Syrians’ only option: Rethinking unfree labour through the study of displaced agricultural workers in the Middle East

This article revisits the notion of “unfree labour” through the study of displaced Syrians working informally in Middle Eastern agriculture, drawing on interviews with Syrian agricultural workers and their intermediaries in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. By taking a political economy perspective, we argue that the International Labour Organization’s definition of “forced labour” does not capture Syrians’ experience of “unfreedom”, born out of the interplay between restrictive asylum policies in Middle Eastern host countries and globalised food systems requiring cheap, mobile labour. Our ethnographic approach also reveals that Syrian refugees are recruited into global supply chains through kinship networks.