Unsafe Homecoming: Unraveling Environmental Injustice and Land Dispossession in the Syrian Refugee Crisis

Ghazal Aswad, N. (2024) ‘Unsafe Homecoming: Unraveling Environmental Injustice and Land Dispossession in the Syrian Refugee Crisis’, Environmental Communication, 18(1–2), pp. 35–42. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2023.2296831. Abstract: This paper attends to the Syrian refugee crisis to argue that land dispossession is not only a political and humanitarian phenomenon, but one that cuts to the core of how we inhabit, experience, and belong on the land. Amid the forced repatriation of Syrian refugees to their country, activists used the hashtag #SyriaNotSafe to raise awareness about the detentions, disappearances, and torture of returnees. Beyond the immediate political persecution of refugees, this paper argues for crafting networked cultures of care attentive to the toxic environmental legacies of the Syrian conflict. Cultures of care must be sensitive to the affective relationships of interdependence between Syrians and their local ecosystems forged during the lifetime of revolutionary struggle. By shedding light on the toxicity of war, the weaponization of the environment, and the deliberate land dispossession by the Assad regime, the ability of Syrians to constitute acts of resistance in sympoiesis or “making with” the land is impacted. If we are to unite in acts of care for refugees, we must resist the inclination to imagine the necropolitical cultures in which we live as somehow distinct from the imperative for environmental justice and the ability to survive and thrive with the land. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com