Faculty Supervisors: Nathalie Peutz and Jonathan Shannon
This project looks at the proliferation of exploitative practices within the humanitarian-development industry in Jordan, with a particular focus on the Syrian refugee crisis. In the past six years, the Jordanian refugee regime has become subject to a new degree technocratic governance, as the international response to the Syrian crisis transformed from a short-term humanitarian mission focusing on emergency relief, to a long-term development enterprise centering macroeconomic interventions, empowerment programs, and refugee integration. The turn to development planning has been accompanied by an increase in exploitation, abuse and fraud in the humanitarian-development sector. To understand why this has occurred, and how Syrians and NGO workers deal with cases of "mismanagement," this project analyzes ethnographic data on experiences of humanitarian and development programming. By doing so, it seeks to shine light both on the localized challenges that Syrian refugees face in the context of protracted displacement in Jordan, and the structural connections between technocracy, humanitarianism and development on the one hand, and exploitation, abuse and refugee management on the other.