Listen: Refugee Hosts’ PI and Co-I respond to Government’s proposed ‘overhaul’ of UK’s asylum system

Refugee Hosts' PI, Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Co-I, Dr. Anna Rowlands have appeared on BBC 5 Live and LBC respectively, responding to the Governments' proposed overhaul of the UK's asylum system. In her interview on BBC 5 Live's Drive programme, Prof. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh discussed the UK's long history of preventing refugees from seeking asylum and of…

Models for Refugee Governance – Legal, political and institutional responses in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

This blog post is an extract from Zeynep Sahin’s book ‘Refugee Governance, State and Politics in the Middle East’ published in December 2018. The book examines the patterns of legal, political and institutional responses to large-scale Syrian forced migration and how Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, three of the world’s top refugee hosting countries, responded to…

‘And then they issued an ultimatum’: Ethical and practical considerations for conducting fieldwork in volatile and research-crowded settings

‘The last thing they needed – I assumed – was one more researcher who wanted to ask them questions for an hour of their precious time.’ Following the ultimatum issued by Turkish authorities to unregistered Syrian refugees in Istanbul to leave the city within one month, Hanna Schneider reflects on the ethical and practical considerations…

EU-Turkey Refugee Deal: “This is (not) a pipe”

This presentation was given by Zeynep Kivilcim at the Refugee Hosts International Conference and critically investigates the EU-Turkey Deal that establishes a regime where Turkey’s authoritarian, European illiberal and liberal sovereign practices converge and function with harmony against the rights of migrants and refugees. EU-Turkey Refugee Deal:  "This is (not) a pipe" by Zeynep Kivilcim,…

The Tribulations, and Deportations, of Syrian Guests in Turkey

Almost 5,000 Syrian refugee have been deported from Turkey to the Idlib area of Syria, an area still experiencing intense shelling and where 86 people were killed in just one week in July. In this piece, Diane al-Mehdi draws on her research to describe ‘horrendous detention conditions’ and the ‘humiliating’ process of deportation and traces the…

Turkey – Crossroads for the Displaced

The conflict in Syria has entered its seventh year. In this time, millions of refugees from Syria have travelled through - or have become stuck in - Turkey, a country that has in turn been shaped by recent political flux. From this position, refugees from Syria - and the NGOs, faith groups and agencies that seek…

How to Overcome Religious Prejudice among Refugees

Religious tensions between diverse refugee communities in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon present challenges to those affected by displacement, exposing some to faith-based discrimination. In other instances, (perceived) markers of religious identity expose refugees to discrimination, both from state officials, and members of the host community too. However, as Kat Eghdamian (UCL) argues in this piece (originally…

Sounds from Istiklal, Turkey

How are social processes of marginalisation and agency heard, as well as seen? Below you can listen to a recording of a refugee youth playing a melody on the busy street of Istiklal, Istanbul. Such soundscapes offer ways of analysing the social, economic and political dynamics that characterise spaces inhabited, shared and contested by and…

Summer Newsletter

Our Summer newsletter is now available to view online. This issue highlights our activities over the summer, as well as our recent Faith and Displacement series, which you can read in full on our website. Please follow the link below for important project updates, including blog highlights and information on recent and forthcoming events: Newsletter…

Hope, Resilience and Uncertainty: A Day with Displaced Syrians in Southern Turkey

In this piece, which draws on Charlotte Loris-Rodionoff's on-going fieldwork in Turkey, we are offered a glimpse of how loss, hope, memory and the future are navigated by Syrian refugees in the everyday. This quotidian lens provides an important antidote to the narratives of exceptionalism that typically colour media and policy responses to forced migration, unearthing diverse experiences of displacement, and…