UC Irvine

This dissertation explores the phenomenon of migrant and refugee settlement in three Global South countries—Egypt, Morocco and Turkey—from the perspective of migrant and refugee groups as well as each host state. It asks: What policy options do Global South host countries, specifically those with semi-authoritarian governments, have for engaging with migrants and refugees, and what factors make a state choose one option over another? While existing citizenship and migration scholarship asserts that host countries essentially have two policy options regarding the treatment of migrants and refugees on their territory – integration or exclusion – my research introduces the concept of ambivalence; aware of the presence of migrant and refugee groups, a host state chooses not to directly engage such groups. Instead, it relies on international organizations and NGOs to carry out engagement on its behalf, which often has tangential benefits for the host state. Through extensive fieldwork and 131 interviews conducted over two years in Egypt, Morocco and Turkey, I find that in the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, Egypt, Morocco and Turkey were able to use ambivalence to manage the implications of their new inward migration due to three primary factors: migrants and refugees found ways to integrate into large informal economies, international organizations and domestic organizations intervened to provide essential services, and the issue of migration was not so highly politicized that it gained prolonged traction in media or amongst the national population. By allowing migrants and refugees to integrate in a de facto sense through minimal government intervention and by relying on international organizations to provide primary services, host states derive international credibility while only exerting minimal state resources.