At the Intersection of Economic and Family Networks: Female Syrian Refugees from Homs in Mafraq, Jordan

A large number of Syrian refugees in Mafraq, Jordan, hail from Homs, Syria, which is 300 km away. Homs is much closer geographically to Lebanon (38 km) and Turkey (175 km). These Syrian refugees from Homs have economic connections to Mafraq that derive from seasonal migrant labour in the agricultural fields outside the city, which predate the Syrian crisis and facilitated migration the longer distance to Mafraq.

Despite these long-standing and proven economic connections, Syrians in Mafraq are often economically marginalized, especially women, who are even more economically vulnerable within their own families. These Syrian women rely upon other Syrians in their networks in Mafraq to source information about available humanitarian aid, which is often low level and insufficient to meet their needs. Lacking the limited employment options of their husbands and the ability to source sufficient humanitarian aid, Syrian women turn frequently to remittances from their translocal and transnational networks of Syrian family members located outside Mafraq and outside Jordan. This demonstrates that Syrian women have cultivated a ‘nested’ networking system for economic viability in an otherwise economically debilitating environment.

Utilizing data from the TRAFIG project and the URBAN3DP survey, this chapter examines the case of Syrian women in Mafraq, demonstrating that their own and their families’ local, translocal and transnational economic connections are diverse in their support and outcomes. While employmentbased, transnational connections have provided mobility and labour opportunities into and within Jordan (especially for and through male heads of households), local family connections provide humanitarian aid information, and translocal and transnational family connections provide necessary remittances. The case demonstrates that Syrian women in Mafraq are embedded in diverse and dynamic connections that shift in geographic reach, utility and outcomes, as they are crosscut by gender, impacted by scarcity and change over time. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges in maintaining these diverse and dynamic connections in conditions of protracted displacement and future uncertainties.