NEW ISSUES IN REFUGEE RESEARCH S c h Working Paper No. 61 R o b Jordan as a transit country: semi-protectioniste immigration policies r and their effects on Iraqi forced migrants Géraldine Chatelard Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies European University Institute Florence, Italy E-mail:
[email protected] August 2002 These working papers provide a means for UNHCR staff, consultants, interns and associates to publish the preliminary results of their research on refugee-related issues. The papers do not represent the official views of UNHCR. They are also available online under ‘publications’ at <www.unhcr.org>. ISSN 1020-7473 Introduction In the last twenty years, several episodes of forced migration have taken place in the Arab Middle East following armed conflicts between states (the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf war) or internal political unrest (in particular in Iraq).1 Despite the scale of these displacements and the centrality of Iraq, the remarks S. Shami made in a 1993 paper still hold true. She states that attention has focused on previous episodes of forced migration, such as the Lebanese civil war and the Palestinian diaspora, that group migration has not been extensively studied, that relief agencies or human rights groups produce the overwhelming majority of the literature, and that there has been little focus on the long-term social implications of forced displacement (Shami 1993: 5). In particular, involuntary migration prompted by the 1991 Gulf war and its aftermath has been given surprisingly little attention, at the notable exception of studies by a single author that have looked at the socio-economic impact of return migration from the Gulf to Jordan and Yemen (Van Hear 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998).