In her senior honors thesis last May, international relations concentrator Victoria Haddad-Salah’10 addressed the disparity between international codes of refugee treatment and the actual treatment of refugees on the ground in host countries.
To understand this asymmetry she looked to the historical shift of refugee policy in Jordan since 1948. She cited the civil war of 1970-71 between Palestinian guerrilla forces and the Jordanian monarchy as a critical turning point for the future of Jordanian refugee policy.
“Standard policy formulas and legal obligations do not explain refugee treatment, rather historical perceptions of threat explain why states accommodate refugees in distinct ways,” she concluded in her thesis titled "Defining the Borders of the Nation: Refugee Policy, Regime Security, and the Formation of National Identity in Jordan."
