Doctoral Dissertation Research: Forced Migrants Encountering the Refugee Regime

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

This project will analyze the relationship between migration management practices of recipient states in the West and the lived experiences of Syrian forced migrants seeking to escape the ongoing civil war in Syria via Jordan. Taken together, state migration policies, refugee laws, and international agreements constitute what is here termed the "refugee regime" - a set of institutional practices through which the migration policies of countries in the West and the Middle East have become increasingly interconnected. This research draws attention to (1) the transnational activities of state agencies, humanitarian organizations, and non-state actors in managing forced migration, and (2) forced migrants' experiences along their journeys. In doing so, this research re-situates the politics of migration management from a top-down disembodied conception to one informed by the everyday encounters, narratives, and struggles of forced migrants themselves. This research will make important contributions to the field of political geography and broader interdisciplinary debates in refugee studies, security and border studies, and feminist methodology. This study further seeks to interrogate popular representations of forced migrants as passive victims or burdens on the welfare state. Findings from this research will inform public debates about Syrian forced migrants through a series of public information workshops and policy briefs. Research findings will be disseminated to wider society in order to foster a better understanding of forced migrants' lives and the challenges that migrants' face. Findings from this research will also inform the co-PI's undergraduate teaching on international migration, transnationalism, and geography. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award, this project will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career. This project responds to calls for studies on how migration management works across national borders and how migrants experience and negotiate their journeys between places of departure and arrival. It does so by answering two central research questions: 1) How is the refugee regime constituted across transnational space? 2) How do Syrian forced migrants experience the refugee regime across their migration trajectory and once they arrive in their final destination? In order to answer these questions this project comprises archival research, interviews, and participatory mapping with Syrian forced migrants, as well as interviews with staff of state and non-state institutions. Using these methods, this research contributes new findings to scholarship on the securitization of migration and the changing geographies of borders and migration management.