The Borderwork of Humanitarianism During Displacement from War-Torn Syria

This chapter attempts to add nuance to the scholarly debate on the security politics of borders and invites its readers to consider the practices and identities of refugees, host border societies, and earlier border migrants in a way that considers their pre-crisis (im)mobility status within the hybrid human realm of the border. The vacillating status of earning a living across the border in times of peace pervades the space of local citizenship during displacement. Against this backdrop, a clear-cut humanitarianism along borders—purporting to distinguish who is the host and who is the guest—acts as a force intended to preserve nation-state privileges. This vacillating status between borders represents the local citizens’ desire that the refugees return home as soon as possible; the refugees, in turn, are left to deal with the paradox of this request, as they are unable to definitively choose either site. It is in this vein that this chapter engages with ungraspable categories of life—and humanitarian labels—pushing border-crossing beyond a matter of life or death, and draws on the taxonomies that humanitarian borderwork and national border policies engender.

“The World Forgot Us and Europe Doesn’t Want Us”

When the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) attacked Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate, the region’s religious minorities became victims of genocide and displacement. This chapter focuses on the region of Sinjar (Kurdish: Şingal) and the displacement of the Yazidi (Kurdish: Êzîdî) along with other religious minorities living there. The displacement of these groups directly resulted from their vulnerability as religious minorities. IS targeted them as religious minorities, and their current problems as internally displaced persons (IDPs) also resulted from their status as relatively small communities without a historically strong political lobby or military force. This chapter analyzes the living conditions and political framework in which these IDPs and refugees must survive and presents their personal perspectives from inside and outside of Iraq. Interviews were centered on the following questions: What conditions prevent Yazidi, Christians, and other groups from returning to Sinjar? What are their perspectives on building a future in the region? What would they need in order to return and rebuild their homes? And how do the displaced adherents of the different religious groups interpret the 2014 genocide within a longer history of perceived genocidal acts against religious minorities in the area?

Gendering the Triangular Relationship Between Vulnerability, Resilience, and Resistance

Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011, the total number of Syrian refugees who have fled to Jordan and registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was 655,624 as of January 2, 2018. Most Syrian refugee families in Jordan have lost all sources of livelihood and face increasing vulnerability. The majority have become reliant on cash and food assistance from international humanitarian organizations. The continuing household vulnerability and the insufficient support provided by the international humanitarian community have forced many refugee families to accept humiliating and “negative” coping mechanisms. Some of the negative coping strategies are based on Syrian refugees’ patriarchal culture, such as early marriage for girls and child labor. Others go beyond the moral virtues of patriarchal culture, such as women’s involvement in “survival sex” (e.g., exchanging protection or housing for sexual favors) and socially and culturally unacceptable jobs outside the home. Literature on gender-differentiated coping mechanisms undertaken by Syrian refugees provides evidence of the reconfiguration of gender, in which women act as the primary family providers through reliance on humanitarian assistance, while the men work in casual menial jobs, or are jobless and helpless.

Human Mobility in the Middle East

Between the two poles of moving purely out of choice or moving because one has no other option but to leave, there are a variety of circumstances and nuanced motivations that lie somewhere in the middle. No matter what the personal or circumstantial drivers and reasons that propel it, migration on an annual basis occurs for millions of people. The term “migration” is itself used to describe varied and complex patterns of human mobility that occur internally within a state or region, as well as those taking place across borders, internationally, and trans-continentally. Migration can be applied to the categories of people moving as a result of their own agency, voluntarily, and as an individual or familial choice. It can also be used to describe the categories of those having to move by force or under duress, and this includes the mobility experiences of forced migrants, internally displaced persons, refugees, and asylum-seekers.

Afghan Migrants in Tehran

Persistent upheavals in Afghanistan since 1978 have resulted in the exodus of a large number of its citizens, with neighboring Iran and Pakistan becoming host to most of these forced migrations. According to Iran’s census figures, there were 1,452,513 documented Afghans living in the country in 2011. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has given a figure of 951,142 for documented Afghan refugees in Iran as of May 2015. In addition to this, UNHCR also reported 620,000 Afghan visa holders and from 1.5 to 2 million undocumented Afghans. The Iranian government has emphasized repatriation as a policy goal vis-à-vis Afghan migrants and has carried out voluntary return initiatives with the assistance of international organizations. However, the voluntary return of 902,000 Afghans from Iran between 2002 and 2012 appears to have been offset by fresh migration that has maintained their overall population in the country.

Integrating African Migrants?

Given historically amicable relations between North Africa’s native citizens of Arab and African descent, it is counterintuitive that prejudice against foreign African migrants from sub-Saharan countries seems to be rising. Discrimination seems to be intensifying against African migrants who have recently arrived from Congo, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Mali, and elsewhere. Where conflict and poverty proliferate in these countries, migrants flee to North Africa seeking clandestine access to Europe by boat across the Mediterranean, or by foot through Spain’s North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. In response, Spain, Italy, and North African countries have increased border and maritime security. Thus, as an alternative, many sub-Saharan African migrants have decided to resettle in North Africa. Previously, articles have appeared depicting North African states as “sender” countries of migrants. Yet, more recently, they have also become “recipient” countries of African migrants.

Borders and Mobilities in the Middle East

This chapter addresses the transformation of geopolitical lines and borders in a globalizing world. In the Middle East, this transformation has been accompanied by severe social inequalities that have been expressed in a number of different ways: increasing limitations placed on the mobility of refugees and migrants, yet decreasing limitations on the cross-border flow of goods; a proliferation of refugee encampments and settlements (formal and informal); human vulnerability and rights violations; and expanded border securitization. In the case of Lebanon, these processes play out in especially stark fashion in big cities and border sites. This chapter focuses on one such site in an area of Lebanon: the Central Bekaa. It is important to start by looking at the context of borders and mobility in the Middle East. This chapter is based on original research that aims to provide an examination of certain aspects of borders and mobility, including the transnational circulation of displaced communities, cross-border networks, and how Syrian refugees in the Middle East—especially in Lebanon—navigate borders and deploy their own social capital in the process.

Diasporic Circularities

The experience of the Omani-Zanzibaris who were forced to migrate from Zanzibar to Oman in 1964 has received relatively little attention, particularly as seen from the arriving/returning Omani-Zanzibaris’ emic perspectives. As we will see in this chapter, Oman’s identity as a cosmopolitan empire offers a variety of pathways for understanding its present-day culture and politics, as well as its responses to the large wave of arrivals from postcolonial Zanzibar. The chapter seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the forced migrations by telling the story of this period from the theoretical stance of hybridity, which challenges the prevailing essentialism of the historical narratives of the 1964 events as an African uprising against Omani colonizers. To expound the experiences of Omani-Zanzibaris, this project gathered multiple accounts drawn from multi-sited ethnographic research carried out in the first round of fieldwork in Oman and Zanzibar together with extensive conversations held in Zanzibar and Muscat in 2016 and 2017. Life-history collections, memoirs (both published and in private family possession in Arabic, English, and Swahili), archival materials in London and Muscat, and digital sources were also researched.

Hosting and Being Hosted in Times of Crisis

This chapter addresses the dynamics and patterns of the Syrian refuge in Syria’s neighboring countries, and its relations and interactions with the local host communities, in the broader context of the Syrian conflict and the massive exile of Syrians abroad that resulted from it. The chapter is based on in-depth fieldwork in the villages of the Dayr al-Ahmar caza (sub-district) in the muhafaza (district) of Baalbek-Hermel, in the north of the Bekaa plain in Lebanon. Our research focused primarily on the three villages that have the highest concentration of Syrian refugees according to a local census carried out in April 2016 by some of the caza’s municipalities. To examine the dynamics of hosting and being hosted, as well as contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the relations between Lebanese and Syrian refugees in Lebanon, the authors chose to study the Syrian refuge through a local prism. The authors rooted their inquiry in the host–guest relationship in time—the contemporary history of Syrian–Lebanese relations—and space—the Bekaa plain that combines dense social transborder interactions between Lebanese and Syrians, in particular, through the decades-long Syrian circular labor migrations to Lebanon—with memories of Syria’s political and military domination over Lebanon.

Living with Uncertainty

Migration across the Sahara from the Sahel to North Africa is a longstanding practice. Its origins can be traced to 1500 BCE when three routes were established to traffic goods and people: the Ghadames road (from Gao in present Mali to Ghat, Ghadames, and Tripoli); the Garamantean road (from Kano and Lake Chad to Bilma, Murzuk, and then Tripoli); and the Oualata road (from what is now Mali to Sijilmasa in Morocco). Traffic increased significantly from the eighth to the seventeenth century CE when the principal commodities in trade were salt, gold, and slaves. These trading routes have continued to be used in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with people and commodities in continuous movement from the south to the north and vice versa. These contemporary patterns of mobility are examined in this chapter. Migrants are arriving in Libya and Tunisia, for the most part, from the neighboring countries of Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon. Migrants from these countries frequently settle in Libya or Tunisia, or are engaged in circular migration between Libya and Tunisia and their home countries.