Fact Finding & Field Research 

Spring 2020: BCARS has partnered with Experts Network member and Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo, Amira Ahmed Mohamed, to conduct interviews with refugees and non-citizens of Egypt focusing on barriers to assistance and integration in Cairo. The city is home to refugees from across the Middle East and Africa who experience varying levels of integration, discrimination, and hardship as a result of their non-citizen status. These interviews will serve as the basis for a BCARS report highlighting the challenges and coping strategies of Cairo's refugees, some of whom have called the city "home" for decades. Watch this space for an upcoming publication. 

Summer 2019: BCARS has partnered with the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies (The Fletcher School) to support fieldwork as part of the Tripoli Project. Tripoli is Lebanon's second largest city and is emerging from 40 years of intermittent conflict. The Tripoli Project aims to support and understand the revival of this city as it is led by its own people. The BCARS/Fares Center fieldwork centers on the issue of statelessness in Lebanon, and explores how women's inability to confer their nationality to spouses and children creates cascading challenges in their daily lives. Read the full report at the link below. 

Summer 2018: BCARS partnered with the Feinstein International Center's "Refugees in Towns" Project to conduct fieldwork examining conceptions of citizenship and notions of belonging amongst refugee populations (Palestinian, Iraqi, Syrian, Sudanese) as well as local Jordanians in Amman and Irbid. The research resulted in two case reports. "Citizens of Somewhere" (Amman) and "New Faces, Less Water, and a Changing Economy in a Growing City" (Irbid). To read the Amman case report, click the link below. You can find all the case reports, including the one centered on Irbid, on the Refugees in Towns website. 

Fall 2017: The BCARS team traveled to Cairo to attend a conference focused on responsibility sharing for refugees in the Euro-Mediterranean space at the American University in Cairo. This conference examined the issue of responsibility sharing from the perspectives of academics, practitioners, and policy makers. Accompanying the conference, the BCARS team conducted fieldwork to hear refugee perspectives on these issues, as well as on the challenges that most impact the day-to-day lives of refugees in Cairo. This fieldwork will inform the BCARS podcast programming, BCARS bulletins, and will serve as a starting point for conducting cooperative research with refugees in Cairo and beyond. 

Winter 2016 : Researchers from BCARS institutions - including Harvard, BU, BC, Northeastern, University of Jordan, and Tufts -- are actively engaging in in-depth research on Syrian refugees and forced migration through the Balkans route and into the EU. Research questions include risk imposed by smugglers and security forces, uses of informal exchange, and resettlement and integration dyanmics.

Summer 2016:  In partnership with Koç University's Migration Research Center, BCARS scholars will meet with policy, government, INGO, and academic experts on the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey in order to develop an understanding of best practices and ongoing challenges with the aim of producing policy recommendations for relevant actors.

Summer 2016: BCARS researchers built on three years of on-the-ground fieldwork in Jordan by meeting with Syrian refugees, representatives from UNHCR Amman, Jordanian officials, and INGO workers including Caritas Internationalis. This work is aimed at creating policy recommendations for relevant actors in the region, and informing European, UN, and U.S. policymakers of best practices from Jordan. 

Summer 2015: As the Syrian refugee crisis expanded from camp to urban settings in Jordan, researchers from BCARS visited Amman, Mafraq, and Irbid to explore governance challenges including the  housing deficit, security and policing measures, water scarcity programs in the rural Badia, and community resilience among Syrian migrants and Jordanian hosts. Products from this research include public media statements, action items for U.S. aid donors, policy observations for Jordanian security actors, and academic research publications.

Summer 2015: As the Syrian refugee crisis expanded from camp to urban settings in Jordan, researchers from BCARS visited Amman, Mafraq, and Irbid to explore governance challenges including the  housing deficit, security and policing measures, water scarcity programs in the rural Badia, and community resilience among Syrian migrants and Jordanian hosts. Products from this research include public media statements, action items for U.S. aid donors, policy observations for Jordanian security actors, and academic research publications.