A month has passed since Assad fell from power, and media reports on what this means for Syrian refugees have taken varied stances.
The Telegraph conspiciously claimed that Syrian refugees from the UK, Germany and Turkey are committed to returning, while the New York Times stated that an “untold number” of refugees are already en route back. Meanwhile, other outlets have a more tempered take, with the BBC exploring the complexity of return decisions given uncertainties about the new government and the somber fact that for many, there’s not much to return ‘home’ to. Vox attempted to tackle the question outright in an expert interview sprinkled with caveats and nuance: Will Syrian refugees go home?
As an aside, I’m not fond of the use of the word ‘home’ here. Given the duration of conflict and insecurity in Syria, long-displaced Syrian refugees will have a wide spectrum of understanding of where ‘home’ actually is.
While a host of literature has sought to explore the return patterns of refugees, observational studies can be plagued with confounding factors that limit our ability to determine what ‘causes’ returns. However, in the past three years, research has attempted to tackle this issue through the use of survey experiments to more precisely understand what influences Syrian refugees’ return intentions. (If you want to know more about this approach, check out Chapter 3 of the newly updated Handbook of Research Methods in Migration).
Authors of The Dynamics of Refugee Return by Alrababah et al. (2023) in the British Journal of Political Science analysed a nationally representative survey of over 3000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon. This survey which included vignettes with randomly assigned qualities regarding safety, economic conditions, and conscription policy in Syria, as well as conditions in Lebanon and which locations have the majority of the respondent’s social networks. For each vignette, respondents were asked whether or not they would return to Syria.
At the time of the survey (August – October 2019), only 5% of their respondents planned to return to Syria in the next 12 months. Results show that conditions in Syria play a much more significant role in shaping decisions than conditions in Lebanon, with levels of safety and the end to military conscription being particularly big factors – with ‘nationwide’ security increasing return intentions by 42 percentage points. Current access to jobs and public services in Lebanon played a statistically significant, but very minimal role.
Interestingly, the existence of social networks in Syria also determined intentions to return, but networks in Lebanon did not predict intentions to stay.
This study, When do refugees return home? Evidence from Syrian displacement in Mashreq by Beaman, Onder and Onder (2022) in the Journal of Development Economics, used surveys with Syrian refugees in both Lebanon and Jordan with multiple research questions and associated experimental vignettes. The survey prompts respondents to reply determine whether a hypothetical household would return to Syria, with some qualities of said household and conditions in Syria randomly varied for each vignette.
Having one’s house destroyed in Syria reduces the probability of return by around 22 percentage points, down from a 38 percent likelihood if the house is intact. Further, respondents were 19 percentage points less likely to expect the household to return when schools were under-resourced (notably, in these vignettes the male head of household was a teacher by trade).
Some things didn’t seem to matter that much: whether the wife of the hypothetical family was employed in the host country did not cause significant differences in responses, and where the source of information on Syria comes from (neighbors or family) was also inconsequential.
Another useful piece of analysis, The Journey Home: Violence, Anchoring, and Refugee Decisions to Return by Ghosn et al. (2022) in the American Political Science Review, was conducted with Syrian refugees in Lebanon and is a great example of how survey experiments can help tease out causality. Their initial descriptive findings showed that refugees who were exposed to violence in Syria before they fled, were more likely to express willingness to return. Authors theorize that this is related to an sort of mental resilience to risk, but the relationship is confounded by ‘attachment’ – those who were already more emotionally attached to their hometown stayed long enough to experience the eventual arrival of violence.
So to explore their hypothesis, they followed up with a conjoint experiment. A sample of 400 respondents were provided with two hypothetical destinations in Syria (i.e. not the hometown) where the chance of harm en route to the destination, along with other qualities, was randomly assigned to each. The study finds that indeed, people who have experienced violence are more tolerant of the chances of harm en route and thus more likely to express the choice to return despite higher levels of risk. The chance of finding work in Syria was also a statistically significant factor. Interestingly (and in tension with Alrababah et al.) the size of the social network in each location did not influence the choice.
Conclusion
Host country conditions don’t seem to determine returns. Social networks in host countries don’t make a difference. Safety and policies in Syria; infrastructure and services like housing, schools, and jobs; and a refugee’s previous exposure to the violence of the conflict do matter. In sum, we may as well be comfortable with each other here at this ‘home’ while we wait to see how things develop in Syria.