Chain expulsions: Syrian refugee returns from Europe and Lebanon (CHAINS)

“Chain expulsions: Syrian refugee returns from Europe and Lebanon (CHAINS)” is an anthropological study of the spatial and temporal dimensions of a legal concept - chain-refoulement.

In chain-refoulement, individuals are sequentially forced across multiple countries’ borders without procedural safeguards, exposing them to torture after expulsions and thus violating the non-refoulement principle.

Taking this human rights violation as its starting point, CHAINS examines how mobility control practices on flight routes towards the EU come to be entangled in expulsion corridors.

While global in nature, chain expulsions are severely under-researched, leaving open questions about actors, consequences and solutions.

The dramatic increase of irregular departures of Syrians since Lebanon's economic collapse in 2019 makes the Cyprus-Lebanon-Syria corridor a timely case with relevance for entanglements of mobility control at North/South and South/South borders globally.

Research into expulsion corridors breaks new theoretical grounds on mobility control as multiple state and non-state actors interact on emerging scales, imploding territorial assumptions in human rights law.

Through mapping and observational interviews and online case studies, the project generates insights into actors and trajectories in expulsion corridors. These empirical insights render visible spatial transformations of state power that result in chain expulsions.

Here, CHAINS innovates methods for research impact through the world’s first futures literacy lab with human right practitioners, a participatory research intervention that elicits new pathways for the future.