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Turkey has witnessed the mass migration movement of Syrian citizens fleeing the Syrian civil war. These people have been defined as ‘foreigners under temporary protection’. However, the UN Convention does not include temporary protection or similar definitions in relation to migrants, refugees, and asylums and accepts them as migrant workers. In our country, people under temporary protection, whose majority is composed of Syrians work in informal jobs. The most important document aiming at granting legal rights to people who are found in a country without any legal position or who is identified as an irregular worker, not as an employee and migrant worker, is the International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. Turkey has become a party to this document. The UN Convention gives immigrant workers and family members a wide range of protective rights, such as work, settlement, education, and trade union rights. In this chapter, the positions of foreigners in temporary protection who are trying to make a living by collecting recyclable materials such as mostly paper, etc., which is defined as a part of the street economy, will be discussed in terms of the provisions of the UN Convention.

Does the media through its news convey us their categorisation, have particular lexical choices, give less space or voice to the actors regarding the news that mentioned street vendors in Turkey? The research question of this study is that whether or not the print media covers street vendors in their news? What is the tone of these news articles? In which pages do they cover? What are the news themes related with street vendors and who are the main actors in this news? This chapter presents a systematic study of 100 news articles which were published between 2016 and 2018 in Turkey’s mainstream, popular newspaper Hürriyet. The 100 news which included the word ‘street vendor’ in the texts were selected from the Hürriyet’s database and categorised and the content of the news articles were analysed. Findings of the of 100 news articles which mentioned ‘street vendor’ were researched and analysed totally. The analysis already reveals that the word choice of the news articles regarding street vendors are often conflict stories between the vendors and municipality police forces namely ‘Zabıta’ in Turkey. In sum, there were 19 news articles that referred street vendors with positive tone and wording, but 68 news articles still depicted street vendors in negative framing and use negative attribution in the text of the news. Totally 16 news articles included by-line and the rest of the 84 news articles did not include the journalist’s name and were covered as anonym. Out of the 100 news articles only a handful focussed on the advocacy and rights of street vendors.

This paper examines the transformation of Syrian political economy from 1970 until 2005. I argue that Syria has undergone two important phases of political and economic transformation, from building a centralized state and economy in the early 1970s to embarking on the path of market economy in the early 1990s. With the logic of competitiveness guiding the direction of economic development, the socio-economic changes of the mid-1980s and after have corresponded with an important process of class and state formation. After a brief discussion of the current transition in Syria, the following sections of the paper attempt to provide a critical study of the different strategies for economic development. Section two examines the process of state and economic centralization of the 1970s and 1980s and highlights the contradictions of this period. Section three assesses the impact of economic liberalization through a study of competitiveness in the economic policies of the 1990s and 2000. The final section examines the economic and political impasse that Syria has been faced with. In conclusion, I argue that the current path of market economy as the strategy for capital accumulation has not resolved the socio-economic problems that Syria has faced in the last two decades. This strategy will continue to face contestation by marginalized groups such as factions of the Baath Party, landless peasants, workers and small producers as Syria becomes even more integrated into the regional and global economy.

The impact of conflict and violence is not only limited to the conflict region itself, but it usually extends to neighboring countries and regions. The Syrian conflict is an example of border-sharing countries hosting a million refugees and re-adapting to the new situation. This case highlights the corporate social responsibility initiative of a Lebanese businessman and business owner in 2019. It explains how this businessman and his company reacted to the waves of Syrian refugees moving to his city in Lebanon. More particularly, it describes the pro-active reaction of the company during the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon and how this reaction has transformed from a donation-based to business-based solution and rearranged its priority to help Syrian refugees. The philanthropic experience of the company before the refugee crisis was donation-dominated. The case also outlines the forms the company and its owner have designed to provide traditional aids (shelters, food, and clothes) and creating jobs for refugees. It shows the need to change the managerial behavior and perspectives due to the unusual situation of conflict. This situation has created a unique experience of corporate social responsibility in Lebanon as an example of a refugee-hosting country.

The spread of COVID-19 has shaken people’s lives around the globe in an extraordinary way, threatening health, disrupting economic activity, and spreading fear and anxiety. However, the outbreak originated as a public health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has also developed into a global economic crisis, with severe and potentially lasting impacts on employment and trade. The chapter investigates the changing dynamics of street economy during the COVID-19 era. In this study, one of the biggest but overlooked stakeholders of the street economy, municipality’s perception through the constables regarding the street vendors will be investigated. It is known that the worldwide epidemic of COVID has caused such problems as layoffs, depreciation of money, the global crisis, foreign trade coming to a halt, and, thus, it reduces individuals’ purchasing power. Therefore, it is considered that the number of individuals who are parties to the street economy has increased. This research aims to understand and discuss how COVID-19 has been affected to the street economy from the point of view of the constables, who are one of the most important stakeholders of the issue. A qualitative depth interviews were conducted to the constables of İzmir Municipality in Turkey. A semi-structured interview questions were applied and the data were analysed with the NVIVO program to understand the changing dynamics of street economy during the COVID-19 era in Turkey. The research aims to support and guide the local authorities with fresh data from the field regarding the changing characteristics of street economy.

This paper aims at contributing to our understanding of how self-settled Syrian refugees (registered and non-registered) use informal practices to forge their non-political agency and how this agency could be considered as political acts.

This paper was conducted per the qualitative data analysis (in-depth interviews and participant observation), attributed to the critical ethnographic approach, through which refugees’ everyday struggle is explored, additionally, that was incorporated with the analysis of Syrians’ Facebook groups and formal sources.

The research paper concluded that everyday struggle strategies are considered as political acts by acquiring rights that many self-settled Syrian refugees are stripped of by international humanitarian agencies and host government. Hence, registered and unregistered refugees equally forge what is called “informal citizenship” through their presence via a blend of agency forms ranging from hidden agency to explicit one and via their incorporating into the informal contexts, leading them to carve a position of semi-legality that help them to circumvent the formal structural hardship.

This paper endeavors to study how urban refugees as change agents can convert their illegal presence to “probably refugeeness” to unsettle the prominent recognition of them as illegal non-citizens in southern cities.

The Syrian civil war that forced hundreds of thousands of Syrian women and children into Jordan as refugees dramatically increased the number of child labourers in that country. The current investigation aims to establish a body of knowledge on the issues surrounding child labour in Jordan by providing an exploratory diagnosis of the phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to explore verbal and physical abusive practices towards working children and investigate whether there are differences between the treatment of domestic and Syrian refugee child labourers.

The research design is quantitative; however, we use a qualitative technique to support and expand the research findings. Data were collected from 124 Jordanian and Syrian working children over a seven-month period in 2013.

The results reveal that it is poverty that forces Jordanian children into work while Syrian children are driven by the need for asylum. Of the abusive practices directed towards working children, verbal abuse is the most common. Older children, children from unstable families and those who work long hours are more vulnerable to this form of abuse, while children from unstable family structures and who work long hours are more likely to experience physically abuse. The results reveal that Syrian children are paid much less, are less verbally abused, had better schooling and perceive working conditions more positively than do their Jordanian counterparts.

Limitations of this research arise from the size the sample.

The current study aims to raise awareness about the importance of preventing abusive practices towards local and refugee children working in Jordan.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, very little is known about refugee child labour and how it might differ from domestic child labour.

The wave of popular unrest in the Arab world reached Syria in March 2011, and what started as peaceful demonstrations with simple demands of justice and freedom turned into a brutal armed conflict and a full-scale civil war. Over seven years of conflict resulted in the deaths of over half a million Syrians, the forced displacement of millions more, and a huge loss of the country's social and physical structures. What began as another Arab Spring movement against a dictatorial regime has turned into a proxy war that has attracted the interests of the world and regional powers. The paper discusses Syria's political history and investigates the motives for the Syrian uprising and argues that it is related to socio-economic deprivations rather than sectarianism. The work underlines the interests of the countries involved in the Syrian conflict focusing on Russia, USA, Iran, and Turkey, as well as their contribution to the future reconstruction of the country.

Over the past few years, the Syrian regime and its allies targeted many cities and destroyed opposition-held neighborhoods. The work considers if this destruction was part of an overall strategy adopted by the al-Assad regime to terrorize those who opposed it and change Syria demographically, examining the new laws issued by the government to transfer public properties into the hands of its loyal businessmen factions, as in the case of the reconstruction project in the city of Homs.

Seven years of war exhausted Syria's financial stocks, and the country (and in turn the regime) is suffering the consequences of military spending. But like any other war, destruction is also a great opportunity to generate money through reconstruction and growth. It is a “win-win situation”; the regime will use the fund designated for reviving the country to its own benefit, gaining future profits. Already invested in the conflict, involved countries will be part of the reconstruction process to secure their presence and control in Syria.

United Nations agencies like UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) are working closely with the Syrian regime and its governmental representatives. This research examines their involvement and how their ‘humanitarian mission' is being exploited to prop up the al-Assad regime.