Aspiring Cosmopolitans: Syrian Youth in Urban Turkey

Abstract

This book explores one of the largest, complex, and intractable humanitarian emergencies today: the Syrian displacement crisis (2012–present). More than five million Syrian refugees live in fragile Middle East states – mostly in urban areas. Large sections of the Syrian refugee population are confined indefinitely, and many survive in the impoverished housing and informal labor markets. Subsisting below national poverty lines, they seem destined for long-term poverty and destitution. While the international aid community has previously faced many similar protracted refugee situations, often concentrated in fragile and low-income states, the Syrian case represents a qualitatively new set of problems outside formal camps. This book is aimed squarely at this policy lacuna, and the need to find new ways to tackle urban displacement in the Middle East region and beyond.