Agrarian Migrations and Moral Economies in Times of War
Syrian Pastoral Refugees in Jordan
p. 175-202
Texte intégral
Introduction
1When the insurrection-turned-war broke out in Syria, the country was known to be the “third largest refugee-hosting country globally” (USCRI 2009). As this chapter is being written, the Syrian conflict is entering its thirteenth year, and the country has become one of the largest “refugee-producing nation” in the world (Chatty 2017). Out of the twelve million Syrians who have been forcibly displaced by the conflict, some 5.2 have settled in neighbouring countries, with which socio-economic linkages are dense (UNCHR 2024).
2This chapter documents the livelihoods of Syrians exiled in Jordan, with a focus on pastoralism, which has been shown to offer critical assets in the face of shocks and uncertainties (Scoones 2023). The agricultural sector is, and remains, an important connector between Jordan and Syria. Syria’s rural poor have been relying on cross border seasonal farm work since the country’s land reforms of the 1960s, whilst Jordan’s agriculture is dependent on foreign labour (Kattaa et al. 2018). In 2015, 85% of shepherds and 93% of the country’s agricultural workforce were non-Jordanians (Figueroa et al. 2018). Yet, except for a few brief humanitarian reports (Kattaa et al. 2018, Mercy Corps 2017, Thiombiano 2017), little research has been carried out on the socio-economic realities of Syrian refugee farm workers in Jordan. Livestock farming has received even less attention, even though it contributes more than half of the output of the agricultural sector and provides a critical source of income and food security for an important number of refugees and Jordanians alike (MoA 2013). This chapter seeks to address this gap by exploring the livelihoods of Syrian refugees who are engaging, partially or fully, in animal husbandry in Jordan. This includes salaried shepherds rearing livestock for Jordanian owners, farm workers raising a few animals for their own consumption and small-scale livestock owners.
3For most immigrants and refugees working in Jordan, the farming sector is associated with low-paid, seasonal job opportunities and hard working conditions. The exploratory stages of this research revealed a more complex landscape, however, with some examples of Syrian pastoralists recovering a sense of socio-economic security through their engagement in livestock farming. Relying on empirical data generated through a mixed methods approach and drawing on (i) a political economy approach to migration histories and agrarian change in the region, (ii) anthropological and historical literature on Bedouin societies and (iii) pastoral studies, this chapter sets out to explain the condition behind this “pastoral resilience in exile”.
Methodology
4This research was conducted in affiliation with the PASTRES programme (Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience), a global research project (2018–2024) that aimed to learn from pastoralists about responding to uncertainty and resilience, with lessons for global challenges.1 Carried out between April 2019 and June 2020, in rural and peri-urban areas of Amman, Mafraq and Zarqāʾ governorates, the field research produced two datasets. The first dataset was the product of a quantitative survey, carried out in collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an INGO providing humanitarian assistance to refugees in host communities in Jordan.2 The survey was completed by 136 Syrians living in five different ITS (Informal Tented Settlements) across the governorates of Mafraq and Zarqāʾ.3 The second dataset is qualitative and was informed by repeated semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with (i) twelve Syrian families, living in the governorates of Amman and Mafraq and engaged in livestock farming, (ii) some of the Jordanian livestock and farm owners for whom these refugees were working and (iii) key stakeholders from the agricultural sector (heads of agricultural cooperative and government officials at State and governorate levels). This qualitative research was carried out in two different field sites. The first one was in al-Tuneib, some 25km south of Amman, close to several mega farms and to one of the main motorways connecting the capital to the south of the country. The families we met there came from the Syrian governorate of Ḥamā and belonged to the Muālī tribe (fakhad Al-Bashakel).4 The second field site was in the rural area of Ṣubḥā, close to Mafraq, and involved Syrian families originating from Aleppo and belonging to the Bani Khais tribe.5
Conceptual framework
5In line with the tradition of critical political economy in migration studies (Veltmeyer and Delgado Wise 2016), this research points to the processes of agrarian change, social transformation and capital accumulation that inform migration patterns. Against representations of refugees as ahistorical figures reduced to their experience of forced exile, the fortunes of the research participants were considered in the context of the socio-economic policies and market-led transformations that have been shaping the agricultural sector and land tenure dynamics in the region (Cassani 2021, Perosino 2023). Ethnographies of Syrian farm workers in Lebanon have demonstrated that the predicaments faced by Syria’s rural poor in their current exiles are less of a rupture than an “ongoing afterlife” of agrarian developmentalism in Syria since the land reforms of the 1960s (Sajadian 2023: 9). This chapter documents the way conflict and longer-term political economies of agrarian change articulate in informing the current livelihood pathways of Syrian refugee pastoralists in Jordan.
6This chapter also draws on the historical and anthropological literature on Bedouin societies (Bocco and Tell 1995, Chatty 1986, Prager 2014), as well as on scholarship in pastoral studies (Scoones 2023). Debunking common misconceptions regarding pastoralists’ presumed inability or unwillingness to change, these two fields of literature are full of examples of the entrepreneurship and adaptiveness of the Bedouin (Chatty 1986, 1996, Lancaster and Lancaster 1990, Rowe 2006) and of pastoral societies more generally (Galvin 2009, Reid et al. 2014, Scoones 1995). This chapter discusses the strategies that Syrian pastoral refugees deploy to mitigate the legal, ecological and socio-economic insecurities that they experience in Jordan. In exploring the way they navigate forced exile, market volatility and resource exclusion, the research identified four essential strategies: (i) the mobilisation of the social capital acquired through previous agrarian migrations, (ii) the diversification of sources of income and resource access, (iii) the negotiation of relationships of trust and protection with wealthy Jordanians, and (iv) the activation of kin group support mechanisms.
7Recent scholarship in pastoral studies has also focused on the continuing importance of the “moral economy” in understanding the way pastoralists respond to uncertainties and their resilience to shocks and crisis (Mohamed 2022). Initially defined by Thompson (1971) and Scott (1976), this concept refers to the moral terms through which economic realities are routinely apprehended. It has also been used to explore the expectations that tie people to their rulers in times of economic turmoil. In the life stories collected during this research, Syrian refugee pastoralists were emphasising social relationships as key determinants of both their migration trajectories and of their (varying degree of) resilience in exile. By mobilising social norms of “subsistence right” (Scott 1976) while understanding their market value as skilled workers in a context of labour shortages, some Syrian pastoralists are proving able to build relationships of trust, respect and protection with powerful Jordanian figures, thereby mitigating their socio-economic vulnerability as refugees. As far as relationships between Syrian pastoral refugees are concerned, Bedouin norms of reciprocity and community support also play a key role, although their performative function is limited by the socio-economic precarity of forced exile.
8This chapter begins with a discussion of the ruptures and continuities that have characterised the migration patterns of Syrian farm workers and pastoralists in Jordan, from seasonal migrations to ensure the subsistence of household units (and livestock rearing historically) to indefinite exile in the context of the current insurrection-turned-war in Syria. The discussion highlights the shifts in the political economies of land and agriculture in which these pre-war agrarian displacements are embedded and the legacies that this prior rural outmigration is having on the settlement of Syrian refugees in Jordan today. This first section also delves into Syrian pastoralists’ stories of how they escaped Syria and settled in Jordan, pointing at how these trajectories build on the social capital inherited from previous agrarian migrations. Drawing on a dialogue between the survey and the interview data, the discussion then sets to describe the two main ways pastoralism has been adopted as a source of livelihood in exile, from small-scale livestock farming and share-herding with Jordanian “partners” for a minority to shepherding and/or household consumption practices for the majority. The third section looks at the strategies they deploy in the face of market volatility, curtailed mobility and resource exclusion. To navigate this landscape of hardships and uncertainties, Syrian pastoralists focus on diversifying—their sources of income and resource access—and on building social ties with wealthy, powerful figures within the Jordanian society (landowners, tribal figures, livestock owners etc.). Finally, the chapter documents the moral norms that underpin the socio-economic exchanges that sustain pastoral livelihoods in exile. It argues that whilst rooted in Bedouin cultural norms and in principles of (pre-capitalist) “subsistence right,” the moral economies of Syrian refugee pastoralists are adaptive and have internalised the rules of liberal, market-based economies. The discussion concludes by pointing to the intersection of dynamic pastoral systems and moral economies with regional political economies in supporting, and challenging, Syrian refugee efforts at building “pastoral resilience in exile”.
From seasonal migration to indefinite exile
9Research into the relationships between Syria and its neighbours points to the continuities between contemporary forced exile and previous economic migrations (Chatty 2017, Lagarde and Doraï 2017, Sajadian 2023). The enduring impact that labour migrations of the past are having on the settlement patterns of Syrian refugees nowadays is being regularly highlighted by academics and humanitarian organisations alike (Alhajahmad et al. 2018, Thiombiano 2017, etc.). The legacies of previous transnational mobilities are particularly visible within the agricultural (and construction) sectors. Long-distance displacements across the region formally known as “northern Arabia” have also shaped the history of Bedouin tribal groups who, before the establishment of contemporary state boundaries, had been moving with their livestock across the regional steppes for millennia. After outlining these histories of spatial mobility, the following pages highlight the extent to which the integration of Syrian pastoral refugees relies on the mobilisation of the social capital acquired through these previous migrations.
Pre-war agrarian migrations
10Pendular migrations of livestock herders have been a historical feature of spatial mobility within the steppes of the former northern Arabia (Meister et al. 2017). In the 1950s, “55% [of Jordanian livestock owners] were [regularly] entering into Syria and 30% into Saudi Arabia due to droughts in Jordan” (MoA 2013). Since then, those transnational movements have become the rare privilege of a few tribes with political connections, such as the Ahl al-Jabal, the Rwala and the Sardiyya who specialise in international trade of ʿawāssī sheep (Lancaster and Lancaster 1997).6
11Agrarian migrations within the region have also been affected by the land and agrarian policy reforms of the twentieth century, which resulted in dynamics of farmland fragmentation and the confiscation of tribal common lands. In Syria, new classes of landless and land-poor rural workers emerged as the successive land reforms of the late 1950s and early 1960s, compounded by the severe droughts of the 1960s, contributed to a significant decrease in the size of landholdings (Ababsa 2013, Leybourne et al. 1993). With local agriculture becoming less and less able to sustain rural households locally on those smaller parcels, an increasing number of young Syrians started to look for job opportunities abroad (Abdelali-Martini et al. 2003). Before the current war in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan were already privileged destinations for Syria’s rural poor in search of seasonal work opportunities (Cassani 2021, Chatty 2017, Sajadian 2022).
12Anthropologist Dawn Chatty noted that Bedouin men from agrarian backgrounds traditionally started to look for seasonal work in farms when they reached the khayāl age (19–20 years old) (1997: 109). For those with experience in livestock rearing, shepherding for wealthy livestock-owning families was a common means of saving for marriage expenditures and of constituting the start-up capital necessary to buy land and/or start their own livestock business. At the end of the twentieth century, Syria still offered opportunities and good salaries in the livestock sector (Chatty 1997). When the Jordanian dinar became pegged to the US dollar in the 1990s, migration to Jordan became a favoured option, with the currency strength differential allowing for quick financial returns. Working abroad also exempted one from the sense of shame that would come with shepherding for relatives from one’s own tribe.7
13In retracing their spatial choices of settlement in Jordan, all ten Syrian households that we met in al-Tuneib (south of Amman) pointed to a prior migration among their kin group. Although these families did not all know each other before the war, they all came from Ḥamā and belonged to the Al-Bashakel fakhad of the Muālī tribe, pointing to patterns of geographical settlements along lines of kinship groups. Abū ʿAbdel, a male head of household in his thirties, explained:
I came here because my brother was already here and he was here because my cousin had come here seven years before the war. He was working in farms. He used to move back and forth between Syria and Jordan a lot.8
14Some like Abū Mahmoud, a father-of-seven in his late fifties, were already living in Jordan when the war started. This early settlement helped him save capital, build networks, have access to credit, in a way which may not be available to Syrians any more. The story of his settlement in Jordan was very different from the ones shared by those who had arrived with the massive influx of refugees:
I came because of the difference in currency, especially because Jordan was not too expensive back then. And so I was working here and sending money to Syria. With it, I bought a piece of land for 500,000 lira (around 1,000 dollars). […] Those solar panels I use for electricity, I got them on credit, for 800 JD (around US $1,100). They gave me a good price for it because I am friends with a Jordanian who works for their company. They trusted me because I’d been here since 2005.
15Circumstances were more challenging for those who were forced to leave Syria as refugees. “We had never left Syria and would never have, if we hadn’t been forced to,”9 explained Abū ʿAbdel, who used to be a relatively wealthy livestock owner back home. When the conflict spread to Ḥamā, he and his wife decided it was too risky for a family with young children to follow his brothers to other parts of Syria. In Jordan instead, they knew that they would be able to count on the help of their relatives already settled there. The social capital and contextual knowledge these provided were key assets in their efforts to mitigate their legal and socio-economic vulnerabilities as refugees.
Fleeing to Jordan as refugees
16Most of the Syrian pastoralists that we met in al-Tuneib arrived in Jordan between 2011 and 2015. Whether they had used up their savings to survive the first years of war in Syria, had had to sell their capital at very disadvantageous prices in the haste of exile or had no savings to begin with, most of them crossed the border with nothing, or very little.
17Abū and Um Ahsan arrived in 2014 from Eastern Ḥamā, after trying to delay exile for as long as possible. Once they decided to leave, they endured months of flight in dire conditions, trying to find livestock markets to scrape a living whilst making their way to Jordan.
We moved very long distances with our sheep. All that time, we had to carry our daughter [who suffers from physical disabilities] on our back. Sometimes, we would set up camp. At other times, we would just sleep in the desert. For a long time, we kept our sheep with us, taking care of them like our children. But then we had to sell them as we couldn’t even buy bread any more and so we were forced to sell them at very cheap prices. We fed them until they were big enough and then sold them to merchants in different places. It took time. We would move to a safe place, then try to find out where the markets were. We’d have to walk 100km sometimes to get there, then it could take us over 2 months to sell some animals. We moved like that from one market to the next, until we had sold all of them.10
18Other families described much hastier crossings, which left them with hardly any savings upon their arrival, even when they initially came from wealthier backgrounds:
It took us 4–5 days to get to Jordan [from Ḥamā]. […] With my father and my brothers, we had thousands of animals in Syria. At the best of times, I owned up to 200 sheep myself. But with the war, we had fewer and fewer and when we left, I only had 50 to 60 left. My family stayed behind longer so they sold them for me and then they sent me the money. But it was little money.11
19All twelve families interviewed shared similar stories: they crossed the border without livestock12 and with hardly any savings, “with only the clothes on our back”. As will be described below, to build new livestock business in Jordan, they would have to save money, connect with Jordanian farm and livestock owners, restock and adapt to challenges related to landlessness and refugee insecurities.
Legal insecurities and mobility restrictions
20Depending on their date of arrival in Jordan, Syrian refugees were either sent to Zaʿtarī or to Azraq refugee camps after being registered with the authorities and UNHCR in Rabaʿa al-Sarhan. Most of the pastoralists we interviewed tried to keep those stays as short as possible. According to the Jordanian bail-out system, only those who had a Jordanian sponsor were allowed to leave the camps. Initially, the sponsorship could be granted easily, with the Jordanian government showing leniency and rarely controlling the authenticity of the sponsoring request. This allowed many Syrians (80%) to settle in host communities. In late 2014 however, the decision was made to apply the conditions of the bail-out system much more strictly (Ababsa 2015). One of the only options left to refugees who wanted to leave the camps was to be smuggled out. These escapes had significant financial and legal implications. Those who had left the camps illegally were prevented from obtaining the MOI (Ministry of Interior) card and unable to claim the services offered to those refugees who were officially registered with the UNHCR. This left some of our interviewees in difficult situations, in fear of arrest and with restricted movements and livelihood opportunities, until an amnesty passed in 2017 legalised them again.
Syrian pastoral livelihoods in exile
Small-scale livestock production and share-herding
21The Syrians we met in al-Tuneib, some 25km south of Amman, lived in Informal Tented Settlements (ITSs). A few of them had moved straight from the refugee camps to al-Tuneib, attracted by the job opportunities offered by the commercial farms nearby. Most, however, had previously lived and worked in other areas of northern and central Jordan (Ṣubḥā, Mafraq, Mādabā, Maʿān), depending on employment opportunities. All of them had agrarian backgrounds, and generally had experience in both crop and livestock farming. Back in Syria, most used to be small- to medium-size livestock owners, with livestock capital ranging from 40 to 400 small ruminants, which they had partly inherited from their parents. Two were landless and worked across sectors for income generation, including wage work as shepherds.
22In Jordan, these Syrian refugee households relied on multi-source income generation. Livestock represented a major part of their livelihoods however, and generally allowed them to cushion the unreliability and seasonality of farm work. Asked about her experience in Jordan, Umm Mohammad stressed that livestock acquisition had eased off some of their challenges. “It was very hard at the beginning. In Syria, we lived in a house and here we’re in a tent. Working in greenhouses is so hot. But we are learning slowly. And since we’ve had livestock, things have improved.”13
23In Al-Tuneib, livestock production was rarely restricted to household consumption purposes. Eight of the ten households we engaged with were deriving income from it: either they earned a salary working as shepherds for wealthy Jordanian livestock owners, or they were commercialising animal-based products. Most of the time, they were engaging in both activities simultaneously.
24Their own flocks were small, with numbers ranging from 6 to 60 animals for an average of 25 sheep (or sheep and goats) per household. Anything above 20 seemed to support the opportunity of income generation and potentially capital accumulation. All of those with over 20 animals were engaging in production and commercialisation, selling milk (for most), lambs (for some), and cheese through direct sales (for a minority). The size of their flocks fluctuated over time, depending on climatic and socio-economic conditions, on their rearing and management skills, and on their personal circumstances. Their life stories highlighted numerous occasions when livestock had provided important safety nets in the contexts of accidents, illnesses or births within the household. It took those who owned livestock several years to save enough money to buy their first animals, with some choosing to buy one sheep at a time, and others some 10 or 20 as start-up capital. Growth rates were slow, but generally positive for 80% of them.
25As mentioned above, these Syrians settled south of Amman were either working as independent livestock producers and/or as hired shepherds. The latter were generally also rearing their own sheep, through practices of share-herding with their Jordanian employer. Different terms of contract were negotiated for these arrangements. The hired Syrian families would be responsible for the herding, feeding, milking and health care of the animals. In exchange, they would either receive a salary, a share of the profit, or a mix of both. Salaries ranged from 350 to 400JD per month (US $490 to US $565), so more than one-and-a-half times the minimum wage of 220JD (US $310). In parallel, all were receiving critical in-kind benefits (electricity, water, feed and access to land), allowing them important savings on personal and livestock herding expenses. These share-herding arrangements are discussed in more detail below.
Domestic consumption and shepherding
26The Syrians surveyed in Mafraq and Zarqāʾ governorates had profiles that were quite distinct from those of the pastoralists we met in al-Tuneib. Opportunities to start accumulating capital through their livestock activities were limited, as for most of them these consisted in either wage-work (shepherding) or domestic consumption. Only 12% said that they “owned animals that generated income”. Livestock possessions were smaller than in al-Tuneib as 90% of our sample owned fewer than 10 small ruminants and only 2% of the survey participants had more than 25 animals.
27These Syrian pastoralists showed financial vulnerability. In contrast to the 80% of those we met in al-Tuneib, only 3% had managed to save money in the past year and 85% explained that they had had to borrow money to cover their living expenses during that time. Unlike the Syrian livestock farmers interviewed in al-Tuneib, they were highly dependent on aid assistance, with 85% saying that it (World Food Programme vouchers or other types of humanitarian support) constituted their main source of income.
Navigating market volatility and resource exclusion
28Whereas pastoralism is generally associated with extensive livestock grazing and practices of transhumance, most small-scale herders in Jordan, including Syrian refugees, now live close to settled areas all year round and herd on spaces of limited geographical scale. Pastoral mobility can nonetheless take many forms, including relational mobility (Maru 2020). We will now describe how Syrian pastoralists’ livelihood strategies are heavily reliant on adaptability, diversification and relational mobility, precisely because the geographical scope of their grazing movements is limited, which makes them dependent on markets. In deploying these strategies, they are reasserting one of the defining features of pastoral systems across time and space: the capacity to embrace variability and cope with uncertainty (Krätli and Schareika 2010, Scoones 2022).
Resource exclusion and price volatility
29With the significant reconfigurations brought about by policy and socio-economic changes on matters of land tenure and agricultural production, pastoral systems of the former Bilād al-Shām have undergone drastic changes in the last century.
30Under the land policies initiated during the British mandate and pursued by the post-independence regime, rangeland underwent a process of accelerated fragmentation, water became increasingly privatised and tribal land regimes eroded (Fischbach 2000, Lewis 1987). These changes in patterns of resource access and control contributed to disturbing rangeland ecosystems and to degrading the quality and quantity of naturally available pastures. These shifts in political economy also led to the curtailing of pastoral mobility, which had already been undermined by newly established borders (Blench 1995, Chatty 1986). As a result, whilst seasonal livestock displacements to the Jordanian bādiya (the arid and semi-arid areas of the country) are still being carried out, they are mainly the preserve of wealthy owners who can afford to transport flocks, water (and at times fodder) by truck, as natural pastures are in short supply. Research established that, in the early 21st century, only 10% of livestock owners were still practising a nomadic mode of livestock production in the middle bādiya of Jordan (Abu Zanat et al. 2005). Small herders, by contrast, tend to stay at the edge of cultivated areas, in villages or close to settlements, where they can benefit from the proximity of farms to diversify their feed sources (Leybourne et al. 1993).
31The difficulties in accessing good-quality natural pastures and in moving around traditional dīra (tribal territories) have translated into an increased dependence on manufactured feed. At the beginning of the 21st century, livestock production specialists established that Jordanian rangelands were hardly providing 15% of the total animal feed (Abu Zanat et al. 2005).14 Our research findings reflected these trends. Out of the 136 Syrian survey participants in Mafraq and Zarqāʾ, only 6% practised some form of seasonal transhumance and 94% quoted processed fodder as their main source of animal feed. This dependency on manufactured feed is highly problematic as it exposes them to the volatility of markets in a context where the agricultural sector is highly integrated in, and dependent on, global circuits (Perosino 2023). Costs of processed feed are high, especially at the black-market rates that are available to refugees who do not have access to State-subsidised products. The primacy of these challenges was confirmed by our survey participants, with 44% of them selecting “feeding animals” as their main difficulty in rearing livestock. Struggles to cover the price of feed at the beginning of winter force many into debt. As is explained in more detail below, these debts then limit their future margins, as middlemen use these credit schemes to impose price control.
Flexibility and diversification
32Small-scale livestock farming has historically been proven to be a remarkably reliable and relevant source of livelihoods in the face of the variability and scarcity that characterise rangeland ecosystems (Krätli and Schareika 2010, Scoones 1995). In the past decades, pastoralists’ traditional landscapes of uncertainties have been further complicated by pro-market land reforms and by the neoliberalisation of the global economy. To the hardships deriving from climate change, demographic pressure and pandemics, these have added the issues of land fragmentation, market volatility and rangeland degradation discussed above. Recent research into pastoral systems’ responses to global shocks and uncertainties have demonstrated that small-scale livestock production continues to offer special tools to respond to these challenges of a new nature (Scoones et al. 2023, Simula 2022, Tadesse 2022). By showing how pastoralism support Syrian refugees in their navigation of forced exile and socio-economic struggles, the research discussed here confirmed the relevance of such flexible systems in 21st-century economies. In describing the various commercialisation strategies at his disposal, Abū Hasan clearly laid out the efficiency of this source of livelihood in weathering market fluctuations:
Pastoralism is good because it’s a guaranteed activity […] By that I mean that in this work, you have many options. Depending on how the prices on the market are, you can decide to sell the meat, the milk, or the cheese. Or instead, you can just keep your animal and feed it for another 10JD [around US $15] and then sell it when the price is higher. You can grow the lambs and sell them. Or sell during Aïd for 200JD (around US $280). Or feed them more and wait. You can decide.15
33Confirming this enthusiastic outlook, Abū Saleh pointed to the religious origins and blessings of such a flexible line of business:
This job is blessed. May Allah protect us. Prophet Mohammed did it as a job so we believe it’s a job blessed by God. And it’s a great job: you can use the wool, the milk, the meat. Everything is a source of income and helps us live.16
34Stressing the potential of pastoral systems to produce reliability in the face of global and local shocks, these themes of flexibility, diversification and adaptation were a common thread of our discussions. The best expression of pastoralists’ resourcefulness and creativity in the face of socio-economic and ecological challenges was found in the multiplicity of land and feeding practices that were deployed by Syrian pastoralists in Jordan. One critical strategy to limit their dependence on manufactured feeds consisted in negotiating access to farmland and to farm products. Most of the households we interviewed were practising shrub grazing, which consists in sending flocks to graze on the shrubs left after the harvest (in late spring/early summer). This represented an essential contribution to their feed calendar. Another widespread strategy consisted in feeding their flocks vegetable residues (unused left-over from neighbouring farms). Generally offered for free or at a very low price, these represent an essential savings for livestock rearing.
35Besides vegetable residue feeding, Syrian pastoralists sought to identify tracts of land that had been privatised, but remained unused to this day, since their purchases had been carried out for speculative reasons: “A lot of Syrian herders try to find land that is owned by banks. If the bank comes and asks for the land because they want to sell it for example, it’s okay. We just leave.”17
36Others were renting small patches of land (from 3 to 15 dunums) to graze all year. In some rare cases, like that of Abū Hassan who had set up in Ṣubḥā a few years before the war, they would plant fodder crops (barley) on these. These arrangements were less frequent however, due to the high prices of land rental. A last, particularly fruitful, means to access land and feed consisted in developing share-herding partnerships with Jordanian livestock owners. These deals will be explored in the last section of the chapter.
Multi-sectorial income generation
37Bedouin livelihoods have historically been underpinned by multi-resource economies, based on strong interactions between rural and urban-based sectors (Lancaster 1997, Rowe 1999). Efforts at building diversified livelihoods were also found among Syrian pastoralists, although the sector-based permit system in place for refugees in Jordan was generally limiting that variability to the agricultural sector only. When the heads of households whom we interviewed or surveyed were dedicating themselves to the livestock sector, the other family members would engage in other jobs within the agricultural sector, as daily labourers on nearby farms for the majority, as animal-based product traders for some. The Syrian herders we surveyed reported an average of 4 to 5 other family members working in other sectors, pointing to the high number of Syrian children working in farms as daily workers.
38The daily labour opportunities offered by the agricultural sector are generally low-skilled, potentially allowing Syrians from different backgrounds to work in farms. The livestock sector, on the other hand, requires specific knowledge and skills. Because of their background in livestock farming, research participants therefore had strong assets compared to other (Syrian and non-Syrian) refugees. All the Syrian pastoralists interviewed in al-Tuneib stressed a preference for livestock rearing over farm work as the main source of income, pointing to the opportunities for profits and independence allowed by the former.
39The multiplicity of solutions found to mitigate socio-economic insecurity and issues of resource access testify to the creativity and flexibility needed to make a living as a refugee in the livestock sector in Jordan. In a context characterised by multiple shortages (of resource access and income generation opportunities), diversification is key. The connections built with Jordanian farmers (to access shrubs, vegetable residues, rent land etc.) and livestock owners (for share-herding arrangements) also highlight the importance of social ties in decreasing socio-economic vulnerability. The next section delves into the last two strategies identified as critical to building “pastoral resilience in exile”—the negotiation of relationships of trust and protection with powerful Jordanians on the one hand and the activation of kin group support mechanisms on the other—and describes the “moral economies of Syrian pastoral refugees” that underpin these social exchanges.
The moral economy of refugee pastoralism
40In the 1990s, Chatty’s (1997) close study of the livestock sector in Jordan and Syria evidenced a trend of deepening social differentiation amongst its actors. The increasing number of absentee livestock owners was matched with a surge in hired shepherds. These structural changes were accompanied by changes in social relationships, with the “traditional association between herd owners and hired shepherds”—based on personal relationships of trust and on a mix of cash and in-kind remuneration arrangements—being replaced by more transactional exchanges, based on simple wages (Chatty 1997). Interestingly however, most of the contracts that were tying the Syrians we interviewed to their Jordanian employers evoked the former type of patron-client relationships. They involved a mix of cash and in-kind remuneration and engaged notions of trust, social recognition and reciprocity, similar to those observed by Cassani (2021) in Lebanon. In exploring these relationships, this research unveiled the assertion of a “subsistence right” for Syrian pastoralists.
41In his seminal book The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1977), Scott contends that there are universal principles governing the moral economies of peasantries across time and space. Critically, there is one overarching principle that dominates the lives of all those who regularly face the risk of famine or shortages: the need to ensure a reliable subsistence. Historical experiences of vulnerability to the vagaries of climate and other external factors nurture, over time, a preference for security over potentially higher, but risky returns. For most small-scale farmers, Scott argues, subsistence security is the “primordial goal,” in the light of which they examine their relationships with their neighbours, the elites, the State etc. Through time, specific patterns of norms, values and obligations develop in support of this safety-first principle. Originally an economic issue, the quest for subsistence insurance thereby comes to be “socially experienced as a pattern of moral rights or expectations” (Scott 1976: 16). The subsistence need becomes a subsistence right.
Subsistence right
42In our interviews, experiences of socio-economic insecurity and legal vulnerability were recurrent themes. The Syrian pastoralists who had been smuggled out of the refugee camps illegally lived in the fear of police control and deportation. Those who were registered with the UNHCR and the Jordanian government had papers but nonetheless felt at a much higher risk of scams and theft than Jordanians. A few of them brought up the fear that their animals would be stolen at night. One man explained that he would stay out all night to tend his flock, as he had been victim of a theft the year before. Another one, who was then working as a shepherd, had been victim of a scam by a pyramid scheme marketing company in which he had lost the savings that he had made from the sale of sixty head of livestock. He explained that a lot of Syrians were being targeted by these schemes. Another, older, man had 40 sheep stolen by a powerful local tribal figure out in the open.18 Unarmed, with little knowledge of their legal rights and deprived of the informal protection available to Jordanians through the tribal structures, Syrian refugees are unlikely to seek to claim justice, either through formal or informal mechanisms, making them easy targets for violence and theft.
43Feelings of vulnerability are increased by the risks related to livestock production. In the context of the ecological and socio-economic uncertainties outlined above, the viability of small livestock business hinges on the possibility of affording feed and animal health expenses. The situation is particularly critical during the winter season, when animal diseases are prevalent and when herders rely exclusively on fodder. Those Syrians who do not have savings to cover operational costs at this time of year use the same informal systems of credit that are used by Jordanian pastoralists. The jaban, intermediaries specialising in the commercialisation of milk, offer loans to livestock producers for the purchase of feeds at the beginning of the lean season. The loans are granted against engagements to be paid back in kind when the milk season starts. According to one of the managers of a livestock cooperative in Jordan, many jaban-s use this special position of power to decide unilaterally on the prices of milk against which the repayment of debt will be assessed.19 These mechanisms of dependency and debt often force livestock producers to sell their milk at under market prices.
44However, the Syrians who were making use of these loan schemes in al‑Tuneib said they were making sure that they were guaranteed fair deals. “We make an agreement with the jaban that he gives us market prices, otherwise we don’t accept,” summarised Abū Faisal.20 Their confidence in negotiating positive terms of exchange and in being able to enforce these verbal contracts was striking, in comparison with the experiences reported to us by Jordanian members of livestock cooperatives. Whilst boosted by a sense of self-worth which is discussed below, these requirements of fair economic remuneration were also a clear expression of their right to subsistence, in a context where legal and socio-economic insecurities run rife. Our research participants were not all successful in negotiating fair arrangements with the jaban-s or with their employers, but, for all, the “subsistence right” was their yardstick for assessing whether business or employment terms were fair, and should therefore be looked after, or not.
Self-worth and power within: building “partnerships” with Jordanian businessmen
45The following pages describe how a special “moral economy of (Syrian) refugee pastoralism” is flourishing on the understanding of their own value within the Jordanian livestock farming sector. The Syrians we interviewed were fully aware that experienced pastoralists had a special niche in Jordan, considering the country’s shortage of human resources and skills. When asked whether he thought it was harder for Syrians than Jordanians to work in the livestock sector in Jordan, Abū Ayyub replied:
No, I don’t think so. On the contrary. Syrians are trusted as shepherds. Also people like doing business with us. And Syrians have more experience, and the Jordanians are trying to learn from us. Jordanians are often doing two jobs, so they are not specialised whereas us Syrians, we live with our animals, so we know all about it.21
46When asked about their choice of hiring Syrians, Jordanian stock-owners confirmed these special abilities and experiences, referring to their knowledge in animal health, breeding and dairy production. Abū Saleh, a Jordanian employing one of the Syrians pastoralists interviewed in al-Tuneib, explained: “A lot of Syrians came with experience in livestock. It used to be their main livelihood. They were livestock owners back in Syria so it’s a chance for us”.22 These privileged positions have contributed to the development of what Syrians were referring to as “partnerships,” or share-herding arrangements, with Jordanian farm and livestock owners. More than half of our research informants in al-Tuneib were involved in these deals. Terms of contracts varied, with arrangements ranging from joint ventures with shared risks and benefits to salaried jobs with benefits and support for their own livestock production.
47Two of our interviewees were allowed some share of the profit made on the Jordanian’s flock. For Abū Ahsan, both expenses and profits would be shared equally. In terms of labour distribution, his “Jordanian partner” oversaw trade and logistics—including organising the supply of feed, which, as a Jordanian, he could obtain at a subsidised price—whilst Abū Ahsan would be in charge of raising and caring for the combined flocks. In the case of Abū Abdel, the Jordanian employer would be covering the expenses of both flocks, as well as providing the Syrian shepherd with a small salary, some in-kind benefits and a percentage of the profits that were made on both flocks. Abū Abdel commented, “It’s a win-win deal. I would pay 150JD (US $210) a month to feed my animals without this arrangement.”
48The other share-herders we met were paid a good salary and advantageous in-kind benefits. Comforted by the knowledge of their worth in the Jordanian context, they had also negotiated advantageous deals, whereby their own feed expenses were covered by the Jordanian employer. As a remuneration for their skilled shepherding, they were given free access to grazing land, feed, water for their flock, as well as a camping site with water and electricity for their family. These additional benefits (in-kind benefits or shares of the profit) were described by Syrian refugees as fair and well-deserved. Abū Abdel explained:
I get 25% of profit and a small salary as well as electricity and water. I have 30 animals and he has 70. When his animals give lambs, we sell them and I get 25%. The offspring that come from my own animals, I keep for myself to grow my flock. But I’m the khabīr (the expert). The Jordanian man doesn’t know anything. He agreed that the knowledge and experience was important.23
49As Abū Mohammad’s words lay out clearly, the social norms of justice that structure relationships between Syrians and Jordanians are based the on Syrian pastoralists’ sense of self-worth. By encouraging them to negotiate fair terms of employment and giving them a sense of “power within” (Veneklasen and Miller 2007: 45), these social norms are a linchpin of their socio-economic security and opportunities to accumulate capital.
50Besides helping them to access land in a context of grazing shortages and to make important savings, these deals are one of the best means to gain protection from local figures. The region of al-Tuneib, southern Amman, is the stronghold of the al-Fayyez (Bani Sakher tribe), a historically powerful clan with vast wealth in land, livestock, and water resources and access to positions of power within the Jordanian State. For Syrians, the need to ensure the support of this influential, wealthy clan is sharpened by their legal and socio-economic vulnerability as refugees. Abū Saleh told us:
The most precious thing about these arrangements is that they allow us to be around those powerful tribes, to be protected by them. In Syria, we had a very different life. We were respected. We had cars, we had farms. But when you escape a war, you need protection. And you also need land.24
51Abū Bahir explained that, for him, benefiting from those informal networks of protection was so vital that it had made him prefer a shepherding job over a potentially more lucrative investment in the livestock sector:
I could be selling in markets on my own and having good business. But being a shepherd gives you protection. Security is the most important thing. I decided to be a shepherd for that, not for the money. […] You have all the security. No one will ever think of stealing animals from this family. Everyone respects them.25
52By stressing how imperatives of physical and socio-economic security were, in his case, the overriding consideration when it came to choice of livelihood, Abū Bahir was here eloquently reasserting the safety-first principle which was articulated in different forms in most of our interviews.
53This research evidenced that, as far as their relationships with Jordanians were concerned, moral economies of Syrian pastoral refugees were embedded in two critical principles: the right to subsistence on the one hand and knowledge of self-worth on the other. The research revealed how these were articulating with Bedouin norms of reciprocity to support Syrian pastoralists’ resilience in exile.
Bedouin norms of reciprocity
54Bedouin social structures have historically been based on norms of reciprocity and community support (Bocco and Tell 1995, Chatty 2013). Interviews confirmed that these mechanisms continue to be relevant among Syrian pastoralists exiled in Jordan. For instance, Abū Dawud told us that the financial support he was getting from his next-of-kin explained why he was still coping despite the modest size of his flock and the health problems that were preventing him from being a farm worker on the side. He also explained that he had been able to start his own livestock business thanks to the initial endowment of several head of livestock that he had received from a cousin. The gesture was justified as being in keeping with the Islamic obligation of the zakāt.26
55These expectations of support weighed particularly heavily on those Syrians who had experience in Jordan from before the war. “I have many relatives who have asked me to help them settle here. I would help them by lending money and connecting them with Jordanian farmers. Also, by sharing knowledge of how things work here, like giving them advice on which animals to start with etc.”27
56Interviews revealed that mechanisms of mutual support and resource pooling were operating in a whole range of domains, from finding a job to responding to transportation and electricity needs, through accessing feed and water and caring for the others’ flocks in their absence. Principles of reciprocity and subsistence rights were particularly performative in case of shocks or serious difficulties. Highlighting the primacy of the fakhad, Abū Abdel explained: “We support each other in Jordan, the Bedouin Syrians. But especially if you are from the same fakhad, then you really help each other. Even if it’s 1JD [US $1.5] here, 1JD there. Especially when people need help urgently, we all give a little bit.”28
Restructured obligations under the stress of exile
57Despite the persistence of these moral obligations in everyday discourses, there was a generalised acceptance that the condition of exile was weakening people’s abilities to fill these duties. Abū Dawud insisted his cousin was a good man to have honoured the zakāt, as “there are not many who do it now”.29 In the same fashion, Abū Abdel explained: “Hospitality remains important here and we can’t say people don’t help each other. But when I came, I didn’t expect my relatives to help me a lot. I knew they were just surviving.” When asked about the difference between community support mechanisms here and in Syria, Abū Saleh explained:
Here we can’t support each other financially. Everyone is worried about his family and himself. If it is very necessary, like an emergency, you might find a cousin who will lend you 100JD [US $140] for a week but then you must pay it back on time. In Syria it was different. We used to take care of each other. Neighbours will take care and support neighbours. Now the support consists in spending time together, visiting each other, not giving money. It’s rare to give money.30
58These words were echoed by Abū Ayyub who explained:
Yes, it was very different in Syria. There, we had good lives. When you lent someone money, you didn’t expect him to give it back to you. We just supported each other. But here, everyone’s life is harder and at best, people can lend you money for a month or two. In Syria we call it a gift. In Jordan it’s a loan.31
59These testimonies speak of reconfigurations in the scope and nature of social obligations in refugee spaces. Several other studies of solidarity mechanisms within the exiled Syrian communities have observed the same difficulties in maintaining the generosity of previous social standards (te Lintelo et al. 2018, Stevens 2016, Thorleifsson 2016). Despite these difficulties, community support mechanisms are still the norm in both material and discursive practices, providing another illustration of the complex systems of obligations and reciprocity that underpin the Bedouin social fabric. Combined with the resources of patronage expected from their Jordanian employers, these social norms play a key role in preserving dignity, ensuring subsistence security and in supporting potential trajectories of upward mobility.
Conclusion
60Understanding the way forced exile intersects with agrarian change and pastoral dynamics to inform the multiplicity of pastoral livelihoods experienced in the context of the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis requires an important research investment across disciplines and sectors. The socio-economic insecurity of Syrian pastoralists who have taken refuge in Jordan varies in severity. Pastoralism, as a livelihood and relational practice, is a determining factor in this variability. On the one hand, most Syrian pastoralists in Jordan are locked into low-paid, seasonal work patterns and, as such, experience similar challenges to those experienced by refugees working (solely) in the farming sector. On the other hand, there are uplifting examples of Syrians who have found ways to extract themselves from trajectories of precarity through small-scale livestock farming.
61The lives of Syrian pastoral refugees are deeply embedded in the political economies that have shaped agricultural markets, pastoral systems and land tenure over the past hundred years. Ethnographies of Syrian farm workers in Lebanon have demonstrated that the predicaments faced by Syria’s rural poor in their current exiles are less of a rupture than an “ongoing afterlife” of agrarian developmentalism in Syria since the land reforms of the 1960s (Sajadian 2023: 9). The present study has explored how this inter-generational history of socio-economic insecurity is reproduced, but also challenged, by Syrian refugees who have chosen pastoralism as the main source of livelihood in Jordan. Whilst the conflict has put an end to seasonal mobility, and to the benefits they were reaping from it, agrarian displacements are not only a “thing of the past”. Their present translations into social capital and contextual knowledge are instead an essential foundation of Syrian pastoralists’ strategies to mitigate socio-economic and legal vulnerabilities as refugees in Jordan.
62The examples of resilience shown by Syrian pastoralists in their forced exile to Jordan provide another illustration of the utilitarian function of the Bedouin identity as well as of the adaptive strength of pastoral systems in the face of uncertainties. In a context where access to natural pastures is limited because of rangeland fragmentation and degradation, small-scale food producers are exposed to the volatility of the globalised and financialised markets in which the Jordanian agricultural sector is embedded. In exploring the way Syrian pastoral refugees address the legal, socio-economic and ecological challenges that they face in Jordan, our research identified four main strategies: (i) the mobilisation of the social capital acquired through previous agrarian migrations, (ii) the diversification of sources of income and resource access (iii) the negotiation of relationships of trust and protection with Jordanians and (iv) the activation of kin group support mechanisms. When combined skilfully, these four strategies have proved instrumental in navigating the landscape of uncertainties in which they evolve, and in certain cases, even in laying the ground for trajectories of upward social mobility.
63Research into the livelihoods of Syrian pastoral refugees in Jordan revealed the roots and nature of the moral economies that underpin their socio-economic engagements with Jordanian businessmen and fellow Syrians. The notion of “subsistence right” emerged as essential to understanding the impact that physical and socio-economic insecurities have on their livelihood choices and on their perceptions of social justice within the Jordanian agrarian economy. Whilst their positions as refugees, from rural (generally poor) backgrounds, lock most Syrian pastoralists into low-paid, precarious employment, the knowledge of their own worth in the current labour market does encourage some to challenge these patterns of precarity. The sense of “power within” in a sector where they have skills and which is being deserted by the Jordanian youth, support expectations of decent material recompense and socio-economic protection from Jordanian elites. Duties of community support and reciprocity within the Syrian community are also critical to pastoral resilience in exile, although there is an acceptation that their precarious position as refugees limit their ability to deliver on these social commitments. In sum, this chapter shows that whilst rooted in Bedouin cultural norms and in principles of (pre-capitalist) subsistence right, moral economies of Syrian refugee pastoralists are adaptive and contextual. More research into the socio-economic background of Syrian pastoral refugees is needed to understand how class, as well as gender, age, tribal belonging etc., articulate with individual agency in explaining the different trajectories identified in the present study.
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Notes de bas de page
1Funded by the European Research Council, the PASTRES research project (2018–2024) was hosted by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (UK) and the European University Institute (Italy). The author acknowledges the ERC-funded ad-hoc grants provided by PASTRES to showcase the findings of this research at conferences. In spring 2020, due to the Covid pandemic, interviews were conducted on the phone by Anas Amarneh, research assistant on this project.
2Although NRC was involved in the data collection, the author is the sole responsible for the interpretation of the data discussed here. This chapter does not represent the views of NRC.
3Survey participants were between 18 and 70 years old. More than 85% of them were heads of household. Women represented 31% of the survey pool. They were chosen using a snowball selection method, based on NRC’s enumerators’ informal knowledge of the area. The only conditions respondents had to meet to take part in the survey was to be Syrian and to own livestock.
4Fakhad (or maximal lineage) are formed by groups of beit (minimal lineage) claiming descent from a common ancestor. This unit is governed by a council of elders, themselves under the command of the head of the tribe or of the head of a sub-tribe (ʿashira) depending on the size of the tribe (Chatty 1986, p. 73).
5Each of the families who participated in the research was visited from three to six times between April and October 2019. Interviews were conducted in or outside their tents, generally in the presence of the whole family (men, women, children) and with the regular visit of neighbours, employers, members of extended families etc. In most cases, interview participation was dominated by male heads of household. Women’s participation in the discussions generally increased with time.
6The ʿawāssī sheep is the most common in Syria and Jordan. Its large, fat tail is an adaptation to the drought conditions. Its meat is highly priced on the Arab market.
7Dawn Chatty, private conversation, email exchanges from June 18, 2020.
8Abū ʿAbdel, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 08/04//2019.
9Abū ʿAbdel, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 08/04//2019.
10Abū ʿAbdel, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 08/04//2019.
11Abū and Um ‘Abdel, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 08/04/2019.
12Unlike refugees in other parts of the world, Syrians were forbidden to cross the border with livestock. Nonetheless the war in Syria did have a significant impact on commercial livestock flows in the region. The official Jordan Response Plan for 2020–2022 reported that, between 2009 and 2017, an additional one million animals had been counted in Jordan (from 2.9 million in 2009 to 3.8 million in 2017), with presumed effects on land degradation, “as many Syrian nomads moved their livestock into Jordan as a result of the Syria crisis” (MOPIC 2020, p. 95). The methodology used by the Ministry of Planning and Cooperation for producing these numbers is unclear, however, and there is no evidence that Syrian pastoralists themselves managed to smuggle their animals into Jordan. What appears most likely, according to the key stakeholders interviewed, is that those live animals from Syria, in particular the prized ʿʿawāssī sheep, were smuggled by wealthy Jordanian middlemen to the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia where larger profits could be made.
13Um ʿAbdel, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 25/05/2019.
14Similar evolutions were observed in Syria where the proportion of natural grazing in small ruminants’ diets had shrunk to 35% by the late 1980s from 100% until the 1940s (Leybourne et al. 1993).
15Abū Hassan, Interview, Ṣubḥā (Governorate of Mafraq), 11/04/2019.
16Abū Saleh, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 28/05/2019.
17Abū Fadi, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 28/05/2019.
18Abū Saleh, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 28/05/2019.
19Abū Gadi, Interview, Ṣubḥā (Governorate of Mafraq), 15/01/2019.
20Abū Faisal, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 02/10/2019.
21Abū Karim, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 26/05/2019.
22Abū Saleh, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 28/05/2019.
23Abū ʿAbdel, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 01/10/2020.
24Abū Saleh, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 28/05/2019.
25Abū Saleh, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 28/05/2019.
26In Islamic law, adults whose possession of wealth exceeds the nisab have a duty to donate to the poorest. These solidarity donations from rich to poor are referred to as zakāt.
27Abū Hassan, Interview Ṣubḥā (Governorate of Mafraq), 21/01/2019.
28Abū ʿAbdel, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 29/05/2019.
29Abū ʿAbdel, Interview, al-Tuneib (Governorate of Amman), 29/05/2019.
30Abū Saleh, Phone interview, 15/06/2019.
31Abū Ayyub, Phone interview, 10/06/2019.
Auteur
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Mathilde Gingembre
University of East Anglia
mathilde.gingembre@gmail.com
Dr. Mathilde Gingembre is a researcher in political ecology, affiliated with the PASTRES research project (University of Sussex, UK/European University Institute, Italy). She specialises in resource politics, environmental justice, land rights, extractivism, agrarian livelihoods and forced exile, and has expertise on Madagascar, Jordan and Lebanon.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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