Moving Money: Syrian Refugees Surviving Displacement in Jordan

Hawala, the unregulated system for the informal transfer of money via passcodes, plays a vital role for Syrian refugees trying to survive in Jordan. The system was regularly utilized in Syria prior to the ongoing and brutal civil war that has created over 5 million refugees. Syrian refugees now have an increased dependency on hawala due to the dissolution of financial institutions within Syria and financial exclusion in countries of exile, including Jordan. The growth of and dependency on hawala by Syrian refugees in Jordan is occurring within a context where formal and digital transfers are both surveilled and access is curtailed. The unregulated system of hawala – and its users – have become targeted for governmental crackdowns on criminal activities such as money laundering, terrorism funding, and counter-terrorism surveillance. This article explores the context of policies and practice of humanitarian aid organizations that utilize cashless and low-cash transfers, as well as of states and agencies of refugee governance that aim to surveil and criminalize unregulated and informal transfers for fear of terrorism. Based on interviews with Syrian refugees and observations inside money exchange businesses in Syrian refugee camps and urban areas in Jordan, I argue that the unstable political situation and conditions of displacement create the need to transfer money and remittances via hawala. Further, that hawala is utilized, despite the political concerns to control such transfers, through adaptation in formality and flexibility in time and space, creating an institutional spectrum from formal and regulated, to semi-formal and regulated in part, and informal, which is unregulated. In addition, the gendered contours of hawala used by Syrian refugees in Jordan reveal important insights into the ways by which the method simultaneously evades surveillance and grows in use, which helps illuminate the ways that the system fulfils a necessary need for low-cash and cashless transfers by Syrian refugees.