Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Interview with Leila Hudson: "Lines of Flight, Assemblages of Home: Syrian Women Displaced"
Host: Roberto Mazza | Guest: Leila Hudson | Aired: December 19, 2025

Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with anthropologist and historian Leila Hudson about her new book, Lines of Flight, Assemblages of Home: Syrian Women Displaced (Syracuse UP, 2025). The book traces the experiences of five middle-aged sisters from Damascus as they navigate war, displacement, and transformation across Syria and the wider diaspora. Hudson uses oral history and Deleuzian theory to illuminate how these women reconstruct home, kinship, and identity amid displacement, challenging simplistic portrayals of refugees as mere statistics or victims.

Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Origins and Aims of the Book

• Personal and Academic Roots ([03:45]-[06:16])

  • Leila Hudson discusses her longstanding relationship with Syria, beginning in the 1980s, and her desire to write an intimate ethnography, originally impossible under Assad’s regime due to restrictions.
  • “Their forced displacement allowed me to envisage a project that I had wanted to write in one way or another for years, decades.” (Leila Hudson, 05:43)

• Author’s Background

  • Hudson identifies as both an anthropologist and historian, with roots in Palestinian and Syrian studies, drawn to urban Damascus as a lens for broader Middle Eastern issues.

2. Documenting the Sisters’ Stories

• Meeting and Research Approach ([08:40]-[12:01])
  • The five sisters were known to Hudson for decades; she gained consent to document their wartime, migratory experiences, ensuring anonymity and ethical care.
  • Research was conducted mostly via WhatsApp and sometimes in person, often involving family participation, which created a therapeutic dynamic.
  • “...narrating their stories to me...was a useful exercise for them to remember, to document, to share with one another...There was a therapeutic aspect to this as well.” (Layla Hudson, 11:05)

3. Divergent Experiences of Displacement

• Variety in Breaking Points ([12:01]-[17:07])
  • Each sister’s decision to flee stemmed from different personal and familial factors (activist children, warfare, regional hope).
    • Salma worried for her son’s activism; Maryam was trapped by war; Hanan saw hope in the Ghouta region.
  • Hudson emphasizes the differentiated experiences—by age, class, family stage, and personality—showing that family stories are not monolithic.
  • “Depending on your class position, your age, your family circumstances, and your personality, there’s more difference than similarity.” (Leila Hudson, 13:45)

4. Theoretical Framework: Assemblages & Lines of Flight

• Application of Deleuze and Guattari ([18:07]-[24:56])
  • Hudson explains using the abstract concepts of ‘assemblage’ and ‘lines of flight’ as concrete tools to trace refugees’ navigation from rigid home structures into fluid, digital diaspora.
  • “It allows us to imagine structural analysis that is fluid and hydraulic rather than rigid and orthogonal...So by looking at a more fluid structural approach...it allows you to look at structures that are looser, more changeable.” (Leila Hudson, 19:39)
  • The narrative moves from fixed houses in Damascus, to fragile exile households, to digital forms of kinship.

5. Gender, Kinship & Decision-Making in Exile

• Women as Central Agents ([24:56]-[32:37])
  • Gendered dimensions of displacement: family decisions to flee are largely shaped by wives and mothers focusing on their children's futures.
  • Extended kin networks (in-laws etc.) become vital assets—or challenges—depending on stage of family and displacement.
  • Making marriages, caregiving, and economic survival all require “managing kin” across new, hostile environments.
  • “It’s the mothers and grandmothers who are assessing and providing lots of feedback to the men and determining the sort of the best path for the children.” (Layla Hudson, 27:13)

6. Journeys to Europe: Risks and Traumas

• Aegean Crossing & Its Consequences ([32:37]-[37:00])
  • The Aegean passage was perilous and heavily dependent on timing, personal circumstances, and luck.
  • Some sisters made it to Europe; others, like Farida, missed the opportunity due to practical or political barriers.
  • “There is so much that needs to be factored into your limited decision making, and then so much that is beyond your own decision making. So each journey ends up being very different. They’re all traumatizing, they’re all challenging.” (Leila Hudson, 36:21)

7. Digital Diaspora & Assemblages of Communication

• Technology as Lifeline ([37:00]-[46:04])
  • WhatsApp, Facebook, and smartphones became essential for maintaining kin bonds and sharing real-time, crucial information (routes, smugglers, dangers).
  • Group chats replaced traditional morning coffee gatherings; emotional and practical ties are maintained (and sometimes escaped) digitally.
  • Cell phones were both a mode of navigation (via GPS) during migration and lifelines for emergency situations.
  • “Their group chat of the family becomes the space for how affection, advice, rivalries, irritations play out.” (Leila Hudson, 44:26)
  • Hudson notes the therapeutic as as well as practical function of these digital networks, emphasizing technology’s role in the family’s evolving “assemblage of home.”

8. Reterritorialization After Displacement

• Creating Home After War ([46:04]-[50:38])
  • After the fall of the Assad regime (Dec 2024), older sisters who remained in Turkey returned to Syria, rebuilding amid difficulty but with hope; younger sisters in Germany returned only for visits, now living cosmopolitan, transnational lives.
  • Younger generations are integrating into German society but maintain symbolic ties to Syria.
  • “...they are happy to be back, happy to be home, happy to be picking up after where they left off in 2012 or 2013. And that involves renting houses while they figure out what has happened to their destroyed houses and whether they’re salvageable. So it’s not easy by any means.” (Leila Hudson, 48:10)
  • Displacement has produced both longing for home and novel identities as ‘citizens of the world.’

9. Looking Forward: Syria after Assad

• Reflections on the Present and Future ([50:38]-[51:39])
  • Hudson reflects on the transition period after Assad, the return of some exiles, and how the experiences and digital skills of the diaspora may reshape Syria’s reconstruction.
  • “What does it mean when we bring all those digital assemblages and all the experiences and new assets of that diasporic decade back to Syria? That’s going to be very interesting to watch.” (Leila Hudson, 51:10)

Notable Quotes

• “Their forced displacement allowed me to envisage a project that I had wanted to write in one way or another for years, decades.”
  — Leila Hudson ([05:43])

• “Depending on your class position, your age, your family circumstances, and your personality, there’s more difference than similarity.”
  — Leila Hudson ([13:45])

• “It’s the mothers and grandmothers who are assessing and providing lots of feedback to the men and determining the sort of the best path for the children.”
  — Leila Hudson ([27:13])

• “Their group chat of the family becomes the space for how affection, advice, rivalries, irritations play out.”
  — Leila Hudson ([44:26])

• “So it breaks down quite along the lines of how far you got, which is not unrelated to how old you were to how successful you were, reterritorializing closer to home versus now.”
  — Leila Hudson ([49:20])

• “What does it mean when we bring all those digital assemblages and all the experiences and new assets of that diasporic decade back to Syria?”
  — Leila Hudson ([51:10])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:45] – Origins of the book and author’s background
• [08:40] – Meeting the sisters and research methodology
• [12:01] – Sisters’ unique experiences and breaking points
• [18:07] – Theoretical framework: Assemblages and lines of flight
• [24:56] – Gender, family, and “Managing Kin”
• [32:37] – The journeys to Europe, trauma, and personal risk
• [37:00] – Digital communication as family lifeline
• [46:04] – Homecoming, reterritorialization, future identity
• [50:38] – Post-Assad Syria and looking forward

Final Thoughts

Leila Hudson’s interview offers a profound and nuanced exploration of Syrian women’s displacement, emphasizing the complexity of refugee family life, the agency of women, the evolution of home and kin networks, and the transformative impact of digital technologies. Her ethnography not only documents trauma and loss but also resilience, adaptability, and the re-imagining of home across borders and technologies.

For listeners seeking to understand displacement beyond headlines, Hudson’s work and this episode provide a vibrant, intimate, and theoretically rich portrait of Syrian women in exile and in return.