Diab, Jasmin Lilian; Alpes, Maybritt Jill; Carpi, Estella; (2025) When Is Home? Temporality, Closure, and the Continuum of Return After Assad. Current Issues in Migration Research , 2 (2) pp. 1-8. 10.24834/cimr.2025.2.1960.

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Abstract

The December 2024 fall of the Assad regime has been cast as a turning point for Syrian refugee return. Yet refugees stress timing over the act of return itself. Based on narratives from Syrians in Lebanon and Türkiye, this article shows how they view repatriation efforts as premature, politically driven, and disconnected from their complex everyday realities. Return unfolds not as a simple choice, but as provisional, investigative, and circular movement shaped by insecurity on both sides of the border. The “post-Assad” label suggests closure while masking ongoing instability and fractured social ties. Rejecting this narrative of finality, refugees reimagine return as part of an open-ended displacement trajectory. By centering the politics of temporality, the article highlights how return remains a contested, risky, and evolving process—its meanings shaped as much by host-country pressure as by shifting conditions inside Syria itself.

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