‘It’s a breach of trust’: fear and frustration over countries’ push to return Syrians home
Tears of joy streamed down Abdulhkeem Alshater’s face as he joined thousands of other Syrian nationals in central Vienna last year. The moment they were marking felt like a miracle: after more than five decades of brutality and repression, the Assad regime had fallen. A day later, however, the ripple effects of what had happened 2,000 miles away in Syria were laid bare. A dozen European states announced plans to suspend asylum applications from Syrians, in a show of how western states are increasingly treating refugees as transients. As the fall of Bashar al-Assad collided with politicians’ quest to be seen as taking a hard line on migration, the lives of Syrians around the globe were plunged into uncertainty. In Austria, where Alshater had spent the past decade painstakingly rebuilding his life – learning German, upgrading his professional certifications and raising his family – the government said it had ordered a review of cases where asylum had been granted to Syrians and that a programme of “orderly repatriation and deportation” was being prepared.
“It’s alarming and disappointing,” said Alshater, who heads the Free Syrian Community of Austria, a group that supports Syrian newcomers and helps them build bridges with Austrian officials and the wider society. “And it’s a breach of trust, especially for those who have already built a life here.” In September 2024 he was one of dozens of Syrians who spent hours volunteering to help clean up after torrential floods battered the small Austrian town of Kritzendorf. It was a small gesture of gratitude towards their new home, one also aimed at rebutting the far-right’s rhetoric and disinformation on migrants. Months later, Austria became the first country in the EU to temporarily suspend family reunification for refugees, a decision that disproportionately affected Syrians. In July this year it became the first to seize on the fall of Assad to return a Syrian with a criminal conviction to his birth country. Alshater said the government’s actions had caused “significant fear” among the nearly 100,000 Syrians in Austria, leaving some grappling with depression and anxiety. In neighbouring Germany, home to Europe’s largest Syrian diaspora, the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has said he expects many of the nearly 1 million Syrians living in Germany to voluntarily return home. “There are now no longer any grounds for asylum in Germany, and therefore we can also begin with repatriations,” he said last month. Those who refused to return could face deportation “in the near future”, he said. His view clashed with the many employers, trade unions and business associations who pointed to the vital role that Syrians play in alleviating the country’s deep labour shortages, as well as reservations raised by his own foreign minister.
The German Economic Institute said last year that about 80,000 Syrians worked in sectors plagued by shortages. This included more than 4,000 mechatronic technicians in the auto industry, about 2,470 dentists and dental hygienists, 2,260 childcare workers and 2,160 medical carers. The study also found that more than 5,000 Syrian doctors were fully employed in Germany and that their return could lead to “critical shortages” in medical services. The threat of deportations now dominates conversations among Syrians, said Anas Alakkad, a refugee who runs a startup that seeks to train migrants for the job market in Germany. “They are afraid that they will get deported,” Alakkad said. Others question whether it is worth learning the language, starting businesses or settling down. “For the refugees who arrived recently, they don’t know if they will be able to get residency, and even if they do, they’re not allowed to bring their families here. So they’re really frustrated,” he said. Governments’ push to return Syrians home have transformed how many in the community see the fall of Assad, said Ahed Festuk, a Syrian activist who moved to the US in 2015. “It’s really bittersweet,” she said. “It’s true that we got our home back, but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that our home has been destroyed completely.” In autumn, a World Bank report described the challenges of reconstructing Syria as “immense”, estimating that it would cost more than US$200bn (£150bn) Weeks later, Donald Trump’s administration said it had ended temporary deportation protections and work permits for more than 6,100 Syrians in the US. Last month a federal judge blocked the order, leaving these Syrians in limbo. Festuk visited Syria in June and saw first-hand how the infrastructure was severely lacking, leaving the government struggling to provide basic services, such as electricity and potable water. While the situation has improved since then, violence continues to flare up sporadically. “So to add millions of people right now I think would be really challenging for the people, for the government and for the country itself,” Festuk said.
She was certain that many Syrians would eventually return, echoing a recent UN survey that found that more than 80% of refugees hoped to return to Syria one day. More than a million people – about 15% of the nearly 7 million refugees forced out of the country by the civil war – had already headed back to Syria in the past year. But Festuk called on countries to give them space to decide. “It’s still too early to force people,” said Festuk, who works for the New York-based Multifaith Alliance, which supports refugees and internally displaced people around the world. M Murat Erdoğan, a migration researcher who has studied the wave of Syrian arrivals in Turkey, said about 500,000 people last year returned to Syria from Turkey, which took in about 4 million Syrians during the war. “So far the voluntary return has been truly voluntary,” he said. “They were relatively ready to go back.” Others, however, had forged deep ties in Turkey: more than 14,000 businesses have been launched or co-launched by Syrians in the country since the war started. “It will not be easy,” Erdoğan said. “They work in Turkey, they have children in schools there or they have access to services in Turkey.” In recent years these roots have come up against a hardening of attitudes towards Syrians in some quarters. A 2023 presidential candidate vowed to send all Syrians home if he was elected. In the German town of Ostelsheim, population 2,500, Ryyan Alshebl listed the topics that dominate his day-to-day life: wind turbines, combating loneliness among elderly people, and land use planning. In 2023, eight years after he had arrived in Germany as a refugee, he was elected mayor of the municipality.
It is a hint of the kind of integration achieved by many Syrians in the country, a feat that has been overshadowed by far-right efforts to turn migration into a political talking point. “People told me after the election that they had biased ideas about Syrian refugees, what they might look like or what they could do,” said Alshebl, who stood as a non-party candidate in the elections despite being a member of the German Greens. In the past year, since the fall of Assad, he said, the German government had created a “dangerous” expectation that Syrians would return – a promise that if not kept, he said, could push voters into the arms of the far right and pave the way for forced deportations. The view has left Alshebl calling for an approach that could strike a balance: allowing Syrians who have learned the language and joined the workforce to stay, while eventually deporting the minority who continue to rely on state assistance. “It is not an act of benevolence for Germany to say that those who are well integrated should stay,” he said. “Germany needs these people. But those who for whatever reason have not been able to gain a foothold so far must also be told in no uncertain terms that they cannot stay. That’s a legitimate deal, I would say.”
