Durable Disillusionment: (Ir)Relevance of Solutions in Protracted Crises

A Blog Series on the Availability of Durable Solutions for Syrian Refugees

In the context of protracted displacement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the concept of “durable solutions” has reached a critical impasse. Once envisioned as a pathway to sustainable futures through resettlement, local integration, or voluntary repatriation, these solutions have become largely illusory–stalled by political stagnation, donor fatigue, and the instrumentalization of return as a default policy. Today, formal pathways to protection are not only inaccessible to the vast majority of Syrian refugees, but increasingly irrelevant to their lived realities. Where integration remains politically unpalatable, and resettlement slots are vanishingly rare, return is not merely encouraged but structurally engineered. This recalibration is reinforced by both regional governments and international actors, who have reoriented shrinking aid budgets toward return programs, leaving refugees disillusioned with institutional responses. In response, many Syrians are forging their own improvised, often precarious, paths toward stability, rejecting official integration while simultaneously generating de facto strategies of endurance and belonging. This blog series proposes a reframing of the “solutions” discourse: not as a menu of externally sanctioned end-states, but as a dynamic set of practices (often crafted from the margins) that reflect refugees’ own negotiation of protracted displacement.

To contribute to this conversation or pitch an essay for the series, please reach out to the editors: Dr Shaddin Almasri (shaddin.almasri@donau-uni.ac.at), Dr Jasmin Lilian Diab (jasminlilian.diab@lau.edu.lb), and Dr Nicholas Maple (nicholas.maple@sas.ac.uk).