Under the guise of resilience: The EU approach to migration and forced displacement in Jordan and Lebanon

ABSTRACT

Building “resilience” to insecurity and crisis is high on the European Union (EU) agenda. EU uptake of this buzzword is especially significant with regard to migration and forced displacement. Uncertainty, however, remains about what resilience is, how it translates into practice, and what its implications are. In this article, we analyze EU humanitarian and development policies and provide empirical insight into resilience-building in Jordan and Lebanon. We show that EU resilience thinking highlights strengthening the humanitarian-development nexus, responsibilizing crisis-affected states, and framing refugees as an economic development opportunity for refugee-hosting states. We also find that how resilience translates into practice depends on the local context and interests of the actors involved. For the EU, resilience-building is primarily a refugee containment strategy that could jeopardize the stability of refugee-hosting states. We conclude that resilience-building in Jordan and Lebanon may ultimately threaten rather than safeguard the security of Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• European Union
• humanitarian aid
• development
• migration
• forced displacement

Almost nine years into the Syria crisis, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has registered over 5.6 million Syrian refugees (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2019). Although many have made the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to reach Europe, most refugees remain in Syria’s neighboring countries, notably Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. The European Union (EU) has taken up migration and displacement as key security challenges in the 2016 EU Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy. In particular, the EU has turned to building the “resilience” of states and societies to insecurity and crisis, with “[a] special focus in [the] work on resilience … on origin and transit countries of migrants and refugees” (European External Action Service, 2016, p. 27). Identified as an important emerging paradigm for EU foreign and security policy (Anholt & Wagner, 2019; Juncos, 2017; Tocci, 2017; Wagner & Anholt, 2016), uncertainty remains about what resilience is, how it translates into practice, and the implications of resilience-building as a response to insecurity and crisis.

As the “sexiest new buzzword” (Hussain, 2013, para. 1), resilience enjoys widespread uptake across many and diverse domains, from technology to business management, to urban planning, and counseling. From 2012, the European Commission has integrated resilience in its humanitarian and development policy, long before it was embedded in the 2016 Global Strategy. EU institutions were however not the first to use resilience. In 2011, the United Kingdom placed resilience “at the heart of [its] approach both to longer-term development and to emergency response” (Department for International Development, 2011, foreword). Subsequently, the United States Agency for International Development published policy and program guidelines for building resilience to recurrent crises. United Nations (UN) agencies and large international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as World Vision, CARE, and Oxfam presently all have policies, guidelines, and programs aimed at building resilience.

Some media, practitioners, and scholars have brushed resilience aside as an empty and meaningless “buzzword,” a mere marketing and communication tool (Bensaude Vincent, 2014). Buzzwords nonetheless espouse “a strong belief in what the notion is supposed to bring about” (Rist, 2010, p. 20). As such, they invoke the feeling that “in the midst of all the uncertainties of the day, international institutions are working together for the good, and that they have now got the story right and are really going to make a difference” (Cornwall & Brock, 2005, p. 1043). Buzzwords are interesting to study exactly because the assumptions and rationales underlying their use often remain unquestioned (Rist, 2010).

In this article, we analyze EU resilience thinking and examine how resilience-building efforts are translated into practice in Jordan and Lebanon. First, we argue that EU resilience thinking is characterized by (i) a focus on the collaboration between humanitarian and development actors along the so-called “humanitarian-development nexus,” (ii) the responsibility of crisis-affected states, and (iii) the framing of refugees as an economic development opportunity for refugee-hosting states. Second, we suggest that the way in which these different elements translate into practice are highly dependent on the local context and on the interests of the actors involved. We propose that the primary objective of the EU is to prevent migration to its Member States, making resilience-building above all a refugee-containment strategy. Insofar as this strategy jeopardizes the stability of crisis-affected states, we conclude that resilience-building in Jordan and Lebanon may ultimately threaten rather than safeguard the security of Europe.

Our article unfolds as follows. In the next section, we provide an overview of the different meanings of resilience in the literature, and explicate our theoretical and methodological approach. In the section that follows, we map EU understanding of resilience by analyzing key humanitarian and development policies from the European Commission. Subsequently, we illustrate how resilience-building translates into practice in Jordan and Lebanon. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our findings on policy and practice.

Researching resilience

The word resilience stems from the Latin word “resilire.” “Salire” means to leap or jump; the suffix “re” indicates repetition, withdrawal, or backward motion. Throughout history, resilience has been used to refer to the quality of “bending without breaking” or “robustness” of materials, as well as the trait of “fickleness” or “fortitude after misfortune or adversity” in people (Alexander, 2013; Bourbeau, 2018). Despite its origins, resilience is often traced back to the ecologist Holling, who used the term to refer to the ability of ecological systems to absorb change and disturbance (Holling, 1973; Walker & Cooper, 2011). Others have pointed to important contributions from psychology, where resilience signaled a shift in the focus on vulnerability and deficits to protective factors and adaptive capacities (Bourbeau, 2018; Masten, 2013; Yates, Tyrell, & Masten, 2015).

Risk scholar Wildavsky–borrowing from Holling–conceptualized resilience as “the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back” (Wildavsky, 1988, p. 77). He regarded resilience as a more effective and cheaper strategy to deal with risks than anticipation and prevention (Boin & Lodge, 2016; Wildavsky, 1988). Subsequently, resilience found a home in studies of natural disasters and became an integral component of international disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies to minimize disaster impact and enhance recovery (Tobin, 1999). Although the EU’s use of resilience before 2012 was limited, mentions of resilience refer primarily, if not exclusively, to DRR.¹

Security scholars have largely been critical of the use of resilience as a strategy to address insecurity and crisis. Their observations show that, rather than being meaningless, a buzzword may have considerable power (Cornwall & Brock, 2005; Cornwall & Eade, 2010). First, scholars have argued that because resilience is about withstanding and recovering from the impact of crises, resilience reconceptualizes crises as unpredictable and inevitable (Coaffee & Fussey, 2015; Duffield, 2011, 2012; Evans & Reid, 2013, 2014). Some consider it therefore as deeply de-politicizing, because the resilient subject “must permanently struggle to accommodate itself to the world: not a subject that can conceive of changing the world” (Chandler & Reid, 2016, p. 53).

Second, because learning is considered to be a result of exposure to adversity, crises are reconceptualized as an opportunity for development (Duffield, 2011; Rogers, 2013). Responding in a resilient way then becomes a responsibility of crisis-affected communities, de facto making them also responsible for non-resilient outcomes (Evans & Reid, 2013; Howell, 2012, 2015; O’Malley, 2010; Schmidt, 2015). Third, scholars have noted that resilience takes the responsibility for security off the shoulders of states (Chandler, 2014; Coaffee & Fussey, 2015; Coaffee & Wood, 2006), thus “outsourcing” security to crisis-affected communities instead (Evans & Reid, 2014). Whereas some consider this neoliberal view of resilience too narrow (Bourbeau, 2015; Corry, 2014), others have interpreted it as a form of post liberal governance (Chandler, 2017). These debates invite us to reflect on what resilience “does” as a buzzword: How is it understood and used in practice, to what ends, and to what effect?

To study resilience, we take an ideational approach. In line with the idea that buzzwords are abstract notions or concepts (Cornwall, 2007), ideational approaches look exactly at the existence and functions of ideas in the study of political and policy processes (Fischer & Forester, 1993). Ideas are “historically constructed beliefs and perceptions” (Béland, 2019, p. 4) that determine not only the framing of problems that policies aim to address, but also “shape the understandings that underpin political action and the rationale and purposes of organizations and policies” (Béland & Orenstein, 2013, p. 127).

In particular, we look at ideas that are explicitly articulated in the foreground of policy discussions: programs and frames (Campbell, 2004). Programs are “cognitive concepts and theories that enable or facilitate decision making and institutional change by specifying for decision makers how to solve specific problems [emphasis added]” (Campbell, 2004, p. 98). Frames are “symbols and concepts” (Campbell, 2004, p. 94) that policymakers use to “justify and promote … policy proposals and convince the public and key interest groups to support them” (Béland, 2019, p. 19). Frames are “normative concepts [that] enable elites to legitimize their programs” (Campbell, 2004, p. 98). Across the next two sections, we look at the frames (the why) and programs (the how) through which the EU conceives resilience and subsequently, how these are translated into practice as “resilience-building.” This provides insight into the underlying, taken-for-granted assumptions in the background of policy discussions that push policy into given directions by limiting both the cognitive and normative range of policy options (Béland, 2019; Campbell, 2004).

In the section that follows, we present the results of a close reading of key EU humanitarian and development policies, notably focusing on paragraphs containing the word resilience. Loosely based on Gasper (1996), we look for definitions or clarifications of meanings, outcomes and (unstated) implications, mention of methods and techniques, and (unstated) assumptions. To illustrate how resilience translates into practice, we then provide empirical examples of resilience-building in Jordan and Lebanon against the backdrop of the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP). This crisis response platform aims to support the countries neighboring Syria to deal with the impact of the refugee influx. EU institutions are a major donor for the 3RP (Supporting Syria and the region, 2019). Following the first Supporting Syria and the Region conference in London in 2016, moreover, the EU hosted subsequent donor conferences in Brussels in 2017, 2018, and 2019. We have selected Jordan and Lebanon because of the countries in which the 3RP is implemented, they host the largest number of Syrian refugees in relation to their own population.

Methodologically, our article primarily builds upon the analysis of various texts, including official EU policy documents and websites, NGO reports, and scholarly literature. Our analysis is further supported by 39 interviews with policymakers and practitioners in the field of humanitarian aid, development, and security, carried out between 2016 and 2019 in Europe, Jordan, and Lebanon. Finally, our analysis is informed by ethnographic insight gained during visits to Jordan and Lebanon between October 2018 and November 2018.

Two important caveats deserve mention here. First, although the EU is a major actor in resilience-building efforts in Jordan and Lebanon, our empirical examples will not reveal “EU” resilience-building. As in any international crisis response, many actors are involved and they shape policy, interventions and outcomes together. Second, we draw on examples of resilience-building in Jordan and Lebanon in order to illustrate what resilience may look like in practice. Differences and similarities between these cases allow us to flesh out the various shapes that resilience may take in the field. A (systematic) comparison between the two cases is nonetheless beyond the scope of this article.

Mapping resilience in EU humanitarian and development policy

Since 2012, the EU has systematically used the term resilience in its humanitarian and development policy. Based on an analysis of this policy, we find that three characteristics stand out. First, resilience requires the simultaneous involvement of, and collaboration between, humanitarian and development actors–the “humanitarian-development nexus.” Second, understanding the context is a prerequisite for resilience-building, in terms of context-specific vulnerabilities and their (root) causes, as well as existing local capacities that humanitarian and development interventions can tap into, build upon, and strengthen. More specifically, resilience is framed as the responsibility of national governments and local authorities. Third, the resilience of refugees is equated with their economic self-reliance within the host country. Moreover, refugees are framed as an economic asset and development opportunity for refugee-hosting states. In this section, we provide a chronological overview of EU policy pertaining to resilience, highlighting where each of these three points emerge.

In its flagship publication The EU Approach to Resilience: Learning from Food Security Crises, the European Commission (2012) defines resilience as “the ability of an individual, a household, a community, a country or a region to withstand, to adapt, and to quickly recover from stresses and shocks” (p. 5). Drawing from the EU Supporting Horn of African Resilience and the Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative, it sets out a resilience-based approach aimed at reducing vulnerability to climate change-induced disasters in particular. Conclusions of the Council of the European Union on The EU Approach to Resilience extend resilience’s applicability from natural hazards to other causes of vulnerability, including conflict, insecurity, and weak democratic governance. Resilience is subsequently characterized as a “comprehensive, coherent and effective approach to achieve better results on the ground” (Council of the European Union, 2013, p. 1), highlighting in particular the complementary roles of humanitarian and development actors.

Whereas the Council recognizes “the importance of working closely with local communities, civil society, local authorities, research institutions and the private sector” it is predominantly “state-building and international co-operation [that are the] central elements of the resilience framework” (Council of the European Union, 2013, p. 3). Moreover, it adds that “it is primarily the national government’s responsibility to build resilience” (Council of the European Union, 2013, p. 2). This focus on the state has led humanitarian practitioners in particular to criticize resilience for being deeply politicizing (Scott-Smith, 2018). For example, the humanitarian organization Médecins sans Frontières walked out of the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 over concerns about its incorporation into broader development and resilience agendas (Médecins sans Frontières, 2016).

Shortly after The EU Approach to Resilience, the European Commission published the Action Plan for Resilience in Crisis Prone Countries, “designed to reinforce the momentum of the resilience agenda” (European Commission, 2013, p. 2). The Action Plan broadens the EU’s earlier definition of resilience, adding that adaptation and recovery should not compromise “long-term development prospects, [and] focus on efficient interventions having a lasting impact” (European Commission, 2013, p. 2). This is important especially, the Action Plan argues, “in times of economic crisis” (European Commission, 2013, p. 2).

In this document, the three main points anticipated in the opening of this section are all notable, as are the ways in which they are interlinked. First, in line with The EU Approach to Resilience, the Action Plan asserts that “achieving resilience objectives requires all EU actors (humanitarian, development, political) to work differently and more effectively together” (European Commission, 2013, p. 4).

Second, and related, a resilience approach must be “sustainable, multi-sectoral, multi-level, multi-partner and strategically and jointly planned by the people affected or at risk [emphasis added], communities, governments (at the local, sub-national and national levels) and civil society” (European Commission, 2013, p. 3). The Action Plan asserts that a resilience approach is necessarily owned and led by affected countries, emphasizing moreover that it is “ultimately individual countries’ responsibility to progress towards resilience” (European Commission, 2013, p. 3). Among other things, this means embedding resilience in “national policies and planning for development” (European Commission, 2013, p. 3). Where this is not possible due to weak governance or conflict, consulting “a range of national stakeholders including civil society in the partner country” (European Commission, 2013, p. 3) and strengthening the capacity of “functioning systems within existing local institutions” (European Commission, 2013, p. 3) are key.

Third, the Action Plan characterizes a resilience approach as people-centered and focused on the most vulnerable, contributing not only to “increasing their capacity to absorb shocks and to cope with stresses, but [also constituting] an opportunity for transformation, in terms of adaptation to changing environments, empowerment, improved livelihoods and economic opportunities” (European Commission, 2013, p. 3). The notion that crisis present opportunities for development can be read as a precursor for EU framing of refugees as an economic asset and development opportunity for refugee-hosting states found in later policy documents. This idea is nonetheless not unique to resilience nor to the EU–it is also found in the concept of “building back better” (Kim & Olshansky, 2014). Still, this is why scholars have criticized resilience for commending exposure to danger (Duffield, 2011, 2012; Evans & Reid, 2013).

The publication of the Resilience Marker by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) illustrates the concept’s growing importance. The Marker was designed “to assess to what extent humanitarian actions funded by ECHO integrate resilience considerations” (European Commission, 2014a, p. 3). The four criteria consider whether projects (i) include an analysis of shocks, stresses and vulnerabilities, and their (root) causes; (ii) are risk-informed and include measures to mitigate risks and prevent the undermining of (local) capacities; (iii) aim to build the capacities of “beneficiaries” and/or local institutions; and (iv) include longer-term strategies aimed at reducing needs, vulnerabilities and risks (European Commission, 2014a). The criteria emphasize the importance of understanding the context and the role of local actors and institutions as important aspects of a resilience-based approach.

Next, the EU Resilience Compendium: Saving Lives and Livelihoods was launched at the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan (European Commission, 2015). In recognition of the uncertainty around what resilience means in concrete and operational terms, the Compendium sets out to share a range of examples that demonstrate that what a resilience-based approach looks like in practice is greatly dependent on the context. In Yemen, a resilience-based approach may look like the distribution of cash to the poorest and most vulnerable people through local distribution systems, and in South Sudan it may be humanitarian and development actors jointly analyzing in which areas they can work in complementarity. Through these case studies, the Compendium highlights two of our main points. First, it shows that a resilience-based approach requires an understanding of the context–in terms of both context-specific vulnerabilities and their (root) causes, and existing local capacities. Second, it illustrates that in order to build resilience, different actors at the local, regional, and international levels, must work together. Ultimately, “[a] mainstreamed resilience agenda, based on multi-sectoral coherence, offers the opportunity to enhance the effectiveness, and take-up, of [resilience] programs” (European Commission, 2015, p. 6).

Growing concerns over the refugee and migration crisis in 2015 provided a catalyst for the policy framework Lives in Dignity: From Aid-dependence to Self-reliance: Forced Displacement and Development (European Commission, 2016b). Drawing from The EU Approach to Resilience, Lives in Dignity aims to “foster the resilience and self-reliance of forcibly displaced people” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 17). Like the previous policy documents, it urges “stronger cooperation between development and humanitarian actors–with closer links in funding at programming level, exchange and assessment of information, and target setting” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 5). Using the term “humanitarian and development nexus” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 6), Lives in Dignity clearly illustrates that the simultaneous involvement of, and collaboration between, humanitarian and development actors is necessary to build resilience.

Discussions about how to connect the work of humanitarian and development actors are not new. The debates around Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD) in the 1990s and 2000s, for example, were similarly concerned with creating functional links between humanitarian and development aid (Crisp, 2001; White & Cliffe, 2000). Lives in Dignity, however, argues that the “policy focus has shifted from a linear humanitarian-development approach–linking relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD)–to resilience building” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 6). Specifically, it stresses the need for political, development, and humanitarian actors to be engaged in crisis response at the same time. The understanding of the connection between humanitarian and development responses has thus shifted from continuous, linear or sequential, to contiguous, non-linear and simultaneous. A 2012 policy brief from the European Parliament explains that:

treating relief, rehabilitation and development as separate processes failed to respond to the complexity of a number of crisis situations … the continuum approach was abandoned in favor of a contiguum approach [emphasis added], which departs from a scenario of simultaneous and complementary use of different aid instruments. (Ramet, 2012, p. 4)

Lives in Dignity furthermore exemplifies our observation that refugees are framed as economic assets and a development opportunity for refugee-hosting states. It intends to foster “self-reliance and [enable] the displaced to live in dignity as contributors to their host societies [emphasis added], until voluntary return or resettlement” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 2). This framing strongly reminds of ideas espoused at the Arusha Conference on the African Refugee Problem in 1979:

If the process of refugee settlement is planned as an integral part of … development of the host country, the undertaking will not only enable the refugees to become self-sufficient and facilitate their integration, but it will also create the conditions for the betterment of the quality of rural life benefiting both the local populations and the refugees themselves. This also enables both the locals and the refugees not only to attain self-sufficiency, but to go beyond it to self-sustained growth and subsequently contribute to the growth of the national economy of the asylum country. (Kibreab, 1983, p. 123)

More specifically, Lives in Dignity describes refugees as “productive individuals with skills and assets [emphasis added] able to contribute to the economy and society of host countries or communities” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 4). Refugees are “potential workers, professionals, business people and development agents” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 14), and their access to host country labor markets is constructed as a way to reduce aid dependency, increase refugees’ self-reliance through financial independence, foster integration, and decrease social tensions. Lives in Dignity recognizes that where host country policies are particularly restrictive, they tend to “maintain displaced populations ‘in limbo’ and ensure that, in the absence of long-term development prospects, they remain in continuous need of support from the humanitarian actors” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 4). In other words, refugees’ economic self-reliance through access to host country labor markets is distinguished as a crucial element of resilience.

This particular framing of refugees can also be observed in the New European Consensus on Development (European Commission, 2017a). For example, article 42 portrays refugees’ access to local labor markets as a “win-win” for refugees and refugee-hosting states alike:

The EU and its Member States will promote the dignity and resilience of long-term forcibly displaced persons and their inclusion in the economic and social life of host countries and host communities, recognizing that displaced persons’ capabilities are a vital portable asset, essential for their resilience and for rebuilding their lives, as well as a contribution to their host communities. (European Commission, 2017a, p. 19)

Article 47 adds that: “inclusive sustainable growth builds long-term resilience in partner countries, by creating opportunities for vulnerable population groups and those most at risk, to participate in, and benefit from, wealth and the creation of decent jobs” (European Commission, 2017a, p. 24).

With 65.3 million people displaced globally and protracted displacement lasting 26 years on average (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2016), one hopes EU rhetoric implies indeed a move away from the traditional “‘care and maintenance’ aid dependence model” (European Commission, 2016b, p. 4). It raises questions, however, about how and to what extent vulnerable groups’ access to the labor market can be realized and made sustainable–especially in countries struggling with high unemployment or with governments opposed to refugee integration.

To summarize, the humanitarian-development nexus, the responsibility of crisis-affected states, and refugees as a development opportunity emerge as three key characteristics of EU resilience thinking. These ideas specify how to build resilience: By bridging the divide between humanitarian and development actors and activities, by supporting national leadership and involve local actors, and by integrating refugees into local labor markets. These programs are then justified by ideas that explicate the why behind resilience: To sustainably reduce needs through enabling individuals, communities, and countries to better deal with stresses and shocks. In the particular context of migration and forced displacement, moreover, there is an additional frame that depicts resilience-building as enabling affected states to benefit from opportunities provided by crisis.

In the next section, we move on to examine the assumptions underlying the different aspects of resilience by exploring how resilience-building translates into practice in Jordan and Lebanon. Our examples show that the different forms and implications of resilience-building are highly dependent on the local context and in particular on the interests of the actors involved.

Resilience-building in Jordan and Lebanon

Jordan and Lebanon hold the largest number of Syrian refugees respective to the size of their own population. As of October 2019, UNHCR has registered almost 655.000 Syrian refugees in Jordan and close to 920.000 in Lebanon. Both countries, however, claim that actual numbers are much higher. Jordan indicates that it hosts up to 1.3 million refugees and Lebanon 1.5 million–respectively 13% and 25% of their population (Government of Jordan, 2018; Government of Lebanon and United Nations, 2017). The influx of large numbers of refugees has created an untenable pressure on public goods and services in both countries, exacerbating long-standing struggles with slow economic growth, high unemployment and lack of resources. In Lebanon, these challenges are further complicated by its history of civil war, Syrian occupation, and political instability.

In early 2012, international and local actors launched a regional strategic framework to manage the arrival of Syrian refugees and its impact on host countries. Led by UNHCR, the Regional Response Plan (RRP) was primarily humanitarian in nature, focused on addressing “the needs for protection and assistance of refugees fleeing from the Syrian Arab Republic” (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2012a, p. 4). Interestingly, resilience was not a major theme in the RRP and its subsequent revisions: Sporadically, resilience is mentioned in reference to psychosocial development in children and youth (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2013).

In 2013, the UN Development Program (UNDP) established a sub-regional response facility in Amman, Jordan, adopting a development-based response to the Syria crisis (Gonzalez, 2016; United Nations Development Program Arab States, 2019). This shifted the aid structure and resulted in the formulation of the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP) in 2015. Co-led between UNHCR and UNDP and including over 200 actors (Gonzalez, 2016), the 3RP constitutes “one of the biggest humanitarian operations ever realized by the UN” (Dionigi, 2016, p. 27).

The 3RP is structured around a refugee component that “addresses the protection and humanitarian assistance needs of refugees living in camps, settlements and local communities” (Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan, 2018, p. 8); and a resilience component, which addresses “the resilience, stabilization and development needs of impacted and vulnerable communities and aims to strengthen the capacities of national actors to lead the crisis response” (Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan, 2018, p. 8). This division implies that national actors and host communities, rather than refugees, are the (main) target group for resilience-building activities.

The countries in which the 3RP is implemented–besides Jordan and Lebanon, also Turkey, Iraq and Egypt–each have a country chapter that adapts the crisis response to the national context. The Jordan country chapter, led by the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, explicitly takes a “resilience-based approach to respond to and mitigate the effects of the crisis on Syrian refugees and Jordanian people, host communities and institutions by integrating humanitarian and development responses [emphasis added]” (Government of Jordan, 2018, p. 2). In contrast, the Lebanon country chapter, officially led by the Ministry of Social Affairs, uses the term “stabilization” instead. Some suggest the Lebanese government rejects the notion of resilience because it is seen to imply the long-term nature of the crisis and refugee presence (Culbertson, Oliker, Baruch, & Blum, 2016; Fakhoury, 2019).

In the remainder of this section, we explore how the three main characteristics of resilience we identified in EU policy translate into practice. We will discuss these points in the following order: First the role of national governments in the crisis response, then the nexus between humanitarian and development aid, and finally Syrian refugees’ access to employment as pathways to resilience.

The role of national governments

EU humanitarian and development policy stresses that resilience is the primary responsibility of national governments. Regardless of the capacities of the latter, the underlying assumption is that crisis-affected states are willing to take responsibility, and that their involvement or leadership will contribute to resilience. Our examples from Jordan and Lebanon show that this is not always the case. Moreover, focusing on the responsibility of crisis-affected states allows the EU to pay little attention to its own responsibility, and to ignore international and local pleas for more equal burden-sharing (Ferris & Kirişci, 2016; Jordan Times, 2016).

Jordan was relatively welcoming when refugees first started to cross its historically porous borders with Syria (Alshoubaki, 2018). When refugee numbers started to increase rapidly, the government opened Za’atari and Al-Azraq refugee camps in the northeastern governorates in 2012 and 2014 respectively. Concerns over stability and security, however, led to the gradual adoption of increasingly restrictive refugee policies (Alshoubaki, 2018), from withdrawing free medical services to unofficial border closures and deportations (Francis, 2015).

Jordan is familiar with hosting refugees: Since the second half of the previous century, the country received significant numbers of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees. During the Iraqi crisis, Jordan restricted and relaxed its refugee policy dependent on the contributions it could elicit from the international community (Kelberer, 2017). Moreover, it did not establish refugee camps, but instead highlighted “the fact that Iraqi refugees lived entirely among the local population and directly affected the host community” (Kelberer, 2017, p. 158)–pressing for aid budgets to be transferred directly to the government. As will become clear, this tendency to leverage its position as a refugee-hosting state to increase access to international aid can also be observed in the current crisis (Arar, 2017; Kelberer, 2017).

Lebanon initially pursued a “policy of no-policy,” leaving much of the crisis management up to UNHCR (El Mufti, 2014; Mourad, 2017; Nassar & Stel, 2019). Expecting it to be short-term, the Lebanese government stressed the humanitarian nature of the crisis, but did not allow the establishment of refugee camps for fear of repeating the Palestinian experience (Dionigi, 2016). As refugee numbers increased unabatedly, Lebanon started to demand more control over the response in order to limit refugee numbers. In 2015, it suspended UNHCR’s refugee registration services (Janmyr, 2018).

In the meetings and negotiations leading up to Lebanon’s country chapter in 2015, the government further compounded its relationships with the international community. It rejected the international notion of “refugee” (Dionigi, 2016; Janmyr, 2018; Saghieh & Frangieh, 2014), and instead refers to Syrian refugees as “persons displaced from Syria,” “displaced Syrians,” or “persons registered as refugees by UNHCR” (Government of Lebanon & United Nations, 2019, p. 4). The terminology in the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan thus denies Syrian refugees a refugee status and rights under international frameworks.

Over time, the government of Lebanon has become increasingly hostile towards both Syrian refugees and the international community. For example, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil has openly called for returning refugees as the solution for the crisis. In June 2018, he threatened to indefinitely suspend UNHCR’s residency applications stating that the agency was “intimidating the displaced who wish to return voluntarily” (Naharnet, 2018, para. 8). In a similar vein, President Michael Aoun has publicly blamed the country’s high unemployment on the presence of Syrian refugees (Daily Star, 2018), further restricting the protection space for refugees. Lebanon’s dependence on foreign aid, however, would make the formalization of refugee returns unlikely (Atallah & Mahdi, 2017).

The humanitarian-development nexus

EU humanitarian and development policy considers bridging the nexus between humanitarian and development approaches vital for building resilience. Nonetheless, the differences between these approaches–in terms of actors, timelines, and objectives (Culbertson et al., 2016)–will make realizing a nexus in practice challenging at best. Moreover, it has a profound impact on the nature of humanitarian aid, which risks becoming an instrument for achieving–political–development objectives (Dany, 2015; Versluys, 2008).

In Jordan, the national response plan:

has been successful in transitioning from a state of affairs wherein the aid architecture for delivering humanitarian and development assistance was fragmented to a nationally-led resilience framework that integrates humanitarian and development support [emphasis added], thereby enhancing transparency and accountability as means of delivering concrete results that positively impact both Jordanians and Syrians. (Government of Jordan, 2018, p. iii)

One way in which Jordan has attempted to integrate humanitarian and development work is by requiring aid organizations to target both refugees and host communities. When registering a project in the Jordan Response Information System for the Syria Crisis for government approval, it must target at least 30% vulnerable host (Jordanian) communities under the refugee component, and at least 30% refugees under the resilience component.²

Although aid organizations have long been aware that addressing forced displacement calls for interventions that address the needs of both refugees and host communities, coordinating short-term emergency and longer-term development approaches is challenging (Boustani, Carpi, Gebara, & Mourad, 2016). The different modalities of humanitarian and development funding are a particular stumbling block: Donors do generally not allow funding for refugee protection to be spent on development activities for host communities and vice versa. One international NGO working in Jordan, however, notes that at least some of their donors allow for flexible funding (Kittaneh & Stolk, 2018). The EU has also shown an increased awareness of the need for more flexible and multi-year funding by establishing the Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis. The “Madad Fund” as it is also known–“madad” being Arabic for “providing help jointly with others” (European Commission, 2014b)–aims to “foster more self-reliance of refugees, helping them thrive, not just survive, while at the same time assisting the countries and communities hosting them [thereby bridging] the nexus between humanitarian relief and development aid” (European Commission, n.d.). It currently has a volume of €1.6 billion (European Commission, 2018).

Tensions between UN agencies are another barrier to realizing the humanitarian-development nexus in practice. In Lebanon for example, the lack of clearly delineated roles and competition for leadership–so-called “turf battles”–have strained relationships between UN agencies (Culbertson et al., 2016). Mainly the relationship between UNHCR and other UN agencies was problematic, which undermined coordination and resulted in the sidelining of UNDP in the beginning of the crisis (Mitri, 2014).

At the core, the humanitarian-development nexus is also about aligning “humanitarian action with long-term goals of development, justice, gender equality and peace” (Kittaneh & Stolk, 2018, p. 15). Refugees’ access to employment is a typical example, as it is understood to benefit both refugees and the refugee-hosting state.

Refugees as a development opportunity

EU humanitarian and development policy is illustrative of the increasingly common portrayal of refugees “as enterprising subjects, whose formal integration into labor markets simultaneously can create self-sufficient actors and cure the economic woes of host countries” (Lenner & Turner, 2018, p. 1). In a similar vein, a European Commission discussion paper recently argued that Syrian refugees’ “integration into the [local] labor market is crucial … to improve their situation through their own efforts and, for host countries, to reap more of the potential economic benefits from the demographic boost” (Errighi & Griesse, 2016, p. 1). Besides positioning access to employment as a primary determinant of resilience, the assumption underlying this framing is that either local labor markets are able to absorb large numbers of additional workers, or that this absorptive capacity can be created in a relatively short time. The examples that follow show that creating the conditions for Syrian refugees’ employment remains difficult to realize in both Jordan and Lebanon.

The 2016 EU-Jordan Compact, under which the government of Jordan commits to opening up the labor market for Syrian refugees, came as a surprise. Kelberer (2017) notes that “[a]s recently as June 2015, mention of work rights in even informal conversations with government ministries could lead to an abrupt end to meetings” (p. 150). Moreover, “the public’s broad perception that Syrian refugees are stealing Jordanian jobs provides the government with little incentive to offer formal opportunities for Syrian employment” (Francis, 2015, p. 24). Jordan nevertheless committed to issuing 200.000 work permits for Syrians in exchange for EU aid–including the relaxation of Jordan’s requirements for exporting to EU Member States (European Commission, 2016a; European Commission, 2017b).

Although “[s]ome hailed the Jordan Compact as a model for the long-awaited ‘sustainable refugee response,’” (Kelberer, 2017, p. 149), it has not yet been very successful. Figures indicate that since 2016, 135.000 work permits have been issued, but also that only 40.000 Syrians refugees held a valid work permit in August 2018 (Turner, 2019). Although Jordan started to describe Syrian refugees “as presenting new economic opportunities for the kingdom” (Boulby, 2018, p. 165), many hurdles prevent Syrians from entering the Jordanian labor market: The limited amount of jobs it can offer, the largely informal nature of the Jordan economy, harsh working conditions, and low wages (Lenner & Schmelter, 2016; Lenner & Turner, 2018; Maltz & Huang, 2018).

In contrast, the EU-Lebanon Compact does not provide for refugees’ access to employment. Instead, it focuses on job creation and business development for the Lebanese, assumed to indirectly create jobs for Syrian refugees (Khater, 2017). Although EU aid is supposed to “support refugees to become increasingly economically self-reliant” (European Commission, 2019, para. 3), Lebanon does not allow Syrian refugees to work. If caught working, UNHCR-registered Syrians will lose their refugee status, and those employing Syrians face a fine (Houssari, 2019).

Despite the assumption that refugees provide a development opportunity for a host country, there is no evidence to support it. Some studies indicate that the presence of refugees has stimulated Lebanon’s GDP, and others report economic decline, in terms of increased competition for jobs and rising unemployment among vulnerable Lebanese (Kabbanji & Kabbanji, 2018). The recent resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri in the face of ongoing protests over politics and corruption, illustrate that Lebanon’s challenges are more fundamental than the presence of Syrian refugees.

Conclusion

In times of complex protracted crises and tightening aid budgets, it may be unsurprising that institutions like the EU turn to resilience: A buzzword that promises the effective, efficient, and sustainable reduction of needs. In this article, we have argued that strengthening the humanitarian-development nexus, responsibilizing the governments of crisis-affected countries, and framing refugees as an economic development opportunity emerge as key characteristics of EU resilience thinking. As programs and frames, they guide and legitimize EU resilience-building efforts. Our examples from Jordan and Lebanon illustrate that the problematic nature of the assumptions underlying the EU approach to building resilience may prevent such efforts from creating actual resilience: A better ability to deal with stresses and shocks. Ultimately, how resilience translates into practice, and what its implications are, depends on the context and the interests of the actors involved. Now, we draw on our analysis and point at some of the implications.

For the EU, resilience-building may be, above all, a strategy to contain refugees in the region and prevent migration to Europe. In keeping with EU resilience thinking, a resilient state is one that can withstand, adapt, and quickly recover from a crisis. More significantly, it can capitalize on the opportunities provided by crisis. In the case of Jordan and Lebanon, resilience is taken to mean allowing refugees access to the labor market, in order for them to contribute to the local economy and overall development of their host countries. Framing refugees as a development opportunity may serve to coax states into accepting the integration of refugees into their societies–in exchange for international aid and assistance. Moreover, it implies that if refugees can become economically self-reliant in host countries, migration to the EU can be prevented. This reveals the internally conflicted nature of this frame: On the one hand, it constructs Syrian refugees as a development opportunity for Jordan and Lebanon, while on the other hand, a threat to the economy, social cohesion, and political stability of Europe.

The predominance of strategic security interests underlying the EU’s relationships with refugee-hosting states has also been observed by Davis and Ayub (2017). They argue that the trade deal under the EU-Jordan Compact, one of the instruments through which the EU intends to build resilience in Jordan, was “part of a package through which Jordan would host refugees that might otherwise attempt to migrate to Europe” (Davis & Ayub, 2017, p. 10). Panizzon (2019) adds that it is in particular this “intersectionality of market-based humanitarianism [that] uses the ‘crisis’ to transform a ‘development opportunity’ into a deterrence strategy” (pp. 266-267). Despite its admirable promises, then, resilience-building is not unlike other strategies to buttress “Fortress Europe,” albeit perhaps in a less obvious manner than, for example, the EU-Turkey deal (Rygiel, Baban, & Ilcan, 2016; Zoomers, van Noorloos, & van Liempt, 2018).

The challenges to building resilience in the Jordanian and Lebanese contexts suggest that actual changes in the situation of vulnerable groups matter marginally at best. Despite limited progress on EU norms and political reforms, the EU continues to positively evaluate its relationships with Jordan and Lebanon. As a pertinent example, the EU has abstained from criticizing Jordan’s repeated suspense of elections (Seeberg, 2016), as well as its hosting of former president of Sudan Omar Al-Bashir in 2017–for which the EU did criticize Uganda that same year (Davis & Ayub, 2017; European External Action Service, 2017; Schaake, 2017). What matters, then, is that countries like Jordan and Lebanon continue to bear the brunt of the refugee crisis.

For crisis-affected states, the EU’s turn to resilience-building provides an opportunity to leverage their position as refugee-hosting countries to obtain international assistance that directly benefits their own development–to the possible detriment of refugees (Arar, 2017; Kelberer, 2017; Tsourapas, 2019). Nonetheless, the refugee crisis has exacerbated long-standing structural challenges, and both countries have seen growing public discontentment. Notably, Achilli (2015) has observed that the EU’s “policy of [refugee] containment is dangerous as it threatens the stability of the countries bordering Syria” (p. 9). As such, resilience-building may ultimately threaten, rather than safeguard, the security of Europe.

Buzzwords, like resilience, “evoke Good Things that no-one could possibly disagree with” (Cornwall, 2010, p. 2). It is exactly “their vague and euphemistic qualities, their capacity to embrace a multitude of possible meanings, and their normative resonance” (Cornwall, 2010, p. 2) that make buzzwords an excellent smoke screen for ulterior political agendas and limit their transformative potential. Do our findings demonstrate the power of resilience–the power to obscure or justify alternative objectives–or its powerlessness to create transformational change for the most vulnerable? In a context as politicized and securitized as migration and forced displacement (Bourbeau, 2018; Huysmans, 2000), resilience may have little room for maneuver. This highlights the need for further empirical work that explores the meanings and implications of resilience in different contexts.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the guest editors of this special issue, two anonymous reviewers, and colleagues from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam for their valuable and constructive feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Rosanne Anholt is a Ph.D. candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Political Science and Public Administration. She holds an M.Sc. in Management, Policy Analysis and Entrepreneurship from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research looks at resilience, the humanitarian-development nexus, and local ownership in the context of crisis governance in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.

Giulia Sinatti is an ethnographer with an interest for migration governance and its linkages with development, humanitarianism, and human security. An engaged scholar, she also advises intergovernmental and United Nations agencies, civil society, and grassroots organizations in the migration field. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

ORCID

Rosanne Anholt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3596-9861

Giulia Sinatti http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8702-3886

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute for Societal Resilience at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Notes

1 For instance, in the 2007 European Consensus on Development. The 2007 communication Towards a European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid does not include the term “resilience” or “resilient”, whereas the 2008 joint declarations on The European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid mention “resilience” once—in relation to disaster risk reduction. Unlike the European Consensus on Development, the European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid was reaffirmed, rather than revised, in 2018.

2 Interview by first author, non-governmental organization staff member, Jordan, October 2018.