Beyond Syria's War Economy: Trade, Migration and State-Formation Across Eurasia

Abstract

This article aims to challenge the methodological nationalism implicit in some writing on the Syrian conflict, by putting post-2011 transformations of Syrian commerce and mobilities in the context of wider Eurasian networks, histories and geographies. The transformations of Syrian commerce and mobility which have occurred since 2011 are often studied under the rubrics of the war economy and forced migration. But the effect of these frames, which focus on the spectacular and immediate, is often to isolate these phenomena from the wider geographical contexts and histories of circulation which have also shaped them. This paper seeks to bring these contexts into focus by exploring the activities, mobilities and networks of transnational Syrian traders who have travelled to and resided in the Chinese city of Yiwu over the past two decades. While these individuals are relatively few in number, they are significant because they enable us to see how Eurasian connections continue to shape border and mobility regimes and projects of state-formation in the region.