“Biting Our tongues”: Policy Legacies and Memories in the Making of the Syrian Refugee Response in Jordan

Abstract

This article analyses the significance of policy legacies and policy memories for refugee policy in conflict-neighbouring countries, where most of the world’s displaced live. Drawing on insights from critical policy analysis, it views refugee policy as co-produced by national and international agencies on the basis of previous dynamics that are already the product of an intense history of interaction and translation. This approach is illustrated by analysing two different aspects of refugee policy in Jordan: the process of counting Syrians in the country and the partial integration of Syrians into the formal labour market. Both examples reveal an overarching legacy of accommodation that ties international and host government actors together. Despite sometimes differing over preferred outcomes, the main goals for the various actors involved have been to strike compromises, safeguard organisational interests, and create outward policy success. In order to meet these goals, the agencies involved have learned to tolerate unresolved ambiguities and disregard other inconvenient legacies and memories that would only complicate policy negotiations. Acknowledging this intertwinement of agencies, technologies, and rationales of government is essential for rethinking policy change and responsibility in contexts of mass displacement.

The governance of Syrian refugees in the Middle East: Lessons from the Jordan and Lebanon Compacts

“…This has also negatively affected those Jordanians who do not own property and whose rents have massively increased within a short period of time. With regard to the 18 designated SEZ for Syrian workers, by March 2019 they employed only 291 Syrians and just over 1000 workers in total (Lenner, 2020), indicating that, at least with regard to the SEZ, the Jordan Compact cannot be considered a success.…”

Disaggregating Jordan’s Syrian refugee response: The ‘Many Hands’ of the Jordanian state

“…Existing literature on Jordan as a host of Syrian refugees focuses on foreign policy (Tsourapas, 2019), the Jordan Compact and Syrians in the labour market (Lenner & Turner, 2018), the effects of refugee integration on migrant labour in Jordan (Hartnett, 2019), encampment policies (Turner, 2015) and the securitization of encamped Syrians by state and humanitarian actors (Gatter, 2021;Hoffman, 2017). Recent work by Lenner (2020) and Lenner and Turner (2018) offers disaggregation at national and international levels, considering institutional interactions and settlements between international organizations, donor states, and various Jordanian authorities. Scholars of the responses in Lebanon and Turkey have undertaken disaggregation that includes the subnational level (Betts et al, 2020;Mourad, 2017), but scholarship that includes subnational level disaggregation of Jordan's Syrian refugee response (Betts et al, 2017) remains rare.…”

“…One is by securing external income from international donors. A number of national legibility and visibility initiatives are geared to this end by different ministries, including the Interior and Labour ministries, to produce an agreed-upon 'count' of Syrians (Lenner, 2020), both in highly visible refugee camps, and in less visible urban spaces, with an additional layer of legibility through issuing work permits in the labour market. Municipalities conducted their own legibility initiatives, often preceding national counts, to secure funding from central authorities and international organizations to support strained municipal budgets.…”

“…As a politically active native-Arabic-speaking population, Syrians represent a potential challenge to Trans-Jordanians. Syrians are seen as potential vectors of anti-authoritarian politics; as a security risk by the SRAD and the MOI (Hoffman, 2017;Lenner, 2020); and potentially as an economically competitive population that could further 'crowd-out' Trans-Jordanians (Lenner, 2020) in an economy with chronically high unemployment. The success of Palestinians, an Arab refugee cohort, some of whom became permanent 'refugee-citizens' and key to state-building in the nascent Jordan, is ignored (Lenner, 2020).…”

“…Syrians are seen as potential vectors of anti-authoritarian politics; as a security risk by the SRAD and the MOI (Hoffman, 2017;Lenner, 2020); and potentially as an economically competitive population that could further 'crowd-out' Trans-Jordanians (Lenner, 2020) in an economy with chronically high unemployment. The success of Palestinians, an Arab refugee cohort, some of whom became permanent 'refugee-citizens' and key to state-building in the nascent Jordan, is ignored (Lenner, 2020). What matters more is the 'very real fear' among Trans-Jordanians of creating even 'a semi-permanent residence for another large Arab cohort' (Lenner, 2020, p. 291;Stevens, 2013, p. 19).…”