In settings of humanitarian crisis, stories of ethical paradoxes and challenges inevitably surface, whether around a café table in Dohuk, Beirut, or Kampala. Aid workers’ standardized approaches to humanitarian assessment in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan shape individual Syrian asylum cases by routinizing refugees’ stories and stripping out legally crucial personal details. Persistent freelance reporters chasing a new angle on the battle for Mosul underpay and endanger their local Iraqi and Kurdish fixers, prompting unionization efforts and limiting further coverage. Local aid workers in any number of conflicts contemplate the fact that they are paid far less than their foreign counterparts. These issues do not exist in a vacuum. Interactions both among war-adjacent professionals and between these groups and war-affected local populations shape the quality of aid provision, influence donor giving, and mold policymakers’ understandings of conflict. These types of interactions reverberate across organizational fields and war-affected communities, creating tensions, opening dialogues, and, sometimes, coalescing into new modes of thinking and behaving. In war-adjacent environments such as Jordan, Turkey, and Kenya how do individuals’ understandings of professional conduct interact with local populations’ concepts of ethical and moral behavior? How do interactions between “international” and “local” professionals in these fields—e.g., between European and Iraqi journalists or between American and Lebanese employees of a United Nations agency—shape outcomes such as reporting practices and provision of humanitarian aid? Focusing on humanitarian crises in the Levant and the Great Lakes region of Africa, this project uses multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with foreign and local professionals in Lebanon and Uganda to identify communities of practice, local innovations, and emergent ethical tensions. Based on a total of nine months of fieldwork in the world’s two most acute and active humanitarian crisis, this paper brings unique leverage to understanding the role of local context in shaping representations of conflict and aid provision while identifying some of the shared impediments to and opportunities for ethical practice.

Since the early 2010s, the migrant crisis has led to the mass inflow of foreign migrants and refugees, leading to rising xenophobic attitudes. Research on the conditions under which native citizens express xenophobia towards migrants has largely centered on evidence from European countries, yet non-Western and developing countries (especially in the Middle East and North Africa or ‘MENA’) have borne the brunt of the recent migrant crisis. In 2016, 4.5 million migrants came to Europe. In the Middle East, their numbers were far greater. Turkey hosts 2.5 million displaced persons, whereas Lebanon and Jordan host 1.5 and 2.7 million. Egypt counts 5.5 million displaced persons, and Iran records nearly 2 million. Hundreds of thousands of migrants also reside in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. Migrants in the MENA come from two types of ethnic backgrounds — co-ethnics and non co-ethnics. Jordan and Lebanon host displaced persons from Syria and Iraq who are co-ethnics (Arabs) and also non co-ethnics (Kurds, Armenians, and Yazidis). In Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, most migrants are co-ethnic Arabs or non co-ethnic sub-Saharan Africans (e.g. Congolese, Nigerians). Drawing on an original survey of 1500 Moroccan citizens in 2017, this study investigates: Why do native citizens express xenophobia towards foreign migrants? Why, further, do these attitudes intensify towards African migrants and dampen towards Arab ones? In addressing these questions, this study tests how effectively traditional theories of xenophobia explain variation in such attitudes among native citizens of the Middle East. While studies based in Europe emphasize that cultural conflicts drive xenophobic attitudes (see, for example: Dustmann & Preston, 2007; Hainmueller & Hangartner, 2013), this study’s results show that economic and security concerns carry more weight in provoking intolerance towards migrants. Citizens bothered by migrants’ social service consumption and concerns that they increase internal instability (through crime) express greater xenophobia towards migrants, especially African migrants. Xenophobia towards African migrants does not primarily come from immaterial cultural factors, like simple racism (or preference for white over black skin) or co-ethnic solidarity with Arab migrants (e.g., common ‘Arabness’). These findings have broader implications by highlighting the serious obstacles non co-ethnic migrants— particularly African migrants — face when they flee to countries in the Middle East seeking refuge from political instability or intransigent poverty in their homelands. This study’s results also furnish critical insights that can inform policies to reduce conflict and alleviate tensions between foreign migrants and native citizens.

Diasporas are well-positioned to serve as critical advocates for their displaced countrymen. High-mobility actors with access to material and social capital, diasporic activists may seek to raise awareness, raise funds, and negotiate access for refugees from their former homeland in their new countries (Moss 2018; van Hear and Cohen 2016). Yet not all diasporas are equally successful in advancing these outcomes, and their encounters with different kinds of state institutions matter substantially (Cheran 2006; Newland 2010; Faist 2015). Based on interviews and fieldwork with Yemeni diaspora activists in the US, UK, Egypt, and the GCC states, this paper seeks to develop a typological understanding of the different kinds of barriers facing diaspora activists who advocate for refugees from their home country. We identify the effects of bureaucratic and administrative hurdles, surveillance and monitoring, restrictions on communications technology, and substantive political fragmentation within the diaspora itself as factors that inhibit the efficacy of diaspora activism on behalf of those displaced by Yemen’s war. Moreover, we explore the similarities and differences in these structural barriers in more and less open political environments, and under conditions of rapid change in several host countries. The Yemeni case stands out as significant in three possible ways, when compared with other refugee-diaspora pairings in the MENA region. First, the Yemeni diaspora has particularly longstanding ties to Egypt, the GCC, and the UK, in comparison to most other regional diasporas. We posit that intergenerational communities have resources and limitations that more recent diasporas may not. Second, structural and demographic features of Yemen’s population mean that Yemeni refugees are less able to directly self-advocate in comparison to other regional populations, and are therefore more reliant on diaspora linkages as intermediaries. And third, in comparison to other displaced populations, the blockage imposed by the Saudi-backed coalition means that Yemen also wrestles with a higher degree of internal displacement, which requires a different kind of diaspora mobilization for relief. Advocating that people be allowed to leave has some qualitative differences from advocacy on behalf of those who already have done so. Collectively, understanding the way in which diverse forms of advocacy are mobilized, received, regulated, or suppressed will move us closer to understanding how refugee advocates from outside these communities can most effectively work with diaspora activists to achieve common aims in regard to the pressing needs of refugee communities.

What are the conditions under which civilians living in territory captured by an armed group will prefer its system of "rebel governance" to that of the incumbent state (Arjona 2016, Mampilly 2011)? Given the opportunity to flee to government-controlled areas, IDP camps, or neighboring countries, why do some people stay? This paper uses the case of the Islamic State’s three-year rule over the Iraqi city of Mosul to explore the individual-level motivations--social, political, economic, and ideological--that influence the decisions of potential migrants to stay or leave territory captured by a state-building armed group. Through a survey of 1,400 residents of Mosul and semi-structured interviews, I compare and contrast the motivations of "stayers" (those who remained in Mosul after IS's arrival in June 2014) and "leavers" (those who fled Mosul in the early days of IS rule and have since returned to the city). While recognizing that decisions to stay or leave are multi-factorial, I develop and test a discrete-choice theory of migration hypothesizing that civilians who had previously experienced high levels of injustice in their interactions with Iraqi state authorities--for example, bribery, sectarian discrimination, and police harassment--were more likely to be "stayers" than those with fewer or no such grievances. If this hypothesis is supported by the data, it would suggest that weak rule of law in Iraq contributed to civilian cooperation with and support for IS. The survey will also assess several alternative explanations that could explain migration decisions: economic resources, social networks, information, threat perceptions, and ideology.

How do refugees from the Middle East adapt to and adopt US religiosity? The supposed difficulty of refugees in adapting to US political norms has been a hallmark of anti-refugee sentiment in the United States. President Trump has proposed religious preferences in refugee admissions, while opinion pieces decry ‘Sharia Law’ and the incompatibility of Islam and US political culture. Paradoxically, the US refugee resettlement program relies heavily on the services of faith communities in supporting and integrating refugee families. As the United States increasingly moves to resettle refugees in smaller cities, this reliance on faith communities is likely to increase. Despite this, recent research into smaller refugee-accepting towns suggests most Americans still expect state and federal government to take a leading role in the resettlement process (Bose et. al., 2018). This faith and state nexus means that the first face of "America" many newly settled refugees see is a religious one. Using case studies of two refugee resettlement programs in Reno, Nevada and Boise, Idaho this paper explores the lived experiences of new refugees and their faith-community mentors. We hypothesize that the experiences and perceptions of religious pluralism in America are mediated by interactions with religious communities. This in turn influences how refugees understand their ability to participate in American life as religious subjects. We further hypothesize that faith communities will rely on less politically sensitive justifications (including 'neighborliness' and 'hospitality') to support refugee resettlement and advocate continued support to their internal stakeholders (Chang 2017). Each of these interactions, on the side of refugees and US faith communities, holds important lessons for resettlement agencies and international organizations.