Doctoral Dissertation Research: Maintaining Sovereignty in Refugee Receiving States

这个项目将讨论难民接收国如何在国家边界漏洞百出和依赖联合国等国际机构的挑战下维护自己的主权。这项研究调查了哈希姆王国约旦王国的难民收容情况。约旦王国是一个中东小国，总人口为900万，有270万难民。向难民提供住所、教育、医疗保健和保护的挑战变得困难，因为约旦公民面临着高失业率和紧张的社会机构，包括过度拥挤的医院和表现不佳的学校。难民和公民都受到越来越多的国家安全担忧和约旦-叙利亚边界恐怖主义威胁的影响。虽然对西方主权的研究是政治社会学和国际移民社会学的基础，但这些文献忽略了收容世界上大多数难民的发展中国家的主权。然而，约旦的主权对于难民保护、地区稳定和全球难民流动是不可或缺的。该项目将增进对为世界其他地区承担难民负担的发展中国家的了解，探讨这些国家如何培养和保持其收容大量难民的能力，同时保留对国家内外事务的最终权力。通过对主权与难民关系的学术关注，可以评估流离失所对难民和公民的影响。该项目将对干预措施提供有经验的见解，这些干预措施考虑到难民和公民的权利、约旦国家和西方捐助国的利益，以及提供援助的联合国等机构面临的挑战。作为该地区的重要盟友和美国对外援助的最大接受者，约旦？S的主权--以及国家收容难民的能力--对美国的利益至关重要。主权是如何通过日常生活中的互动在实地实施的？通过民族志和深入的半结构化访谈(以阿拉伯语和英语进行)，这项研究纳入了175名参与者的回答，其中包括叙利亚难民、约旦公民、联合国和政府官员。这使得研究人员能够对主权不仅是一个自上而下的、国家强加的项目，而且还是一个由公民和难民的代理行为塑造的项目进行理论推导。例如，从根本上构建主权的社会结构包括边防警卫在决定谁可以进入和离开难民营时行使自由裁量权的方式。对约旦主权的分析是在主权国家体系内进行的。约旦行使主权的做法必然存在差异，这种差异是区分全球北方和全球南方的国际难民制度的基础。

This project will address how refugee-receiving states maintain their sovereignty despite the challenges of porous national borders and dependence on international institutions like the United Nations. The study investigates refugee hosting in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which is a small Middle Eastern country with 2.7 million refugees in a total population of 9 million people. The challenges of providing shelter, education, health care, and protection to refugees are made difficult because Jordanian citizens face high unemployment and strained social institutions including overcrowded hospitals and underperforming schools. Refugees and citizens alike are affected by growing national security concerns and the threat of terrorism along the Jordanian-Syrian border. While the study of Western sovereignty is foundational to political sociology and the sociology of international immigration, the literature neglects the sovereignty of developing states that host most of the world's refugees. However, Jordanian sovereignty is indispensable to refugee protection, regional stability, and the global flow of refugees. This project will enhance understanding of developing countries that bear the refugee burden for the rest of the world, exploring how such countries cultivate and maintain their capacity to host large refugee populations while preserving final authority over internal and external affairs of the state. A scholarly focus on the sovereignty-refugee nexus allows for an assessment of the effects that displacement has on refugees and citizens. The project will yield empirically informed insights into interventions that take into consideration the rights of refugees and citizens, the interest of the Jordanian state and Western donor states, and the challenges of aid providing institutions like the United Nations. As an important ally in the region and top recipient of US foreign aid, Jordan?s sovereignty - and the state's capacity to host refugees - is critical to American interests.How is sovereignty enacted on the ground through interactions among everyday people? Through ethnography and in-depth semi-structured interviews (conducted in Arabic and English), this research incorporates responses from 175 participants, including Syrian refugees, Jordanian citizens, and UN and government officials. This allows the researcher to theorize about how sovereignty is not only a top-down, state-imposed project, but one that is also shaped by the agentic behaviors of citizens and refugees. For example, the social construction of sovereignty from the ground-up includes the ways that border guards practice discretion when deciding who can enter and exit a refugee camp. The analysis of Jordanian sovereignty is situated within a system of sovereign states. The practice of Jordanian sovereignty is necessarily couched within disparities that are foundational to the international refugee regime that distinguishes the Global North from the Global South.