Nergis Canefe

This book examines the Syrian crisis and exodus by focusing on the experiences of the dispossessed rather than the recipient states. Reintegration and resettlement after situations of mass displacement are generally long-term, multi-faceted and complex processes. Whether we are talking about acceptance in a new society as refugees, migrants, and guest workers, or returning home to postconflict situations, each scenario involves both specific physical challenges and difficult encounters with broader political communities. The debate presented here on precarity and statelessness in terms of systemic denial of access to rights, or, their selective attribution to Syrians on the move, allows us to reconsider the Syrian exodus in a new framework that links forced migration, labour studies, citizenship and rights debates rather than isolating the refugee experience. For quite some time we had been awaiting such a book that will connect in a singular global theme the wars of our time, forced migration, and the emergence of precarious labour force throughout the world in this neoliberal age. Nergis Canefe's Syrian Exodus in the context of the neoliberal crisis of the global state system and the resultant statelessness, dispossession, and mobility is that kind of book. It is profound. It does not waste vacuous words on humanitarianism and pious wishes for universal respect for human rights. It tells us what war means in real life, the destruction of all possible means of realisation of rights, and how the upheaval in West Asia and the North African region is redrawing boundaries, destroying old stable orders that were once the basis of citizenship, and the consequent emergence of statelessness on an unprecedented scale. The book's merit lies in deciphering the crisis in the traditional discourse of refugee studies in the light of the current crisis of the state system and the global governance regime. It shows how after three decades of the end of the Second World War various forms of migration eroded citizenship as the basis of rights. Consequently, as the book explains, the traditional role of the nation-state as the harbinger of rights is also largely over. This book helps us to understand the all round precariousness signified by migration today: precarious state of rights, precarious nature of the legal remedies, precarious lives, and above all precarious forms of labour at the service of neoliberal capitalism. The Syrians have arrived in contemporary history as the great signifier of a viciously transforming age. Professor Ranabir Samaddar, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group Nergis Canefe's timely book is an important contribution to the literature on the forced migration of Syrians as she shifts the focus of their displacement from European fears to the context of the Middle East and the countries that have received most of the refugees, primarily Turkey. Through the lenses of transitional justice and citizenship, Canefe exposes the long historical roots of the exodus and particularly sheds light on the trials and tribulations of undocumented, refugee and migrant Syrians. She argues that it is not necessary to wait for the end of a war to begin to address the causes and consequences of displacement and sets out strategies to move beyond a humanitarian response putting refugees themselves at the centre of the process to build a better future.