IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/intlab/v161y2022i2p245-266.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Syrian refugee labour and food insecurity in Middle Eastern agriculture during the early COVID‐19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Ann‐Christin ZUNTZ
  • Mackenzie KLEMA
  • Shaher ABDULLATEEF
  • Stella MAZERI
  • Salim Faisal ALNABOLSI
  • Abdulellah ALFADEL
  • Joy ABI‐HABIB
  • Maria AZAR
  • Clara CALIA
  • Joseph BURKE
  • Liz GRANT
  • Lisa BODEN

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data from the 2019 SyrianFoodFutures and the 2020 From the FIELD projects, this article provides insights into the early effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic on refugee labour in agriculture in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. In spring 2020, movement restrictions and supply chain disruptions caused displaced Syrian farmworkers to lose their jobs and face increased food insecurity. The authors situate their findings in the context of host countries' use of legal ambiguity in governing refugees, Middle Eastern agriculture's reliance on migrant labour, and the region's long‐standing food insecurity. They conclude that formalizing refugee labour cannot alone address exploitation.

Suggested Citation

  • Ann‐Christin ZUNTZ & Mackenzie KLEMA & Shaher ABDULLATEEF & Stella MAZERI & Salim Faisal ALNABOLSI & Abdulellah ALFADEL & Joy ABI‐HABIB & Maria AZAR & Clara CALIA & Joseph BURKE & Liz GRANT & Lisa BOD, 2022. "Syrian refugee labour and food insecurity in Middle Eastern agriculture during the early COVID‐19 pandemic," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 161(2), pages 245-266, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:intlab:v:161:y:2022:i:2:p:245-266
    DOI: 10.1111/ilr.12348
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12348
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ilr.12348?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Prem Kumar Rajaram, 2018. "Refugees as Surplus Population: Race, Migration and Capitalist Value Regimes," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(5), pages 627-639, September.
    2. Thomas Hale & Noam Angrist & Rafael Goldszmidt & Beatriz Kira & Anna Petherick & Toby Phillips & Samuel Webster & Emily Cameron-Blake & Laura Hallas & Saptarshi Majumdar & Helen Tatlow, 2021. "A global panel database of pandemic policies (Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker)," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(4), pages 529-538, April.
    3. World Bank, 2020. "The Mobility of Displaced Syrians," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 31205, December.
    4. Malika Abdelali‐Martini & Jennie Dey de Pryck, 2015. "Does the Feminisation of Agricultural Labour Empower Women? Insights from Female Labour Contractors and Workers in Northwest Syria," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(7), pages 898-916, October.
    5. Zeynep Sahin Mencutek & Ayat J. Nashwan, 2021. "Perceptions About the Labor Market Integration of Refugees: Evidences from Syrian Refugees in Jordan," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 615-633, June.
    6. Ali Bhagat, 2020. "Governing Refugee Disposability: Neoliberalism and Survival in Nairobi," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(3), pages 439-452, April.
    7. Evan Easton-Calabria & Naohiko Omata, 2018. "Panacea for the refugee crisis? Rethinking the promotion of ‘self-reliance’ for refugees," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(8), pages 1458-1474, August.
    8. Jill E. Hobbs, 2020. "Food supply chains during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 68(2), pages 171-176, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Doua Ahmed & Pierina Benavente & Esperanza Diaz, 2023. "Food Insecurity among International Migrants during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(7), pages 1-14, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yajia Liang & Taiyang Zhong & Jonathan Crush, 2022. "Boon or Bane? Urban Food Security and Online Food Purchasing during the COVID-19 Epidemic in Nanjing, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-25, June.
    2. Svetlana Fedoseeva & Ellen Van Droogenbroeck, 2023. "Pandemic pricing: Evidence from German grocery e‐commerce," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(4), pages 1139-1156, October.
    3. Szász, Levente & Bálint, Csaba & Csíki, Ottó & Nagy, Bálint Zsolt & Rácz, Béla-Gergely & Csala, Dénes & Harris, Lloyd C., 2022. "The impact of COVID-19 on the evolution of online retail: The pandemic as a window of opportunity," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    4. Fang, Da & Guo, Yan, 2022. "Flow of goods to the shock of COVID-19 and toll-free highway policy: Evidence from logistics data in China," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    5. Judit Temesvary & Andrew Wei, 2021. "Domestic Lending and the Pandemic: How Does Banks' Exposure to Covid-19 Abroad Affect Their Lending in the United States?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-056r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 17 Nov 2021.
    6. Jacqueline Ruth & Steffen Willwacher & Oliver Korn, 2022. "Acceptance of Digital Sports: A Study Showing the Rising Acceptance of Digital Health Activities Due to the SARS-CoV-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-16, January.
    7. Hannah Carver & Tracey Price & Danilo Falzon & Peter McCulloch & Tessa Parkes, 2022. "Stress and Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Exploration of Frontline Homelessness Services Staff Experiences in Scotland," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(6), pages 1-20, March.
    8. Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul, 2021. "Macroeconomic effects of COVID‐19: A mid‐term review," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 439-458, October.
    9. Blake-Rath, Robyn & Grote, Ulrike, 2022. "Resilienz und Digitalisierung in der deutschen Agrarwirtschaft: Lehren aus der COVID-19-Pandemie," 62nd Annual Conference, Stuttgart, Germany, September 7-9, 2022 329610, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA).
    10. Carlos Díaz & Sebastian Fossati & Nicolás Trajtenberg, 2022. "Stay at home if you can: COVID‐19 stay‐at‐home guidelines and local crime," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 1067-1113, December.
    11. Joël Cariolle & Florian Léon, 2022. "How internet helped firms to cope with COVID-19," Working Papers hal-03592617, HAL.
    12. Xiao Chen & Hanwei Huang & Jiandong Ju & Ruoyan Sun & Jialiang Zhang, 2022. "Endogenous cross-region human mobility and pandemics," CEP Discussion Papers dp1860, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    13. Alejandro G. Graziano & Yuan Tian, 2023. "Trade disruptions along the global supply chain," Discussion Papers 2023-06, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    14. Khan, Nawab Ali & Azhar, Mohd & Rahman, Mohd Nayyer & Akhtar, Mohd Junaid, 2022. "Scale development and validation for usage of social networking sites during COVID-19," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    15. Yekaterina Chzhen & Jennifer Symonds & Dympna Devine & Júlia Mikolai & Susan Harkness & Seaneen Sloan & Gabriela Martinez Sainz, 2022. "Learning in a Pandemic: Primary School children’s Emotional Engagement with Remote Schooling during the spring 2020 Covid-19 Lockdown in Ireland," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(4), pages 1517-1538, August.
    16. Mirko Licchetta & Giovanni Mattozzi & Rafal Raciborski & Rupert Willis, 2022. "Economic Adjustment in the Euro Area and the United States during the COVID-19 Crisis," European Economy - Discussion Papers 160, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    17. Kai Barron & Heike Harmgart & Steffen Huck & Sebastian O. Schneider & Matthias Sutter, 2023. "Discrimination, Narratives, and Family History: An Experiment with Jordanian Host and Syrian Refugee Children," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(4), pages 1008-1016, July.
    18. Mukhamedova, Nozilakhon & Wegerich, Kai, 2018. "The feminization of agriculture in post-Soviet Tajikistan," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 57, pages 128-139.
    19. Lucia Freira & Marco Sartorio & Cynthia Boruchowicz & Florencia Lopez Boo & Joaquin Navajas, 2021. "The interplay between partisanship, forecasted COVID-19 deaths, and support for preventive policies," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, December.
    20. Das, Saikat & Bose, Indranil & Sarkar, Uttam Kumar, 2023. "Predicting the outbreak of epidemics using a network-based approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(2), pages 819-831.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:intlab:v:161:y:2022:i:2:p:245-266. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ilounch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.