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2 Transnational mobilities during the Syrian war An ethnography of rural refugees and Evangelical humanitarians in Mafraq, Jordan Ann-Christin Wagner PhD in International Development University of Edinburgh January 2019 3 4 Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree. Except where stated otherwise by reference or acknowledgment, the work presented is entirely my own. Some ethnographic vignettes and sub-sections appear in modified form in three publications which were released at about the same time as this thesis (Wagner 2017; Wagner 2018a; Wagner 2018b). Signature: Date: 3 January 2019 5 6 Abstract This thesis explores how conflict and closed borders have reshaped transnational mobilities in the Levant since 2011. It draws on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mafraq, a provincial town in northern Jordan, in 2016/17. At the time of my research, Mafraq was home to ca. 100,000 locals and similar numbers of Syrians. The timeframe of the study coincides with a specific moment of the humanitarian response in Jordan when stricter encampment policies had exacerbated legal insecurity for urban refugees and the dwindling of international aid had heightened the importance of grassroots and faith-based organisations to Syrians’ daily survival. The thesis speaks to recent debates on “mobility” in the Anthropology of Humanitarianism, Forced Migration and Middle Eastern Studies. It captures intersecting transnational networks of two populations that often remain invisible to policymakers and academics: marginalized rural Syrians that come from, migrate and flee to remote borderlands in the Levant, and Evangelical humanitarians who operate mostly under the radar of the mainstream aid industry and host states. To make sense of the spatial deployment of refugees and Evangelical aid workers during the Syrian conflict, current displacement has to be understood in the context of more longstanding mobility schemes in the Middle East and beyond. My thesis examines the experiences of displaced people and those who assist them through a transnational lens. It does so by studying old and new cross-border flows of people, as well as practices and resources that help poor Syrians survive and Christian charities turn into professional aid providers. From an epistemological point of view, my thesis demonstrates that the study of refugees trapped in exile can heighten our understanding of mobilities in territories that have become inaccessible to anthropologists because of conflict. From a conceptual perspective, it helps us comprehend that forced migration is not a one-way street, but often embedded into more complex patterns of movement, including those of aid providers. Lastly, through revisiting connections between transnational mobility, labour and legality, the thesis highlights global convergences between control mechanisms of humanitarian governance of the displaced in the Global South, and the policing of mobile populations in the Global North. 7 8 Lay summary Although the Syrian conflict that started in 2011 is one of the most mediatized humanitarian crises in recent history, we know little about how refugees chose where to go, and about the faith-based grassroots organisations that assist them in neighbouring Arab countries. This thesis draws on fourteen months of ethnographic research conducted in 2016/17. It explores the cross-border movements and support networks of Syrian refugees and Evangelical (Christian) aid workers who now live and work in Mafraq, a provincial town in northern Jordan. Through extended interviews, my thesis captures flows of people, goods and money that have long remained under the radar of states and humanitarian agencies and do not appear in official statistics about labour migration and international aid to Jordan. We tend to think of war as a disruptive force – my research shows that refugees’ and Evangelical aid workers’ networks in the Middle East and beyond are surprisingly robust and have sometimes even been intensified by conflict. After 2011, poor Sunni Muslim peasants from remote areas in central and northern Syria sought refuge in Mafraq because they were already familiar with the town through previous experiences of labour migration. Today, they often work with the same local employers. Their lack of work permits, as well as Jordan’s restrictive policies on refugees’ freedom of movement, means that they are exposed to exploitative working conditions in the informal economy and threatened by deportation to Syria. Exchanging money, spouses and information with relatives abroad holds refugee families together, despite closed borders in the Middle East. European and Jordanian Evangelical humanitarian organisations in Mafraq receive funding and unpaid volunteers from fellow believers in Western Europe and North America, in the tradition of ties that date back to the 19th-century travels of missionaries to the Middle East. More recently, Evangelical aid workers accessed new sources of funding when they learned to communicate with the mainstream aid industry. My doctoral thesis challenges our understanding of forced migration as a one-way street – displacement is often embedded into more complex patterns of movement, including those of aid workers. My findings also allow me to intervene in current policy debates in Europe about the distinction between “migrants” and “refugees”. The example of rural Syrian populations in Mafraq shows that in one’s lifetime, a mover can switch between categories. 9 10 Content List of figures ................................................................................................................................................. 13 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................................... 15 Introduction: A tale of two (or more) cities .................................................................................................... 17 A humanitarian landscape under the radar ...................................................................................................... 21 Applying a transnational lens to the study of displacement ............................................................................. 25 Syrian refugees in Mafraq: From a crisis narrative to histories of precarization .............................................. 30 Livelihoods approaches in the study of displacement ................................................................................. 31 Labour, mobility and (il)legality in the Arab world ....................................................................................... 35 Evangelical volunteers in Mafraq: Faith and aid as two transnational projects ............................................... 39 Faith-based humanitarianism in the Arab world ......................................................................................... 41 Evangelical aid providers in Mafraq ............................................................................................................. 43 “Giving with no strings attached”? Evangelical volunteers’ difficult relationality ....................................... 47 Methods and the researcher’s position in the field .......................................................................................... 49 Crossing linguistic and gender barriers ........................................................................................................ 51 Volunteering with Syrian refugees ............................................................................................................... 52 Living with a Jordanian host family .............................................................................................................. 64 Overview of chapters ........................................................................................................................................ 69 PART I Chapter 1: Under the radar – precarious rural livelihoods and labour migrations in pre-war Syria ................. 73 Dispossession in rural Syria ............................................................................................................................... 76 Syrians’ pre-war migrations from the household perspective .......................................................................... 83 Syrians’ pre-war migrations from a macro-economic perspective ................................................................... 90 The other Syrians: Intersecting mobility schemes and rural populations on the move .................................... 95 Internal displacement in rural Syria prior to 2011 ............................................................................................ 97 Loss of rural livelihoods after 2011 and flight to Mafraq ................................................................................ 100 The camp, the city – and the village? ‘Who goes where’ revisited ................................................................. 103 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................... 107 Chapter 2: Refugee labour and illegality – loss of social status, exacerbated legal limbo and Syrian workers “on the run” ................................................................................................................................................

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