IEE Newsletter No. 25

Research Activities: Research Cluster 2 Organised a Panel at the Development Studies Association Conference in Oxford

Jasmin Fritzsche reports on the event.


The Development Studies Association Conference 2016, held between 13 and 14 September, was hosted by the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID) at the University of Oxford. With this year’s theme ‘Politics and Development,’ over 70 panels approached and reflected on a range of different empirical and theoretical perspectives on the interplay of politics and development.

The panel, which was organized by Research Cluster 2, was entitled 'The regional politics of forced displacement in the Middle East. Cluster members Jasmin Fritzsche, Loubna Abi Khalil, and Raffael Beier chaired the panel and addressed the questions and problems that shape the local responses to the Syrian refugee crisis in light of the regional political environment. Bringing together scholars from the region, the panel reflected on issues of forced migration in Lebanon, Turkey, and Israel.

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Impressions from the Panel Session (photo: Loubna Abi Khalil)

In his presentation, cluster member and PhD student Assem Abi Ali discussed the challenge faced by Lebanon as a result of the influx of Syrian refugees with a special focus on the country’s political system of consociationalism. His paper was followed by Margarite Zoeteweij and Ozan Turhan’s (both University of Fribourg) paper ‘New crisis, old reflexes: Turkey's role in the EU's refugee crisis management’. In her presentation Dr. Zoeteweij critically engaged with the EU and Turkey’s policy responses to the arrival of refugees from Syria. The third presentation was given by the PhD candidate Shai Tagner (The Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev and the Department of Political Science at Roma Tre). In his paper he analysed the various competing asylum and migration agendas in Israel. He argued that the constant tension between national and liberal understandings of the Jewish nation-state and the potential opposition between these essential characteristics have determined the political, legal, and social space in which the country's asylum regime has evolved.

FritzscheJasmin Fritzsche
Research Fellow
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Phone: +49 (0)234 / 32-22292
Fax: +49 (0)234 / 32-14294

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