Homewrecked: How to end the Syrian exile? : Shared by Dina Craissati

Especially for those who worked in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis - a must-read. 

Quote from the authors: "What would it take to enable Syrians who earnestly wish to go home? A refugee crisis doesn’t resolve itself: Just as the displacement of millions requires an architecture to host and integrate refugees, their return will take more than wishful rhetoric and half-baked policies. The risk, right now, is to create the opposite of a virtuous circle: a situation in which returnees face so many problems as to discourage others from following suit."

Dina

Homewrecked: How to end the Syrian exile?

Alex Simon, Hajar Srour, and Anas Alhennawi
Synaps
Click here for the article.

Summary
This essay argues that while many Syrians long to return home after Assad’s fall, the material, political, and institutional conditions for “safe, voluntary and dignified” return simply do not exist. Drawing on interviews with returnees and would-be returnees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Türkiye and Europe, the authors show how devastated infrastructure, soaring prices, scarce jobs, ruined housing, and collapsing public services make life inside Syria intolerably precarious—even for those who managed relatively better in exile. At the same time, aid cuts, xenophobia, and tightening legal regimes in host states are pushing refugees toward return before they have the means to survive there, producing cycles of regret, secondary displacement, and renewed smuggling.

The article criticizes Western and regional governments, as well as the aid system, for chasing the political optics of “returns” while doing almost nothing to rebuild Syria or support those who actually go back—with token cash grants, chaotic data, and almost no follow-up on housing, livelihoods, or legal status. It highlights how UNHCR and other agencies, hollowed out by budget cuts and bureaucracy, fail even to communicate clearly with refugees about available schemes, let alone track outcomes and protection risks. The authors place Syria within a broader global pattern in which migration policy is driven less by coherent interests than by populist scapegoating, eroding both refugee rights and domestic social protections. They conclude that unless states stop weaponizing return and instead invest seriously in reconstruction, services, and rights, “homecoming” will remain a trap for the poorest rather than a path out of exile.

Methodology
This essay draws on roughly 130 interviews conducted between December 2024 and October 2025. These include about 50 in-person interviews in Jordan, 40 in Syria, 20 in Lebanon, and the remainder in Germany or (remotely) in Turkey. Interviewees include Syrians who returned to Syria, or are considering doing so; refugees who returned to Syria then crossed back to Lebanon; aid sector professionals; and Western donors to the refugee response.

Key findings and implications for humanitarian policy

• Finding: Return is structurally unsafe and often coerced, not “voluntary”.
• Finding: Returns are driven by aid cuts, loss of legal status, and hostility in host states, into a Syria where jobs, housing, and services are absent.
• Implication: Humanitarian and donor policy that banks on “return” without investing in livelihoods, housing, and services is essentially exporting destitution and should be treated as a protection failure, not a success.
• Policy architecture for return is missing or perverse at every level.
• Finding: Rich states freeze asylum, offer paltry one-off grants, and celebrate tiny repatriation numbers; neighbors squeeze Syrians out of work and services; UN agencies provide confusing information and no systematic follow-up.
• Implication: Any serious return framework must include: accurate data and monitoring; meaningful financial packages; legal aid (especially on debt and property); and cross-border health, education, and mobility arrangements for those shuttling between Syria and host states.
• The Syria case exposes a deeper crisis in global migration and aid regimes.
• Finding: The same politics that push Syrians back to a broken country also fuel wider assaults on migrants and social safety nets at home.
• Implication: Humanitarian actors cannot treat refugee return as a narrow technical file; they need to confront the political economy of xenophobia and austerity, or risk becoming instruments of policies that undermine both refugee rights and broader social protection.