Refuge in the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean: Spaces of containment or places of choice?

After the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the European Union became fixated on keeping refugees from the Middle East out of Europe. By 2015, with the mass influx of Syrians, Iraqis, and others, seeking safety across the Balkans, the European response was an extraordinary effort to push back and contain these displaced people within the Eastern Mediterranean region through physical barriers, bilateral agreements, and the establishment of refugee camps. This paper suggests that Europe’s efforts to keep displaced Syrians and Iraqis out of Europe were misguided. That is, contrary to what much of the European main media reported at the time, relatively few of those displaced Syrians and Iraqis had a strong desire to seek asylum in Europe. Rather, depending upon socio-economic and kinship networks, and historical ties developed over 500 years of Ottoman suzerainty, they preferred to remain in the region following long-established transnational socio-economic networks and kinship ties.