CRS Seminar: Prolonging the Temporary: Female-Headed Syrian Refugee Households on Displacement, Return and Waiting post-Assad
Wednesday January 20, 2027
10:00am - 11:30am (ET/Toronto)
This is a virtual event
Zoom Link:
Guest Speaker: Jasmin Lilian Diab, Director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University and CRS affiliated scholar
This study explores the migration decisions and lived experiences of female-headed Syrian refugee households in Lebanon amid evolving political conditions following the fall of the Assad regime in 2024. Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews, it investigates how caregiving responsibilities, gender-based vulnerabilities, and the enduring threat of patriarchal violence shape these women’s reluctance to return to Syria and their aspirations for resettlement in Europe. While Lebanon offers relative freedoms, it remains a site of profound precarity, forcing women into protracted states of waiting. Anchored in feminist theory, intersectionality, and the aspirations-capabilities framework, this article reframes displacement as a gendered and strategic negotiation rather than passive victimhood. These women, navigating abandonment, statelessness, and systemic exclusion, emerge as agents of resilience – resisting reductive narratives and asserting autonomy through deliberate choices. The study calls for gender-responsive refugee policies that centre the specific needs, risks, and aspirations of female-headed households in protracted displacement contexts.
Bio:
Dr. Jasmin Lilian Diab (she/هي) is the Director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University, where she also serves as an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Migration Studies at the Department of Communication, Mobility and Identity.
In 2025, her research was awarded the Lisa Gilad Prize from the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM), as well as the School of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished Achievement Award.
In 2026, her research received the ‘Best Paper Award’ from the Gender and Sexuality in Migration Research Standing Committee at IMISCOE, the largest interdisciplinary network of scholars in the field of migration.
Dr. Diab is a Global Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Refugee Studies at 91ÑÇÉ«, and an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for International Gender Studies at the University of Münster.
