The European Union in the Global Refugee Regime: A Political Economic Approach to the Humanitarian-Development Nexus

This project examines the role of the European Union (EU)
in promoting new technologies for aid and displacement
management in the global refugee regime. It presents a
study of how the EU has helped mainstream the "nexus
model"-a model that calls for strengthened coherence
between humanitarian and development aid-as part of its
response to the so-called Syrian refugee crisis. In doing so,
I explore to what extent and through what processes the
nexus model has been used to navigate and promote EU
political and economic interests in a multi-stakeholder
environment. I take Jordan and Lebanon as two initial case
studies, using discourse analysis and process-tracing to
interpret qualitative data. The project contributes to
nascent scholarship in international political economy and
critical refugee studies on the humanitarian-development
nexus by highlighting the key role played by the EU in
driving contemporary policy developments, while
simultaneously showing how EU engagement is shaped by
its interactions with other key stakeholders. By situating
the nexus model in a critical political economy framework,
I argue that we can better understand the interests such an
approach serves more broadly and how it affects refugee
beneficiaries specifically.
16 Research Project Proposal At a time when over three-quarters (ca. 15.7 million) of the
global refugee population are in a protracted situation
(UNHCR 2019), the nexus model has been framed as a key
strategy to manage displacement. Building on previous
models such as "Linking Relief, Rehabilitation, and
Development" (LRRD), the nexus model can be defined as
an attempt at "strengthening collaboration, coherence, and
complementarity" of humanitarian and development
actions through shared involvement of public, private, and
third sector actors (OECD-DAC 2020, 6). In theory, the
nexus model has been framed as a "win-win" solution to
refugee crises, promising to support not just refugees,...