Keywords

1 Introduction

In January 2019, when I had been doing fieldwork in Germany for almost three months, I met Abu Mohammad, a Syrian man from Hama in his late twenties who lived in Neumünster, a city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany. His wife and children had made the first part of the journey from Syria with him, but then stayed behind in Turkey to avoid the most dangerous part of the crossing, choosing to wait for Abu Mohammad to arrive safely in Germany before joining him through family reunification. However, due to delays in the reunification application as a holder of subsidiary protection (see Chap. 2), Abu Mohammad had not seen his family for almost 4 years at the time of our interview. He described his separation from his family with the Arabic term intiẓār, waiting.

A few months earlier, in Lebanon, I had met Em Walid, whose son had migrated to Turkey with the intent of reaching Europe. Since then, she had lived in a constant state of anxiety and apprehension, which influenced her daily activities and made her feel ‘ajez, paralysed. These and other life stories I collected in Lebanon and Germany made me realize that family separation was one of the biggest challenges for Syrian families in both countries, and that for many of them, it was not a matter of when they were going to be reunited, but if. I realized that not only did these people live transnational lives, embedded in two different contexts for an indefinite amount of time, but that they had established several ways to do family in separation. The concept of ‘doing family’, where ‘family’ is embedded in a verb phrase rather than used as a noun (Stiles, 2002) and refers to a ‘doing’, rather than a ‘being’ (Smart & Neale, 1999), entails fluid and transitional configurations of family that can occur when life is disrupted, such as when households are separated.

Transnational families have been a long-standing area of interest in migration studies (see Al-Sharmani et al., 2017; Baldassar & Merla, 2013; Crespi et al., 2018; Greschke, 2018). Scholars have paid considerable attention to different aspects of transnational family lives, including practices such as transnational marriages (Ferrero, 2015; Schmoll, 2007) and the transnational dimension of care (Baldassar & Merla, 2013; Vietti et al., 2012). The literature has also dealt with family separation (Slack et al., 2018; Shruti, 2019) and its effects on left-behind families (Ambrosini, 2008; Antman, 2013; Cortes, 2015). A consistent stream of studies focused on Europe have concerned family reunification and the legal aspects of separation for refugees (Grote, 2017; Bick, 2018; Tometten, 2018; Damir-Geilsdorf & Sabra, 2018; Sauer et al., 2018; Kraus et al., 2019). However, significant gaps remain. For example, while the literature has considered the transnational activities of forced migrants and refugees (Al-Ali et al., 2001; Horst, 2006; Van Hear, 2014), significantly less is known about the dimension of forced separation in displacement, everyday insecurities for refugees and left-behind families, and the various ways in which separated households do family from afar. Moreover, forced migration movements in the Global North have rarely been studied from a relational viewpoint considering interconnected sets of relationships, or jointly analysed with those in the Global South.

This chapter aims at filling some of these gaps by looking at family separation among displaced Syrians in two different countries, Germany and Lebanon. The research questions that have motivated this study are as follows: How do Syrian households in Lebanon and Germany deal with the everyday insecurities brought about by displacement? And how do they do family in separation?

I argue that separated households in both countries experienced separation not only as a geographical estrangement, but also as a temporal separation. Despite the conditions imposed by Western states on the entry and stays of family members, for Syrians in displacement, the idea of family had wider boundaries and multiple dimensions. In fact, the idea of family for Syrians in displacement did not synch with the definition used by the family reunification regimes of Western countries, namely the nuclear family consisting of father, mother and children.

In this chapter, I focus on families who have remained forcibly separated across international borders after fleeing the Syrian war. I call these families ‘separated’ instead of ‘transnational’ because separation best represents the way they feel about their circumstances and how they do family across borders. These families are connected by relationships of interdependence across borders and the motivation to be reunited. However, the principles of formal family reunification are often based on narrow ideas of family that fail to take into consideration different meanings of family in different contexts (Georgas et al., 2001; Kofman, 2004; Fonseca & Ormon, 2008; Strasser et al., 2009).

This chapter aims at analysing the difficulties families face when separated by international borders and at exploring the strategies they put into practice to do family in separation. I adopt a grassroots perspective to help to gain an intimate understanding of refugees’ experiences of transnational family life. This focus on refugees’ subjectivities will serve to demonstrate, for example, how transnationalism is experienced as a separated family and how agency is exercised to come to terms with the hardships of separation.

In the following sections, after introducing my methodology and the research background, I will explore the difficulties posed by separation and everyday insecurities for Syrian families in Lebanon and Germany before delving into the strategies that participants in both countries put into practice to cope with separation in displacement.

2 Methods and Data

This chapter is based on fieldwork conducted for my doctoral thesis (Tuzi, 2022 ) in Lebanon and Germany. My fieldwork in Lebanon was conducted in 2018 and 2019 in the cities of Beirut and Tripoli and in several rural areas of the North, Akkar and Beqaa governorates. My research in Germany was conducted in 2019 in the states of Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and Bavaria. In this chapter, I report the experiences of 19 Syrian women and men between 26 and 62 years old who were displaced in Lebanon (6 people) and Germany (13 people) and forcibly separated from members of their nuclear or extended family. The two groups of informants were not directly equivalent, as the interviewed families in Germany and Lebanon were not related. Yet there was a correspondence between the two displaced groups in their lived experiences, everyday insecurities and the way in which they coped with forced separation. For this reason, comparing the two groups allowed a double perspective on the experience of separation that helps overcome monolithic understandings of displacement.

Before starting each interview, participants were asked in Arabic to give their oral consent. I connected with participants through my pre-existing networks, such as Syrian families I had met on previous visits to Lebanon, and through local organizations and civil society networks. I then expanded the sample through snowball sampling, asking participants to connect me with other Syrians they knew. Interviews were carried out in Arabic with the assistance of local research assistants and then transcribed and translated. Interviewees participated voluntarily and the research was explained to them in detail. They were free to withdraw their participation or not to answer questions they did not feel comfortable with. I used pseudonyms to protect participants’ identities. My analysis of these interviews focused on the nature of separation, the challenges family members experienced and the coping strategies they employed to overcome difficulties.

The definition of ‘refugee’ posed a question for my methodology. In Lebanon, where the 1951 Refugee Convention does not apply, only Syrians registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) are considered de facto refugees. Yet this category excludes many families who fled human rights violations and humanitarian crises in Syria and arrived in Lebanon after the UNHCR closed registrations in 2015 (Dionigi, 2016). In Germany, over 90% of Syrian applicants have been granted asylum, but only a minority have received full refugee status; most Syrian nationals have been granted subsidiary protection. As forced migration experiences varied widely among Syrians in Lebanon and Germany, I decided not to apply narrow definitions to my research and included in my study all Syrian nationals who were displaced in either country as a consequence of the Syrian civil war (2011–present). In this chapter, I consider the experiences both of Syrian families in Germany who were waiting for reunification with their left-behind families in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, and of Syrians in Lebanon who were hoping to join their close relatives who had migrated to Egypt, Sweden, Germany or other European countries.

3 Everyday Insecurities of Syrian Families in Lebanon and Germany

In my fieldwork in Lebanon and Germany, it was clear that for the Syrian participants, the idea of ‘family’ had blurred boundaries and multiple dimensions: family had not only a physical or spatial dimension, but also a temporal one. Separation was experienced as both a geographical and temporal estrangement, and associated with feelings of anticipation and waiting. For instance, Abu Mohammad, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, said that the separation from his wife made him feel suspended in a waiting state, bintiẓār – stuck in limbo – and that his life would finally start only when his left-behind wife could join him in Germany:

When I talk to my wife in the evening, we always imagine how our life will be when she comes here. I tell her that we will go to the park to make a barbecue, or to the cinema – we have never been to the cinema together! Oh my God, I cannot wait for her to be here and for our life to finally start! (Interview, Neumünster, Germany, March 2019)

Similarly, Saad, a Syrian man from Aleppo who arrived in Berlin in 2015, leaving his wife and children in Syria, explained:

The problem is not only not knowing when I will be able to see my wife and my kids, but if I will be able to see them again. I feel powerless because there is nothing I can do. I can only wait. But I do not know if all this waiting will lead to something eventually. (Interview, Berlin, Germany, February 2019)

The experience of separation for participants in Lebanon resonates with these feelings of suspension in Germany. Syrians in Lebanon also felt stuck in limbo, or in a double space – the resettlement country and the country where their loved ones were. Abu and Em Walid, a couple from Homs, lived in a state of constant worry and distress for their son, who was in Turkey and intended to attempt the dangerous journey to Europe. The couple remained in Lebanon, unsure of when or if they would ever see their son again. Em Walid was terrified at the idea of her son’s journey to Europe. She knew someone whose son had attempted it unsuccessfully and could not bear the idea that the same could happen to her son.

I didn’t want him to go. I told him, ‘Don’t go, it’s too dangerous!’ But he wouldn’t listen, and now he’s in Turkey. He’s working to collect the money, and then he will travel to Greece. […] If anything happens to him, I will never forgive myself. (Interview, Tripoli, Lebanon, June 2018)

Abu Walid, her husband, explained to me that the separation from their son caused his wife a sense of paralysis. She lived in a continuous state of suspension and waiting.

Sometimes, if we don’t hear from him for the entire day, she stops doing everything and starts worrying about him. She just sits there and doesn’t do anything. […] When she feels like that, I take care of the house and the chores because she’s paralysed. (Interview, Tripoli, Lebanon, June 2018)

Among the Syrians I met, family separation referred not only to being separated from spouses and children, but included being apart from one’s parents, siblings and extended families in general. Moreover, separation can occur in the course of different North-South migration trajectories and involve transit countries. While Germany was mostly a receiving country in terms of family reunification, Lebanon was both a sending country and a transit country where families waited to be reunited with their loved ones abroad. Some of the families I met in Lebanon considered themselves left-behind by close relatives in the West or in other Arab countries, especially Egypt, a destination for many Syrians after the outbreak of the Syrian war. Many families in Germany, on the other hand, had left family members behind in Turkey, a transit country for those who aimed for Europe.

The experiences of separated families in the two countries were especially similar in terms of the sense of insecurity that separation caused. These insecurities were not static but changed spatially and temporally (see also Tiilikainen, 2019, p. 149). Family separation among Syrian families engendered multiple everyday insecurities (Crawford & Hutchinson, 2016) that took a variety of forms and affected their wellbeing on many levels. Drawing on White (2010) and Tiilikainen (2019), I observed that for separated Syrian families in Lebanon and Germany, everyday insecurities had three main dimensions: material, relational and ethical (see also Al-Sharmani et al., 2019). Within the material dimension fell insecurities related to tightening financial and living conditions, which concerned most people in both countries. Relational insecurities were related to the multispatiality of relationships lived across borders and the double positionality sensed by separated families between the resettlement country and the home or transit country. The ethical dimension was especially evident in the sense of guilt that Syrian men and women in both countries felt for having left family members behind or for being a burden to close relatives who had migrated abroad.

These often-overlapping dimensions of the everyday insecurities experienced by Syrian families in both Lebanon and Germany serve as a backdrop for understanding how separated family members try to cope with the difficulties they face. Three main coping strategies emerged in my interviews: establishing new social networks and activities, consolidating family relationships, and reinforcing religious beliefs and practices. In the accounts of Syrian families in both countries, these coping strategies intersected with everyday insecurities in multiple ways.

4 Coping with Forced Family Separation in Displacement

4.1 Establishing New Social Networks and Activities

Many Syrian families in Lebanon and Germany searched for new networks and activities to reduce the stress, worries and tensions caused by forced family separation. Social networks are essential to establishing a new social space after migration (McKenzie & Rapoport, 2010). The literature has emphasized that even in protracted displacement, individuals are keen on rebuilding their social capital and social networks in the new environment (Uzelac et al., 2018). Often, migrants and refugees seek to build networks among communities with similar traditions, language or culture; in other circumstances, they build networks with local communities (Hagan, 1998). Migrant men are often expected to be the main participants in public social networks (Moliner, 2020) and to be the bridge between the household and the receiving country.

Although men’s social networks may no longer be primary for many families, as migrant mothers have engaged more readily with networks around kindergartens and schools than migrant fathers, for example, this seemed to be what Ibrahim, a man from Damascus in his late thirties who lived in Munich, expected. While waiting for his family to be reunited with him in Germany, Ibrahim had initially tried to establish new networks with the goal of creating a new social environment for them. However, as his family separation became protracted, he used these networks himself to construct a new individual self in his new community.

Ibrahim told me that he had experienced a great deal of stress related to his separation from his wife and children. Like many refugees, he had faced financial problems upon his arrival in Germany. Because his family was separated and he did not know when or if he would be reunited with them, he would also have to support his family in Syria for an indefinite amount of time. He was therefore experiencing material insecurities. However, Ibrahim was also experiencing ethical insecurities associated with his privileged position as compared to his family, their future as a household, and the traumatic experiences he had faced during his journey. Because he had survived forced migration and was now safe in Germany, he felt guilty that his family was still in danger in Syria.

I should not be here without my family. I should be with them [in Syria]. They are in very dangerous conditions. They cross the Lebanese border to reach the [German] embassy in order to keep this [family reunification] process going. […] I feel ashamed because I am here and they are not. (Interview, Munich, Germany, March 2019)

This ‘survivors’ guilt’ has been identified by other authors (Bemak et al., 2002; Bughra & Becker, 2005; Goveas & Coomarasamy, 2018) as a condition common to many refugees that contributes to emotional stress and jeopardizes migrants’ sense of safety, wellbeing and integration in the resettlement country (Bemak et al., 2002, p. 35). To overcome these anxieties, Ibrahim tried to re-establish a state of mental health by engaging in something that ‘made him feel good’ – playing football.

The first year in Germany was very hard. My family was not here with me, and I was very stressed all the time. I know I am luckier than others because I have a good job and a good salary – the highest I have ever had! But I could not help being miserable all the time. […] My days were all the same, and the only thing that made me feel happy was to talk to my family in the evening. But I could not bear the fact that they were away, and I could not sleep. Then, a colleague from work, a German man, invited me to play football one evening, and I went. And you know what happened? I remembered how much I liked playing football. I forgot about the journey, all the worrying and the stress. Now I play with them every week. I feel much better because playing helps me to be mentally fit, and my wellbeing is also the wellbeing of my family, even if we are separated. (Interview, Munich, Germany, March 2019)

While doing something for himself and his health, Ibrahim was also reaffirming himself in a new social space. He was able to access local networks in Germany to establish his role in a new social environment and negotiate a new sense of belonging.

Afaf, a Syrian woman and mother of three who lived in Lebanon, had a similar experience with yoga. For a long time, Afaf had lived in a state of anxiety and stress due to the harsh living conditions in Lebanon, financial insecurity and separation from her husband, who had forcibly migrated to Turkey. Finding a job in Lebanon while caring for three children had not been easy for Afaf, and she was almost completely dependent on the money her husband sends her. These material insecurities, together with the ethical insecurities of being a burden for her husband abroad, caused her a great deal of stress.

I would like to find a better job and be able to pay the expenses, the rent and the food so that I don’t have to ask my husband. […] My older kid told me that he wants to go to work, but I don’t want that. I want them to study. (Interview, El-Marj, Lebanon, September 2018)

Afaf struggled with both material and ethical insecurities, but like Ibrahim, she actively searched for help to support her wellbeing. She decided to take up yoga through a local humanitarian organization in order to take care of her mental and physical health, which had deteriorated due to the dire living conditions she was experiencing.

Being separated from my husband and not having any idea of when I’m going to see him again caused me a lot of stress. Yoga helped me to reduce stress and tension. It’s a different kind of treatment, but it’s my medicine. I’ve learnt how to breathe and relax, how to take care of myself. (Interview, El-Marj, Lebanon, September 2018)

Activities introduced by new friends and NGOs helped some participants, like Afaf in Lebanon and Ibrahim in Germany, to reduce the tension, anxiety and stress caused by being far from their families in a resourceful, non-harmful way.

The experiences of Iman, a woman from Aleppo in her thirties who was living in Chtoura, and Farid, a man from Damascus in his forties who was living in Berlin, were similar in the way they responded to the relational dimension of everyday insecurities. Both participants had been separated from their families for several years at the time of their interview, and they both had suffered the loss of their sense of emotional closeness with their families. In order to come to terms with these insecurities, they both sought support from their host communities. Iman was living in the Beqaa Valley region of Lebanon, in an unfinished house with her two children and her parents. Her husband was in Sweden.

Life as a woman alone in Lebanon is not easy. Even if less than in Syria, the community’s control over us is still strong. My parents are very open-minded, but our relatives are not. I felt alone when my husband left, and I had nobody to talk to or to laugh with. (Interview, Chtoura, Lebanon, August 2018)

Iman lived in precarious conditions, with material insecurities and a general sense of discomfort, while waiting for a new life to start once she would be able to reunite with her husband. However, Iman did not allow these insecurities to become an obstacle for her life in Lebanon. Instead, she deliberately chose to use this time to improve her life:

I started attending vocational training at an NGO for refugee women, and soon I found a really strong network of friends. I had two choices: sitting at home waiting for my husband to take me to Europe or doing something good for myself. (Interview, Chtoura, Lebanon, August 2018)

Through a local NGO that supports refugee women, Iman found a new support network on which she could rely.

I made really good friends within this network. If I have a problem, I can talk to at least three people I consider good friends. We help each other to overcome the hardship of life in Lebanon. (Interview, Chtoura, Lebanon, August 2018)

Farid had a similar experience in Germany. He was separated from his wife, who was still in Syria waiting to be reunited with him. Through the help of a German friend, he established a new network of connections in the local community. He did not let the solitude and seclusion of separation bring him down. Instead, he decided to engage in the new social space, even though he did not speak the language:

It’s not easy to live alone. I have to work double: outside the house and inside. In the beginning, it was difficult. I felt lonely most of the time, and I didn’t know how to organize my life. Maybe I was depressed. Then I made a German friend who helped me a lot. Even before we were really able to communicate, because I didn’t speak good German, he was taking me to the Jobcenter, helping me with everyday duties and responsibilities. He even helped me to find a job! Now we are good friends, also because I speak German and we can communicate. (Interview, Berlin, Germany, March 2019)

Through new connections, Farid was able to build a new sense of belonging that made life in separation more bearable.

I have been waiting for my wife to be reunited with me for three years now. I don’t know how much longer it’ll take. But I decided not to waste my life and to use this time to improve myself. Establishing good connections and friendships is a way to improve. (Interview, Berlin, Germany, March 2019)

Instead of waiting in limbo in the absence of his family, Farid established new social networks that support his wellbeing and developed new skills.

Previous studies on transnational migration confirm these results. In particular, Bryceson and Vuorela (2002) use the term frontiering to refer to the multiple ways in which migrants put into practice specific strategies to navigate different normative systems and to develop their lives in a new country where they lack support networks and social capital. Through frontiering they also define new identities, new spaces and new roles (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002, p. 11). Farid’s and Iman’s strategies also demonstrate how well-being takes place in reciprocity and in relationships as a process of meaningful engagement in a new environment (Al-Sharmani et al., 2019).

4.2 Consolidating Family Relationships

The second type of coping strategy used to respond to everyday insecurities was the consolidation of family relationships and mutual support among family members during the difficult time of separation. The account of Fatma, a woman from rural Damascus who was living in Leipzig, Germany, demonstrates this strategy. Her husband, with whom she was hoping to build a family, had stayed behind in Turkey. She had fled to Germany, only to realize that the migratory project they had envisioned would probably never come true. Fatma experienced relational insecurities due to her double positionality and transnationally divided intimate relationship:

Most of the time, I feel I’m not fully here [in Germany]. But I’m not there [in Turkey] either. I don’t feel I’m alive. I carry on, I live my life, but I’m not alive. (Interview, Leipzig, Germany, January 2019)

The frustration she felt at not being able to fully enjoy life in Germany did not, however, prevent her from establishing herself in the new social space or from creating a space in which she could turn insecurities into possible securities. She was able to transform the frustration brought about by her transnational positionality and to use this newly acquired strength to create a new way to do family in separation.

When my husband and I speak over the phone, we speak about the future. We come up with projects, we imagine he is here with me. This is the only way we have to be together at the moment, but planning the future helps us not to lose hope that this future is still possible. (Interview, Leipzig, Germany, January 2019)

Planning the future was a mechanism Fatma used to cope with separation and to project herself and her husband into a dimension in which they could exist as a family. In this way, they maintained hope and kept their aspirations alive.

Another participant, Amal, a 30-year-old Syrian woman living in Berlin, had also made an effort to establish a space for her family to exist in separation. She had fled Aleppo 5 years earlier, leaving her parents and siblings behind. At the same time, she escaped her violent ex-husband, with whom she had had a difficult divorce. In Germany, Amal’s financial burden increased considerably, as she still had to support her parents, but now without the help of her husband. In Berlin, Amal received state assistance and worked only occasionally as a freelance translator. These material insecurities, together with the trauma related to her divorce, being separated from her family and finding herself alone for the first time in her life, made her struggle greatly with her life in Germany. She told me that when she arrived, she felt depressed and constantly anxious due to the pressure of needing to support her parents.

I wasn’t able to do anything. For one year, I couldn’t even start studying the language. I wasn’t able to take care of myself, and I was living in a state of distress that affected everything. […] I needed help to overcome my trauma, the loss of my life in Syria, the failure of my marriage. But I couldn’t find the right way to live. I couldn’t even enjoy my regained freedom from my husband. […] Now I’m doing better. I have good days and bad days. But the pressure of my parents in Syria is something that affects everything else. (Interview, Berlin, Germany, March 2019)

Because extended families can rarely be reunited and left-behind family members in Syria lack other options for welfare assistance, refugees in Germany often need to deal with these financial pressures indefinitely. These economic difficulties can limit people’s options and opportunities in the host country and cause them to experience material insecurities – a precarious life with no alternative solution.

I’m sending almost the whole [state] allowance to my parents in Syria. Here I can work as a teacher of Arabic, and I do translations when I get the chance. […] My dream is to study here in Germany, but I can’t afford it because I have to support my parents. (Interview. Berlin, Germany, March 2019)

As Amal’s words demonstrate, sometimes the pressure to provide for one’s family in the country of origin or transit paralyses people to the point of making them unable to find ‘the right way to live’. When I met Amal for the first time, I had the feeling that she was still struggling with finding a balance between her responsibilities towards her left-behind family in Syria and her life in Germany. However, her attitude towards the future was rather positive, as she had high expectations for her new life. She argued that her relationship with her family had improved since they had been apart and that she had started putting more effort into it.

In the beginning, I felt the responsibility of supporting my parents emotionally as well as economically. They are old and alone. It is my duty to do so. But then I realized that in fact they are also supporting me. Even if we do not know if this separation will end, we help each other to get through it. (Interview, Berlin, Germany, March 2019)

Amal also claimed that her parents in Syria had gradually become more understanding of her needs and more open-minded towards her.

They no longer put pressure on me about getting married again or starting a family… or at least not like before. They understand that my position has changed, that I live in another environment, and I can make different choices. […] I think it also depends on the fact that I provide for them now, and they respect me more for this. […] They were not close-minded before, but 10 years ago, what I did [migrating to Germany and living alone] would have been impossible even to imagine. (Interview, Berlin, Germany, March 2019)

The consolidation of her relationship with her left-behind parents helped Amal to create a space for them in her new life and to build a sense of togetherness. At the same time, this connection helped her to build her resilience in the face of daily struggles. After an initial period in which Amal suffered from the stress of her multilayered trauma, she was able to strengthen her sense of closeness to her parents and do family from afar, which helped her to create wellbeing and cope with the hardship of displacement. These findings therefore confirm that sending financial remittances is a way to maintain the emotional wellbeing of migrants and their families, recreating a sense of family in separation (Mckay, 2007; Abrego, 2014).

Maisoun, a woman in her thirties from rural Aleppo whose husband was attempting the journey to Europe at the time of our interview, was facing both material and relational insecurities in Lebanon. Like many Syrians in Lebanon, Maisoun was experiencing precarious living conditions. She shared a two-room apartment on the outskirts of Tripoli with her sons and some relatives. She worked occasionally as a cleaner and tried not to depend on her relatives.

They gave me a place to live, and I appreciate it a lot, but I want to be independent. I want to reach the point where I can buy clothes for my kids without asking anything from anyone. (Interview, Tripoli, Lebanon, June 2018)

Maisoun also faced relational insecurities. In particular, she struggled with maintaining the stability of her family, which she perceived to be at risk because of the distance that separated her from her husband. The multispatiality of her relationship with her husband made her feel that their connection was more fragile than before:

Before, in Syria, we used to sit together and drink a cup of coffee after a long day. We used to talk about our day. We used to share everything. […] It’s not easy to be apart. Sometimes you feel closer [to your partner], sometimes further. (Interview, Tripoli, Lebanon, June 2018)

In order to keep the family together, Maisoun said she now put more effort into her relationship with her husband. She talked with him over the phone and followed him virtually on his journey.

I talk to my husband every night. […] Now even if we are separated, we try to maintain stability in our relationship. (Interview, Tripoli, Lebanon, June 2018)

Maisoun’s efforts to maintain family stability through contact with her husband from a distance also involved her children, with whom she shared information and stories about their father. In this way, her husband’s presence was also felt strongly by the children, creating a new way to do family from afar.

These accounts resonate with what Joseph (1993) calls ‘family connectivity’ and Bryceson and Vuorela (2002) call ‘familial relativising’. In other words, many participants were able to maintain family continuity in the transnational space and seemed to see themselves as an extension of their families and their families as an extension of themselves (Joseph, 1993).

Syrian women and men in separation were able to do family from afar by establishing relationships in which their boundaries as individuals were fluid and blurred enough to feel that they were a part of their significant others even during separation (Tuzi, 2022). For example, they imagined a possible future together in which they would be reunited as a family. In this way, they also kept hope, expectations and aspirations alive. My findings confirm that individuals are able to do family under different circumstances and in multiple dimensions (see Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002; Kofman, 2004), including during separation.

4.3 Reinforcing Religious Beliefs and Practices

The final category of coping strategies identified in both fieldwork investigations is the reinforcement of religiosity. Syrian participants in Lebanon and Germany engaged or re-engaged in religious activities and practices, especially as a way to cope with the ethical dimension of everyday insecurities. The most significant expression of ethical insecurities was ‘survivors’ guilt’, a feeling associated with having survived traumatic events such as wars or natural disasters (Bemak et al., 2002).

Nevertheless, participants who were displaced in Lebanon also felt guilt over being a burden for their family members abroad. For example, Khawla, a young woman from Damascus whose husband was in Sweden, lived off the money he sent her from abroad. Although her husband had not yet established himself financially in Sweden, she was dependent on him and felt the pressure of being a burden on him.

Participants who experienced these ethical insecurities often used religion to cope with these feelings that elicited emotional stress and jeopardized their sense of safety and wellbeing (Bemak et al., 2002, p. 35). Religion plays a fundamental role in the lives of many migrants, both individually and at a community level (Frederiks, 2015). Practices of ‘religious reflexivity’ (Martí, 2015) encompass problem-solving dynamics in a framework of self-construction (Tuzi, 2022). In this sense, religion becomes a reflexive action, not in deliberate religiosity in every sphere of life, but in reacting to settings that do not adhere to one’s religious values, commitments or desires (Martí, 2015; Archer, 2012).

Khawla explained that in religion she found a safe space where she could feel free from the pressures of her circumstances.

In my religion, I found a safe space. I was not so involved in religious practices before. I am a Muslim, but neither my husband nor my family are into religion so much. When [my husband] left, I decided to wear a veil as a way to protect myself. Praying came gradually, but it helped me to handle difficulties and to keep having hope for the future. (Interview, El-Marj, Lebanon, September 2018)

Khawla used religion as a tool to cope with harsh living conditions and with life as a lone woman. By reapproaching religion and religious practices in displacement, she constructed a new, resilient self. Similarly, Nabil, a man from Homs in his late twenties who lived in Berlin, found in religion the strength to manage the relational insecurities of separation. Nabil had been separated from his family for 3 years when I reached out to him in March 2019. He engaged in religious practices to find the strength to keep hope alive.

Praying helps me to believe that there will be a better future for my family and me. I did not know it could be so beneficial. I was never very religious. I believe in God and everything, but I have never truly engaged in practices. (Interview, Berlin, Germany, March 2019)

Nabil and Khawla had embraced a more religious life-view that provided them with meaning and support in their difficult family situations.

The relational insecurities experienced by research participants were not solely a result of their separation from family members, but also due to the loss of support networks and the difficulty of establishing new ones in displacement. For example, Abdallah, a man from the Golan Heights who lived with his sister’s family in Münster, Germany, was especially concerned about his lack of friends.

In Germany, I found no one I could really trust. People saw me either as a terrorist or as a broken thing. I really miss having friends and sharing my thoughts with them. (Interview, Münster, Germany, March 2019)

For Abdallah, religion offered a way to compensate for the loss of his support networks:

When I feel lonely, I pray. I read the Qur’an. […] I feel better after that. […] I have suffered a lot in my life. I escaped from bombs, I had no food, I ran away from oppressors, and I have been without documents […] I was not so religious before, but the discovery of religion helped me to get through all this, as I had only God to support me. (Interview, Münster, Germany, March 2019)

The ‘discovery of religion’, āiktishāf al-dīn, sustained him and helped him to heal from the painful experiences of war, violence, imprisonment and forced migration. As Abdallah’s experience demonstrates, experiencing or re-experiencing a religious self is a way to cope with the multilayered structures of separation in displacement.

These findings resemble what other authors have found. For example, Khawaja et al. (2008), in a study on Sudanese women in Australia, found that although refugee women had gone through life-threatening experiences and traumatic events during displacement, they had developed a series of coping strategies, such as reliance on religious beliefs and inner resources, and a focus on plans and aspirations. Religious beliefs were tied to the process of resilience and endurance in forced migration, but were also employed to adapt to life difficulties (Khawaja et al., 2008).

5 Conclusion

In this chapter, I have examined the experiences of separated Syrian families in Germany and Lebanon. Despite the different displacement contexts and the fact that there were no connections between my Syrian interviewees in the Global North and the Global South, I found parallelisms in the strategies displaced people employed to come to terms with the hardship of family separation. Family separation is a disruptive experience for everyone, but even more so if it is prolonged and there is no chance of reunification in sight. Separation for the participants in this research was an unwanted condition that was often experienced with great discomfort and concern. As my interviewees in Lebanon and Germany have explained, separation was experienced as a suspended state or limbo that created multiple everyday insecurities and impacted their lives as well as the wellbeing of their family members across borders.

Syrian women and men in this study used common strategies to come to terms with the overlapping material, relational and ethical everyday insecurities experienced in separation. In particular, families in both Lebanon and Germany established new networks and activities to improve their wellbeing, maintained and consolidated family relations from afar, and reinforced religious beliefs and practices in a framework of self-construction to heal from the painful experiences of separation. In this way, displaced Syrians in Lebanon and Germany exercised agency not only through tangible actions but also as ‘intangible, cognitive processes of reflection and analysis’ (Kabeer, 1999, p. 438). For example, they were able to do family from afar by establishing relationships in which their boundaries as individuals were fluid and blurred enough to feel that they were a part of their significant others even during separation. Some people imagined a possible future in which they would be reunited as a family. In this sense, separation was conceived as multidimensional, with not only a physical or spatial dimension, but also a temporal one.

However, separation should not be normalized, and separated families should not be considered merely a new way to live relationships in forced displacement and during migration. Family separation remains a disruptive experience that brings about great discomfort and concern for many migrants.

My work suggests three avenues for future research. First, it would be interesting to look at the impact of family separation on gender relations from an intersectional perspective. An intersectional lens would help to capture the multidimensional importance of different socially constructed categories that shape identities and to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the structural constraints on separated refugee families. Second, it is crucial to understand how family separation affects the social inclusion of Syrian refugees in resettlement countries. Finally, I suggest that more research be done on how coping strategies affect families once they are reunited. Some of the coping mechanisms identified in this chapter can be transformative and hence potentially divisive and challenging for reunited families. This chapter therefore invites further research as well as urging practitioners to focus on micro-level perspectives in order to shape more efficient macro-level responses.