and sense of self as Palestinians. Notable is their ability to clearly, fearlessly, and liberally construct themselves as free speaking agents. This political mode of speakerhood enables them to define themselves anew as full partners, not subordinates or ‘colonized’. Adi states:

The refusal to see themselves as a ‘minority’ offers a nuanced insight into what is often described as the conundrum of being a ‘Palestinian in Israel’: the experience of exclusion Palestinians deal with as second-class citizens in a Jewish state, alongside that of suspicion from other Palestinians and Arabs in Arab countries (Meira & Shihade Reference Maira and Magid2012). By emphasizing the oneness and continuity of the Palestinian people, and bringing in important gender and generational differences, these young Palestinians decolonize their status as a ‘minority’ and offer a new epistemological self-understanding that liberates them from ‘oppressive tools’. Indeed, their status as a ‘national minority’ was involuntarily and even unwillingly set as a result of colonization and territorial expansion (Kymlicka Reference Kymlicka1995). In sum, their attempts as linguistic citizens to reimagine and reconstruct existing sociopolitical and colonial arrangements (e.g. their imposed minority status) is a central component in striving for transformation through acts of LC (Bierria Reference Bierria2014; Stroud Reference Stroud, Lim, Stroud and Wee2018) as it becomes even more evident in the last analytical section.

Reclaiming ownership of Palestinian space and identity

The way participants related to Haifa and its significant Palestinian landmarks creates a link between space, identity, and political speakerhood. Particularly useful for analyzing this link is what Jaworski & Thurlow call ‘making space, locating self’ (2010:6), referring to those discursive processes through which the construction of space is deeply imbricated with realization of selfhood. Young Palestinians apply various discursive tools in reclaiming their ownership over Palestinian spaces.