Migration, mobility, and circulation in the Middle East: rethinking inequalities and informality.

On 26-29 August 2019 Derya Ozkul attended a migration study week organised by Lebanon Support in Beirut focusing on: ‘Migration, mobility, and circulation in the Middle East: rethinking inequalities and informality’. The Migration Study Week offers a participatory, interdisciplinary, innovative, and intensive immersion in migration issues in the Middle East. It sheds light on the national (macro-), subnational/local (meso-), and individual (micro-) levels and the extent to which migration governance can contribute to perpetuate inequality and social injustice in the region, as well as the emergence of (informal) strategies deployed by migrants and refugees in order to “navigate” increasingly constraining systems. It offered a space for synergies, networking, and sharing experiences between scholars and practitioners in the region, in view of facilitating multi-disciplinary collaboration. Workshop sessions included:

  • Refugeeness in the Levant: unachieved concepts and blurred realities; the case of Palestinian and Syrian refugees.

  • An interactive lecture on methodology and conducting Comparative Migration Studies in the Middle East.

  • Refugees as an economic actor

  • Refugees as City-Makers: For a different kind of refugee talk

  • Refugee returns: aspirations, narratives, and policies

  • Citizens and Refugees: Managing through Engendering Disparities: The case of Jordan

  • Forced Migrations and Cultures of Assistance in Lebanon: From Meso-Governance to Micro-Governance and Back

  • Forced Migration and Media Narratives - New Forms of Storytelling

    It brings together practitioners, junior researchers, and journalists that work with and on refugees to reflect critically on the main problematics that shape migration, mobility, and circulation in the Middle East.

    The study week combined interactive lectures, open discussions and exchanges, as well as field visits.

FieldworkBryony Varnam