Based on various fieldworks conducted between 2013 and 2016, and 60 semi-directed interviews with Syrian refugees, this paper questions how local and national levels shape the situation of uncertainty experienced by Syrian refugees in Egypt. More specifically, in the Egyptian political context characterised by an authoritarian legal framework and increasing levels of violence, it shows how Syrian refugees create their own adjustment strategies, and try to initiate a « Syrian community » with specific practices, networks, narratives and labelling. Since March 2011, Egypt has been facing the largest wave of immigration in its history with the arrival of approximately 300, 000 Syrians. First, a large part of them was driven by the hope of finding in Egypt a "revolutionary solidarity", a common culture based on Arab language and a shared past. But, since the Revolution of 25 of January, the Egyptian political system has treated the issue of Syrian refugees both as an opportunity and as a threat, largely communicated to the Egyptian society through official medias. Under Mohamed Morsi, groups of exiled activists and religious associations openly participated to an external opposition to the Syrian regime. The pro-revolution policy statements of Mohamed Morsi favoured the rise of this mobilisation. Syrian refugees were at that time able to pretend to a prestigious status of “activists” or “revolutionaries”. The fall of Mohamed Morsi on the 3rd of July 2013 put an end to the favourable climate towards Syrian refugees and gave rise to stigma and authoritarian repression. A propaganda machine has since then been set up against both Muslim Brotherhood and Syrians. With the implementation of new visa restrictions, it has become for the Syrians a pressing and critical need to be a refugee, in an official way through registration to UNHCR. The haziness surrounding the legal framework regarding asylum offers to the Egyptian state to change an host attemp of public policy to a safe management of refugees. By ostracizing refugees, it denies them any social existence in the public space and prevents them from articulating a discourse of contestation against the State’s authority. Against this background, this paper explores the agency of Syrian refugees in Egypt and shows how they are still managing to build a collective voice and memory.

Among the millions Syrian refugees who flee from Syria to its neighboring countries, thousands of them belong to the upper-middle business class in the pre-revolution Syria. This group used to be in a much wealthier stance and are professionals in business investments, and possess a stronger social capital compared with their fellow countrymen. Although they experienced the same disaster as their fellow countrymen, they clearly show their strengths of economic and social resilience during the war period in the host countries – clearly indicated by the more than 10,000 Syrian companies in Turkey, and another hundreds of factories and workshops in Egypt and Jordan. However, very limited academic studies have addressed the existence and development of these economic elites of refugees during the war. The Syrians who left Syria after the 2011 revolution are in general considered and treated as ‘refugees,’ Yet governments, think tanks, and Academia neglect the fact that not all of the Syrians who left Syria are the traditionally depicted ‘refugee.’ This paper argues that economic elites of refugees play important roles as alleviators to their countrymen and the host societies in the face of crisis. The questions asked in this paper is, what are the context of the emigration of the Syrian businessmen? How do the different host countries’ atmospheres affect the settlement process of the business migrants? And what kind of business and philanthropic activities the Syrian businessmen are practicing? The sources used in this paper are based on the press survey from various online sources, and a nine-month period of fieldwork, consisting mainly of in-depth semi-structure interviews, between the mid of 2014 to the end of 2015. Interviews were conducted with more than two hundred Syrian businessmen in the Turkish cities of Istanbul, Gaziantep, Mersin, and Bursa, and in Egypt and Jordan. The paper finds, that a reconsideration of the importance of the economic elites of the war-induced migrants can not only be of life-long importance for traditionally depicted refugees, but can also be of lasting importance to the economies of the host countries.

Brazil is the developing country outside the Middle East which has received the largest number of Syrian refugees. Thanks to a special program established in September 2013, the country has issued more than 8000 “humanitarian visas” to individuals “affected by the conflict in Syria”. Initially intended to last two years, the program was prorogued in September 2015 for another two years. Whereas the country is dealing with severe recession, Brazilian authorities expect to at least double the number of those humanitarian visas by 2017. Brazil has one of the most progressive refugee policies of the “Global South” – with solid institutions ensuring a series of rights, such as the ability to work as soon as the asylum application process is initiated or the right to family reunification without conditions –, but the country only offers poor welcoming facilities. With no state-funded programs for language training or other specific social benefits, Syrian refugees have difficulties to access basic public services, particularly health care and housing. While asking for more government assistance is excluded in a time of economic crisis, Syrians rely almost exclusively on ethnic and religious networks, and a handle of local NGOs. Based on an ongoing ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews with refugees and associations leaders, as well as a press review, this paper explores individual strategies deployed by Syrian refugees to navigate Brazil’s administrative, economic and cultural challenges, and identifies some common patterns. Three major categories frame their collective identification: race, class, and ethnicity. While refugeeness was until recently largely associated in Brazilian media with Haitians – “black and uneducated refugees competing with local poor” –, the majority of Syrians try to re-negotiate the refugee label as “white” “entrepreneurs” and/or “hard-working” “skilled” employees, drawing upon the image built one century earlier by Syrian-Lebanese immigrants. The presence of a large and old Syrian diaspora well represented among Brazilian middle and upper classes involves both opportunities and constraints. On the one hand, diaspora networks do provide some assistance to refugees and contribute to mitigate Brazilian unfamiliarity with Middle Eastern culture. However, on the other hand, they can also be the space for invisible exploitation and silencing political views, as the majority of the traditional Syrian-Lebanese organizations – mostly Christian – strongly support the regime of Bashar al Assad.

What is the dialectical relationship between “refugees” and “revolutionaries” in the case of Syria? This paper begins from the empirical puzzlement of why some groups of Syrians actively endorse the label of refugee while others dodge this categorization. As refugee studies have shown, the extreme violence inherent to many revolutions historically has often triggered large movements of refugees (Zolberg et al. 1989). “Refugees” on the move signal a crisis in the relationship between the country of origin and its citizens and represent “a problem” to be solved by the international state system. Similarly, revolutionaries in history have used crisis to violently overthrow of political regimes and induce radical social transformations by subverting relations between subordinate and dominant citizens. Through the persistence of the authoritarian regime Syria might be a case of unsuccessful revolution, yet social transformations are ongoing and more than half of the population are considered refugees or internally displaced. The Syrians in focus are members of the peaceful, but severely marginalized revolutionary movement in Syria. Based on nine months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in 2013-2015 and more than 150 interviews, the paper explores comparatively how Syrians navigate in their first host country of Lebanon and in their second host communities in Europe. Formal and informal policies as well as popular attitudes towards Syrians are explored. Through a number of examples the paper argues that a persistent rejection, but also tactical self-identification of the refugee label can be identified. It is argued that the rejection is strongly attached to a subjective propensity to act. Being “a refugee” in Lebanon was often associated with deprived Syrians in the Beqaa’ Valley and in the Palestinian camps. After flight to Europe, these Syrians are suddenly themselves being labelled “refugees” by their new host communities. To understand the tactical endorsement as well as the persistent rejection of the refugee concept, the paper argues that a number of features must be taken into consideration. Geographical and cultural proximity of Lebanon and Syria (vs. distance of Europe), the continuation of destruction inside Syria, and levels of security are all identified as important facets. The paper concludes by considering the implications of viewing “refugee” as a discursive label more than de-politicized judicial status. In this context, rejecting “Syrian refugeeness” on the subjective level can be viewed as a revolutionary critique of the the Syrian political regime – and the international state system upholding it.