Lebanon and Turkey increasingly pressure the Syrian refugees they host to return to their country of origin. But human rights organizations indicate that returnees risk torture and death in Syria. Current returns therefore often defy international refugee law. This project investigates how such contested return dynamics are influenced by EU-actors’ positioning.
Specifically, by studying what EU-actors do not say or do in the face of contested refugee returns in Lebanon and Turkey, it develops a fundamentally new perspective on transnational refugee governance that foregrounds inaction and ambivalence as exercises of power.