Review of Nergis Canefe, The Syrian Exodus in Context: Crisis, Dispossession and Mobility in the Middle East

Abstract

Nergis Canefe’s The Syrian Exodus in Context: Crisis, Dispossession and Mobility in the Middle East presents itself as focusing on the experiences of dispossession among migrants highlighting their state of precarity reinforced by practices of selective attribution of rights. Structurally, the book consists of an introduction, five essential chapters and a conclusion. The author points at the insufficiency of the literature on forced migration to put the Syrian exodus in context and solicits theories on statehood, labour market restructuring, capital accumulation and critical citizenship. In doing so, her objective is to defend and illustrate that the Syrian crisis is not an anomaly but part of a continuum of forced displacement and takes place in a context of existing global injustices, thus going beyond a state-centric lens. The result is a stimulating argument which examines the current case of displacement in the light of past examples from the author’s previous research with displaced communities to further expand on existing frameworks. Its central theme is the exploration of the definition dispossession in forced migration through three lenses: labour studies, citizenship and rights debates.