RGP Cycle One Grantees and Projects

Omar S. Dahi, Yasser Munif: Reconstructing Livelihoods among Syrian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: A Multifaceted Approach

The displacement of the refugees has been used as a rallying cry to mobilize the opposition movement both internally and externally. However if regional history is any guide, refugees are more useful to a cause than a cause is useful to them. This project builds on previous research on how refugees are configured in post-conflict reconstruction of livelihood and the built environment in Syria. The research will take place in Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon. Our project lies at the intersection of the three themes of the research proposal: inequality, mobility, and development. This proposal argues that if future Syria does not place the interests of refugees at the fore, refugees may be victimized three times. First as victims of unequal development, second as victims of brutal repression, and third as victims of neoliberal reconstruction projects. The research examines how the emerging plans for post-conflict reconstruction and development ‘imagine’ the process of post-regime development and in particular the role and place of the refugees and IDPs. Over a period of twelve months, we will also be examining how these groups themselves imagine their future and that of Syria. Our project would continue to critically interrogate the discourses, plans, statements, and conferences, emanating on refugees and IDPs. We plan to examine these processes on two levels, an international and global level and a local grassroots one. We plan to examine these processes on two levels. At the level of reconstruction projects and summits and at the same time, we will conduct ethnographic research and experiment with Participatory Action Research among refugee populations in Turkey and Lebanon, asking them about their own perspectives about how they imagine their future and that of Syria.

Publications related to this project:

Syria in Fragments: The Politics of the Refugee Crisis
Breaking Point: The Crisis of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
Manbij, a Success Story in the Liberated Areas

Omar S. Dahi is associate professor of economics at Hampshire College in Amherst, USA. He specializes in economic development and international trade, with a focus on South-South economic relations and the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa. Dahi also serves on the editorial committee of the Middle East Report and is co-editor of the Syria page at Jadaliyya. His work has been published in various academic journals, including the Journal of Development Economics, Applied Economics, and the Southern Economic Journal.

Yasser Munif specializes in colonial history, racial identities, and the production of postcolonial space in marginal sites in France and its colonial territories. More recent research analyzes the importance of urban settings in shaping national identities during the Arab revolts (Egypt and Syria). More specifically, by investigating the confluence of arts and culture and urban spaces, his research explores the making and un-making of national identities.