Open AccessRefugees’ Transnational Livelihoods and Remittances: Syrian Mobilities in the Middle East Before and After 2011
Author(s) -
AnnChristin Zuntz
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of refugee studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.908
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1471-6925
pISSN - 0951-6328
DOI - 10.1093/jrs/feab016
Subject(s) - livelihood , refugee , kinship , ethnography , syrian refugees , political science , middle east , forced migration , economic growth , development economics , mobilities , diversification (marketing strategy) , geography , sociology , agriculture , business , economics , social science , archaeology , law , marketing
Pursuing an ethnographic approach, this article explores how Syrians’ pre-war kinship-based networks have oriented livelihoods strategies for refugees in Jordan after 2011. Drawing on long-term fieldwork (2015–2017) in northern Jordan, I argue that seasonal migration was a livelihoods strategy for Syria’s rural poor long before 2011, serving as their old-age provision and contributing to rural development. Since 2011, conflict-induced displacement and border closures have reshaped Syrians’ transnational kinship-based networks: geographically, but also with regard to the diversification of sources of income and gendered responsibilities. In Jordan, Syrian refugees mobilize pre-war transnational ties to access jobs in agriculture and the humanitarian sector, and distribute their income through kinship-based cross-border networks. These ethnographic findings challenge a localized understanding of refugee livelihoods, demonstrating that the household economies of refugees, migrants, and those left behind, in Syria, Jordan, the Gulf countries, and now Europe, are intertwined. In closing, I provide recommendations about how a networked understanding of refugee livelihoods can inform the COVID-19 emergency response, and help create decent jobs for displaced people in the Global South.