Affiliation:
1. Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15a George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, UK
Abstract
Abstract
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.
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Subject
Political Science and International Relations,Geography, Planning and Development
Cited by
18 articles.
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