Paper details

Paper authors	Asya El Meehy
In panel on	Syrian Remittances: Navigating Forced Displacement, Sanctions and Humanitarian Needs
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Neoliberal reforms aimed at redefining relations among states, markets, and societies, gained momentum in the Middle East post-uprisings, despite being at odds with broad-based mobilizations calling for social justice, and equitable development. Against the backdrops of exclusionary patterns of economic governance, as well as low growth rates averaging a mere 1.6% over the last decade, the region witnessed important changes in migrant remittance dynamics. Not only have the volumes of remittances increased, but also their destination, and origins shifted. In fact, remittances flowing into the region’s labor exporting economies rapidly grew from $37 billion in 2010 to $ 56 billion in 2020, almost doubling in value from 2.7 % to 5% of the GDP (World Bank 2020). This comparatively represents the highest ratio of remittances to GDP among developing regions (Luciani, 2017). The salience of remittances as an important source of foreign exchange and a source of household financing is also evident from the fact their volume consistently exceeded Foreign Direct Investment inflows over the last decade, which averaged just above 1 % of the GDP.
These trends may seem initially paradoxical, given the decline in Arab workers’ migration to GCC countries. A closer look, however, reveals that migration to Europe and the United States have markedly increased, in part due to the onset of conflicts across the region and massive new waves of forced displacement (IOM data). The latter also created new remittance-dependent countries, like Syria where inflows are by some estimates as high as US 8.5 billion, representing as much as 30.6% of the GDP of that country’s shrinking economy (2017 figures). In war-torn countries, remittances are regarded as not just important for building community resilience and sustaining local livelihoods but as a vital resource that can also be later leveraged for recovery and post-conflict reconstruction purposes. In fact, the emphasis on the potential leveraging of remittances has been reinforced by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda in support of achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, which brought to the forefront the role of workers and migrant remittances as an important source of financing for development. Nonetheless, studies on the dynamics of remittances in conflict affected countries across the region are scarce, with only a handful of field-based humanitarian reports addressing the issue.

Using Syria as a case study, the paper focuses on comparing the dynamics of remittances from two sides. The first relates to the sending side, specifically unpacking modalities of transfer, identifying the main variables influencing remittance sending behavior, and exploring the structuring effects of sanctions across Jordan, Germany and Turkey. The second, on the receiving side, comparatively reflects on access risks, household impact, and the overall socio-economic effects of remittances across space. Theoretically, the project will aim to enrich scholarly debates regarding the dynamics, and impact of remittances while also contributing to the state of the art comparative politics debates on the nature of rentier states in the Middle East.

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