Abstract
Little is known about how the idea of ‘resilience’ translates into practice. It has nonetheless emerged as a dominant theme in the governance of crises, such as political instability, armed conflict, terrorism, and large-scale refugee movements. This study draws on interviews with humanitarian and development practitioners in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon working under the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan to explore how resilience is interpreted and translated on the ground. Results suggest that resilience is translated as the economic self-reliance of refugees, and the capacity for crisis management of refugee-hosting states, enacted through ‘localization’ and strengthening the ‘humanitarian-development nexus.’ The prominence of the political and economic context and the power relations between crisis response actors that it generates reveals the limits of what a buzzword like resilience can achieve on the ground. The findings highlight the need for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to engage in continuous critical reflection on whether the ways in which resilience policies and programmes are implemented actually improve the ability of systems and vulnerable populations to recover from crisis, as well as on the validity of the assumptions and interpretations on which such policies and programmes are built.
Highlights
Issue This article is part of the issue “The Politics of Disaster Governance” edited by Dorothea Hilhorst (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands), Kees Boersma (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Emmanuel Raju (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
This study finds that practitioners understand resilience-building as strengthening refugee-hosting states’ capacities to manage the impact of the Syria crisis— the pressure created by increased demand for public services
Findings from interviews with humanitarian and development practitioners working in the context of the 3RP in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon illustrate how resilience takes on the meaning of selfreliance as it travels from the global to the local, and from policy to practice
Summary
Issue This article is part of the issue “The Politics of Disaster Governance” edited by Dorothea Hilhorst (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands), Kees Boersma (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Emmanuel Raju (University of Copenhagen, Denmark). I argue that in practice, the concept of ‘resilience’ becomes imbued with particular—even narrow— meanings contingent on crisis response actors’ interpretations of the context, which in turn determine how resilience, as a capacity for recovery, is ‘built.’ To what extent resilience policies and programmes can achieve results on the ground, depends on the political and economic context and the power relations it generates between crisis response actors In this way, the results provide empirical evidence for the political nature of crisis governance, which, rather than a technocratic exercise, is “shaped by the people, institutions and history of the context in which crises happen” The results provide empirical evidence for the political nature of crisis governance, which, rather than a technocratic exercise, is “shaped by the people, institutions and history of the context in which crises happen” (Hilhorst, 2013, p. 5)
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