A Different Kind of Refugee: A Case Study of the Emirates’ Syrian Migrants Seeking Citizenship in Europe

The overarching research question of this project is:

How does the legal exclusion of migrant populations in host societies together with political and socio-economic instability in the home countries of migrants, produce new forms of transnational migratory experiences?

To answer this larger substantive question, the project will empirically analyze the following subthemes:

1) The impact of the Syrian conflict on Syrian citizens who live in the Gulf States, both on the social and structural level;
2) The key reasons for their decision to migrate to a European country, their process of deciding the destination and the methods they developed in reaching Europe;
3) The future development of this group’s patterns of mobility in transnational spaces, including the Gulf, Europe and globally, after the acquisition of ‘European’ passports.

The project contributes to migration and refugee studies through a case study of Syrian migrants who live(d) in the Gulf States, aiming to challenge and complicate prevailing norms on drivers of (forced) migration both in academic and policy circles. Syrians are more vulnerable to the strict migration policies of the Gulf States than other migrant groups, as Gulf authorities are wary of a possible spill over of the Syrian conflict to the UAE.

The project contributes to citizenship studies by exploring not only issues in the Gulf region, but also responding to larger contemporary questions such as the links between limited legal exclusion of migrant populations in (Western) host societies, political and socio-economic instability in the home countries of migrants, and drivers of (forced) onwards migration for these populations.

The project adds to Gulf studies by enlarging the limited research on migrant lives in the Gulf, which predominantly focusses on South Asian communities. Currently, there is no research which attends to the experiences of Arab migrant groups who live in the Gulf. The aim of this project is therefore to highlight the various strategies Syrian migrants in the Gulf develop in order to mitigate the spillover effects of the political conflict in their countries of origin on their future plans and mobilities within the Gulf as well as globally.