When people arrive at state borders in search of sanctuary, one enduring question emerges across news headlines, in policy debates, and among scholars: Who qualifies as a refugee? This question remains timely because its answer has the power to provide some people with access to a territory, resources, and rights while hindering others from acquiring the same opportunities. Refugee recognition bestows special privileges that allow an individual to cross borders that are restricted to economic migrants. As outlined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is a person who is forced to leave their country of origin due to a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” In contrast, an economic migrant is a person who leaves their country of origin to pursue greater economic opportunities abroad. While such labels describe some people’s experiences, they do not reflect the array of intersecting motivations for migration.
States have guarded the parameters of the refugee definition, keeping it restrictive so that they may limit who is permitted to enter and remain on their territory. While some advocates support broadening the definition of who qualifies as a refugee, others warn that efforts to renegotiate the refugee definition may risk that states will ultimately provide fewer protections to people who are currently recognized as Convention refugees. It is within this legal landscape that the categorical distinction between economic migrants and refugees becomes especially consequential. The refugee-migrant binary is, therefore, reinforced because it serves an important legal function.
Legal assessments, however, do not always reflect the reality of people’s lived experiences. Nor are they uniformly just. Scholars have searched for ways to move beyond the refugee-migrant binary by providing frames that more accurately reflect the dynamics that shape how and why people move. Rebecca Hamlin introduces the term “border-crossers” to describe people who move without ascribing worthiness to the individual, noting that hierarchies of vulnerability can be misleading and detrimental to those who are excluded from the refugee designation. Abigail Weitzman and colleagues use the term “migrants in need of protection” to avoid giving primacy to some forms of coercion over others. Chiara Galli provides a robust comparison of “de facto” and “de jure” refugees, giving the reader language to compare individuals who have experienced similar types of persecution or violence, but whose asylum claims are not equally recognized by the state. The search for alternative constructs to frame empirically informed examinations of displacement reflect the limited explanatory power of legal labels.
Drawing upon our scholarship in The Refugee System (Polity 2022), we move beyond the refugee-migrant binary with a robust analysis of the relationship between mobility and immobility to understand where and why people move (or stay) and how states, often in coordination with one another, impede or facilitate that movement. The “(im)mobility chessboard,” reproduced in Figure 1, illustrates people’s experiences along two different continua of movement and coercion. This matrix is a tool. Not only does it move the debate past the refugee-migrant binary, it also allows us to conceptualize the relationships among a wide range of migrations and sedentary states. In this essay, we demonstrate how the chessboard can be used to map (im)mobility of individuals over the course of their lives and for families that are separated within and across state borders.
How to Read the Chessboard
The chessboard below reflects a range of possible experiences rather than focusing in isolation on a single type of (im)mobility. Refugees and economic migrants are included within a matrix that encompasses illustrative examples of other forms of forced and voluntary migration. To capture a broad range of (im)mobility and coercion, the chessboard depicts where different types of people fall along two axes. The x axis shows the degree of movement away from home, beginning with domestic relocation and extending to international relocation and return. The y axis shows the degree of proximate coercion—the level of violence or its threat applied close in time—that propels movement or staying in one place. Thinking about (im)mobility across the refugee system allows us to deeply consider the relationship between movement and violence, acknowledging that persecuting governments may kill, expel, enslave, and intern people in concentration camps. Forced immobility is directly tied to forced migration.
We conceptualize these axes as continua of coercion and movement rather than discrete stages to emphasize that they are part of a large potential universe of experiences. While the categories that appear in the matrix are visually equidistant, we do not mean to suggest that these movements are strictly sequential. Within groups subject to persecution, people may find themselves in different categories at different times, or different members of the same group may experience different categories simultaneously. Movement among these dimensions is not always in a single direction. Like a chessboard, it is possible for an individual to move forward, backward, and sidewise. Some individuals have a greater range of possible motion than others. In this essay, we demonstrate how one Syrian family has navigated the challenges of war and displacement. We introduce the Asfour family before describing their experiences to illustrate the utility of the chessboard, focusing on the categories that are relevant to the Asfour family. (For an extended discussion of the chessboard, see chapter two of The Refugee System. For more about the Asfour family, see chapter four of The Refugee System.)
Mapping (Im)mobility
The Syrian civil war began near the Asfour family home in the southwestern town of Daraa. In the decade that followed, the Asfours were among the millions of people displaced by the war. Half of the family became internally displaced, moving multiple times to neighboring towns and villages in search of safety. The other half became refugees. The Asfour family’s experience reflects larger patterns of movement among Syrians. More than half of Syria’s population of 23 million was displaced by the war. Approximately 7 million became internally displaced persons (IDPs). An estimated 5.3 million Syrians became refugees in the Middle East, most finding refuge in neighboring states. More than one million Syrians sought asylum in Europe, and an estimated 250,000 Syrians were resettled to countries in the Global North.
Voluntary non-migrants. The most immobile people include non-migrants who voluntarily stay at home, depicted at bottom left on the chessboard. They represent the majority of the world’s population. Before the war, the entire Asfour family were voluntary non-migrants. They lived in their hometown where their family resided for generations. Wajih Asfour, who was 17 years old when the war started in 2011, lived with his parents and eight siblings. He was more interested in playing soccer and hanging out with his friends than he was in political action. But, when his brother Rami suggested that they join the protest marches, Wajih agreed to tag along.
Internally displaced persons (IDPs). When the violence escalated from bullets fired at crowds of protestors to bombs dropped over Daraa, the Asfour family fled to a neighboring village. They became internally displaced persons. Their movement is categorized as “domestic” along the x axis. As the chessboard demonstrates, IDPs and refugees can face comparable degrees of coercion, with movement across an international border being the operative distinction. In fact, many people who become refugees were first internally displaced. Crossing the international border is an important distinction, however, especially when seeking access to protection under international law. According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is not only defined by a well-founded fear of persecution, but also must be “outside the country of his former habitual residence.”
The Asfours did not stay in the neighboring village for long. They discovered that the threats they faced in the neighboring village were greater—although distinct—from threats in their hometown. In Daraa, the Asfours feared bombs. In the neighboring village, which was under the control of the Syrian government at this time, they worried about targeted persecution. Wajih and Rami were filmed taking part in the Daraa protests. They were in jeopardy of being arrested and imprisoned by the Syrian government. As depicted on the chessboard, imprisonment implies a greater degree of coercion than internal displacement. The family decided to return to their hometown.
Upon return, the Asfours were no longer voluntary non-migrants, because the degree of coercion they now faced was greater than before the war. The family was forced to return to a place that remained unsafe—immobile because they hoped that staying would be safer than leaving.
Open refugee camp. Wajih, his mother, and two of his sisters became refugees in January 2013 when they fled across the border into neighboring Jordan. The Asfours delayed the decision to leave as long as they could, but violence escalated when the weapons became deadlier. They entered Za’atari refugee camp, which over the years became an “open refugee camp” as depicted on the chessboard. Not all camps allow refugees to come and go. Many refugees are confined in heavily securitized camps, depicted as a “closed camp” on the (im)mobility chessboard.
Members of the Asfour family were now separated by an international border. Half were registered with the United Nations as refugees. The Asfours who stayed in Syria would become internally displaced several times in the years that followed, sometimes moving every couple of weeks between villages and towns that were between 10 and 70 kilometers apart. Wajih’s sister, Rula, moved the least. Rula found refuge in the city of Suwayda, but when she did not feel welcomed, was able to seek refuge elsewhere. In comparison, Wajih’s father spent four months living in ISIS-controlled territory where he could not freely decide to leave. The chessboard allows us to account for these varying degrees of coercion during internal displacement.
Resettled refugee to authorized immigrant. In 2017, Wajih was resettled in Canada through the World University Service of Canada’s Student Refugee Program. Resettled refugees have fled high levels of coercion in the past, but in the present, they voluntarily participate in resettlement programs. For Wajih, a new life in Canada meant that he would no longer carry identification papers that labeled him as a refugee. He was now on his way to becoming a Canadian citizen. Ironically, the day that Wajih stopped being a refugee according to the UN’s roster was also the same day that Canada officially invited him to enter the country as a recognized resettled refugee.
Wajih met his wife, Hala, in Canada. Hala gave birth to a baby girl in 2021 who became the first Canadian citizen among the Asfours. Wajih became the second. In 2023, he was also able to help sponsor one of his brothers, who, after living for years in a refugee camp, is now on a pathway to acquiring citizenship as well.
Hope for voluntary return. For years, Wajih has dreamt of the day that he will be able to see his father again. Because of his Canadian citizenship, this dream has become a plan. Canadian citizenship not only provides Wajih with rights that he did not have as a Syrian citizen or as a refugee in Jordan, but also makes international travel more feasible in the future.
Conclusion
No single refugee is likely to experience all the potential types of entrapment and displacement, such as forced immobility, internal flight, crossing an international border to seek sanctuary, resettlement abroad through a formal program, independently seeking asylum, and repatriation. Yet, if we shift our focus from individual experiences to considering familial or household experiences, it becomes clear how each of these types of immobility and mobility are related, as demonstrated in Figure 3.
Not only does the (im)mobility chessboard allow us to conceptualize how Wajih’s life course can be mapped over time to capture varying degrees of coercion and movement, it also allows scholars to simultaneously consider the whereabouts of the entire Asfour family. Opportunities for movement varied as the war stretched on. Borders closed that had been open during the early years of the war. Members of the Asfour family who could have become refugees in the first few years of the war missed their chance to cross into a neighboring country. At the same time, as members of the Asfour family gained a foothold in their new country of residence, they were better able to support others. The (im)mobility chessboard makes visible the connected experiences that are hidden by the simplistic and misleading refugee-migrant binary.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the authors and not the American Sociological Association.
