Migration diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean – inter-state politics of population mobility in the Middle East

Project summary

This project investigates how migratory flows across national borders have affected, and featured in, the Jordanian state’s diplomatic interactions.

Project details

Location: Jordan

Year(s): 2018-2019

Project director(s): Gerasimos Tsourapas (University of Birmingham)

Lead institutions and funding:

  • CBRL

Project description

This project investigates how migratory flows across national borders have affected, and featured in, the Jordanian state’s diplomatic interactions. It focuses on the politics of Jordan’s management of cross-border population mobility in its international relations on three dimensions: as a sending state (of emigrants to the Arab oil-producing states); as a transit state (regulating migrants’ transit to other Arab and non-Arab states in the region); and as a host state (of labour immigrants and forcibly displaced populations). The pilot study utilises British archival and secondary sources, French diplomatic reports, as well as elite and expert interviews in order to highlight how Jordan’s migration policies developed in reaction to British rule (1921-1946) and the numerous population mobility crises following the 1948 War. It demonstrates the Jordanian state’s complex and layered structured approach in regulating cross-border mobility from independence until today.

Project bibliography

Tsourapas, Gerasimos. 2020. Migration diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean – inter-state politics of population mobility in the Middle East. Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant 2018-2019, p 18.

Published:26 November 2021

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