Month: January 2023

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SIPRI Report: Towards a Renewed Local Social and Political Covenant in Libya, Syria and Yemen

Towards a Renewed Local Social and Political Covenant in Libya, Syria and Yemen

Author: Ahmed Morsy (SIPRI)

December, 2022

STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Summary

This SIPRI Insights Paper examines the domestic and external factors at play in Libya, Syria and Yemen and their impact on negotiating post-war peaceful settlements and shaping prospective social contracts.The paper’s argument is twofold. Firstly, policymaking must move beyond a static approach to understanding these conflicts. Despite apparent stalemates, the three countries should be approached as ever-evolving simmering conflicts. Secondly, policymakers have to move below the national level in order to achieve various forms of localized social peace. Given the nature of these conflicts and the varied sub-national segmentation, the analysis concludes that community-level social and political covenants may offer a first building block towards nationwide social contracts and sustainable conflict resolution. The role of external actors, particularly the European Union (EU), is critical in paving the way for these locallevel dialogues and negotiations in Libya, Syria and Yemen. In short, external powers, including the EU, should adopt policies that push for long-term resolution to achieve postconflict stabilization rather than opportunistically taking sides.

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New article on Intergroup Encounters in Urban Public Spaces: Everyday Strategies of Host Community Members Following a Refugee Influx

Intergroup Encounters in Urban Public Spaces: Everyday Strategies of Host Community Members Following a Refugee Influx

Author: Ezgi Irgil (UI)

December, 2022

IMRJournal

Abstract

Some host community members (HCMs) develop positive attitudes toward refugees, while others do not. The current literature on perceptions of refugees offers different explanations for these varied responses to intergroup encounters (positive contact, negative contact, and exposure). Nevertheless, few scholars have examined the outcomes of intergroup relations at the microlevel to better understand the various impacts of intergroup encounters between HCMs and refugees. Even fewer scholars have focused on the everyday implications of HCMs’ attitudes toward refugees in response to changing local demographics. In this article, I argue that in addition to the type of intergroup encounters, the locations where these encounters occur at the neighborhood level serve as a critical factor in understanding HCMs’ sociospatial attitudes or their attitudes toward refugees at the microlevel of everyday life. In doing so, I introduce the concept of everyday strategies to describe the sociospatial attitudes that HCMs adopt in different types of urban public spaces following their encounters with refugees in neighborhoods that have experienced a large refugee influx. Empirically, the analysis draws on interviews conducted with 60 HCMs in Bursa, Turkey, in 2018 and, through the concept of everyday strategies, extends the literature on HCMs’ attitudes regarding refugees. Overall, this article contributes to the wider study of international migration by detailing the influence of microlevel intergroup encounters on HCMs’ sociospatial attitudes in a South-South forced migration context.

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