The workshop “The Here and Now in Forced Migration: Everyday Intimacies, Imaginaries, and Bureaucracies” aims to explore how forced migrants perceive and experience the ‘here and now’ and how this manifests in, emerges from and shapes everyday intimacies of family and kin relations vis-à-vis bureaucratic encounters. The roundtable “Encountering Immigration Regimes: Syrian Refugees in Europe and Beyond” intends to extend the workshop’s overall aim by facilitating a discussion of different European and non-European immigration regimes and the ways Syrian refugees respond to them.

As the Syrian uprising nears its tenth anniversary, and the civil war continues to create major refugee crisis, hosts countries around the world have received Syrian refugees differently. In Turkey, for instance, Syrians are referred to as ‘guests’. This term carries no legal meaning under national and international law and implies that protection is merely a short-term solution. In Germany, a majority of Syrians receive subsidiary protection that they need to renew once a year, affecting their chances of bringing family members over through family reunification policies. Whereas in Lebanon, the polices and laws regulating residency make it difficult for Syrians to maintain legal status and, thereby, valid legal residency.