With Dr Gerasimos Tsourapas, University of Birmingham
18 November 2020

How do states’ foreign policy goals affect their policies towards refugees? What is the impact of forced displacement on host states’ political development? Gerasimos Tsourapas draws on elite interviews conducted across Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis to examine the particularities of migration diplomacy in the Levant.

He identifies how the three states sought to secure economic aid from the international community, relying on both bargains and threats, in exchange for hosting Syrian refugees within their borders. In fact, the absence of a functioning global refugee regime and the reluctance of Western countries to host refugees led to the commodification of forced migration and the emergence of a new type of state, in which forced migration constitutes an instrument of economic leverage – the refugee rentier state.

In this talk, Gerasimos discusses the effects of such processes on the international politics of the Levant, as well as on the future of refugee protection across the world.