The politics left behind: how pre-migration and migration experiences shape Syrian refugees’ interest in home-county politics

ABSTRACT

For those fleeing violent political conflict home-country politics may be uniquely challenging. Given the high stakes which refugees are more likely to engage in home country politics? This article focuses on two sets of factors: experiences of hardship in the context of emigration, transiting and settling to their destination country; and the ongoing social ties to family and friends left behind. For our analysis, we draw on a recently collected nationally representative survey of Syrian refugees in Canada (N = 1974). We find that among those resettled in Canada, experiences of hardships in Syria and while in transit in their interim country are associated with less engagement in the political affairs of Syria. On the other hand, those who have a harder time settling into life in Canada also tend to remain more interested in home-country politics. In contrast to some findings in research on labour migrants, those who maintain close personal ties to friends and family back in Syria remain more engaged with politics. Together, the findings highlight the unique pressures refugees face and the role these pressures may have on continued interest in the political affairs of their home country after migrating.

KEYWORDS:

• Syria
• refugees
• home-country politics
• migration experiences

Acknowledgements

This article is written using data collected from surveys conducted by McGill University Researchers, with Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s support for recruitment and with consent of survey participants. The dedicated work of the Tajribati-Canada research team made the project on which this article is based possible. The project is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant 435-2018-0799 awarded to the first author. For excellent comments on an earlier version of this article, we thank Steven White.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Only 159,254, or 2.41% of the total, have been recognized and formally resettled as refugees according to the UNHCR (UNHCR Resettlement Data finder, see at https://rsq.unhcr.org/en/#wPU6).

2 Respondents were asked in which of the 14 Syrian governorates they lived before 2011 – we take these as a proxy for home region. 20 respondents left these before 2011 (between 2007 and 2010) – those are coded as having spent 0 years post-conflict in their home governorate.

3 Although respondents may have passed through multiple countries or regions between the time they left Syria and arrived in Canada, respondents’ interim country experiences were asked in relation to the country respondents spent the most time in after they left Syria and before arriving in Canada.

4 The polychoric correlation between rating experiences as stressful and frequency of contact is almost exactly 0.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant Number 435-2018-0799]; the Canada Research Chairs Program [CRC-2021-00458].