Removal Infrastructures for Syrians in Lebanon and Turkey (REMOVED) Project

Abstract

REMOVED takes the principle of non-refoulement, a human rights concept designed to protect refugees from inhumane and degrading treatment after return, as a starting point to study the removal practices that Syrians experience in Lebanon and Turkey, the ways in which they navigate and resist different practices of removal and, more concretely, the human, social and political consequences of these removals. Resisting binary distinctions between voluntary and forced returns, the project conceptualizes pushbacks, deportations, obliged returns and repatriations jointly as removals. It enquires into the emergence, patterns and consequences of removals by approaching removal infrastructures as multi-scalar entanglements of authorities, institutions and norms through which the demographic composition of the territory is controlled, negotiated and resisted by people in everyday practices. REMOVED research team uses ethnographic methods, such as mapping and informal interviews with professionals, such as Syrians in Turkey and Lebanon; professionals and advocacy actors who work on the Syrian displacement crisis in Turkey and Lebanon; and actors of mobility and migration control at different spatial and temporal points of the removal trajectories. The team also actively seeks and puts into place partnerships with refugee rights advocacy organizations in Lebanon and Turkey.

Keywords

• REMOVED takes the principle of non-refoulement
• a human rights concept designed to protect refugees from inhumane and degrading treatment after return
• more concretely
• the human
• the project conceptualizes pushbacks
• deportations
• negotiated and resisted by people in everyday practices. REMOVED research team uses ethnographic methods
• such as mapping and informal interviews with professionals

Removal Infrastructures for Syrians in Lebanon and Turkey (REMOVED) Project

Abstract

References

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