Syrian farmers in the midst of drought and conflict: the causes, patterns, and aftermath of land abandonment and migration

ABSTRACT The prevailing narrative on the Syrian Civil War attributes it to climate-induced migration resulting from a severe drought, which serves as a central link connecting climate change with the 2011 protests. However, limited research has involved interviews with Syrians, with most studies focusing on drought's meteorological aspects and estimated migrant numbers. Our interdisciplinary study we conduct surveys with 82 former Syrian farmers in Turkey, carry out 16 in-depth interviews, and analyse satellite images to explore land use activities. Our objective is to answer three questions: (1) How can we distinguish between 'forced displacement' and 'migration as an adaptive response' during the 2007–2009 drought in Syria and the subsequent civil war? (2) How do drought, land abandonment, and migration interact in Syria since 2006? (3) How can we enhance understanding of 'trapped' individuals, considering mobility restrictions in host countries rather than solely immobility in the country of origin? Our findings are threefold: firstly, Syrian farmers employed adaptive measures against drought before the war; secondly, land abandonment during the drought was less extensive than portrayed in literature linking climate, migration, and conflict; and finally, we emphasize that refugees may feel trapped even after leaving their homes.


Introduction
The concept of migration involves a wide array of human mobility.It can range from internal, short distance, to international and long distance, from temporary to permanent resettlement, and from voluntary to forced (McLeman & Gemenne, 2018).Although internal and external migration are not mutually exclusive processes, most human migration patterns have been found to occur within domestic borders, i.e. internally, regardless of whether the main drivers are environmental or not (Obokata et al., 2014).Migration (partly) caused by environmental factors does usually not take place over long distances.A major reason for this is that migration, and especially international migration, requires economic and social capital (Findlay, 2011).Vulnerable populations who are unable to use migration as a way to adapt to environmental change may instead become trapped (Adams, 2016;Black & Collyer, 2014;Foresight, 2011;Zickgraf, 2018).
The political and economic contexts are important for how migration becomes an outcome of environmental change (Adger et al., 2015;Joarder & Miller, 2013;Kabir et al., 2018;Obokata et al., 2014).There is literature that links climateinduced migration with armed conflicts, where migration for adverse environmental conditions may lead to increased risk of conflict or violence (Linke et al., 2018), as well as risk of internal displacement and international migration (Abel et al., 2019;Missirian & Schlenker, 2017).Climate change has also been increasingly addressed as 'a threat magnifier of existing migration drivers' such as social, political, and economic factors (Parrish et al., 2020).Climate factors may contribute to people's (1) forced displacement, (2) decision to migrate or (3) resettlement as decided by political power holders.Additionally, people may become (4) trapped due to different factors that prevent migration, or (5) decide to stay immobile despite environmental risks (Parrish et al., 2020).
Migration has previously largely been viewed as a result of failed adaptation but has increasingly become conceptualized as one of many adaptation strategies in the face of environmental change (Ayeb-Karlsson et al., 2019;Gemenne & Blocher, 2017;Vinke et al., 2020;Wiederkehr et al., 2018).Research has, however, shown that migration may increase vulnerability and reduce the adaptive capacity of migrants and their families, often referred to as erosive or maladaptive migration (Adger et al., 2018;Radel et al., 2018;Rademacher-Schulz et al., 2014;Vinke et al., 2020;Warner & Afifi, 2014).
A large share of empirical research on environmentally induced migration focuses on drought as a potential driver of migration (Piguet et al., 2018).Drought has been found to influence both internal (Afifi et al., 2016;Joarder & Miller, 2013) and international (Obokata et al., 2014) migration decisions through economic losses at the household level.A study including eight cases across the world found that migration can be attributed to rainfall variability at varying extents depending on the nature of the rainfall variability as well as socio-economic factors of the affected household (Afifi et al., 2016).In many of the cases migration was used as an adaptation strategy in times of drought or heavy rainfall, that helped diversify livelihoods and increase resilience of the household.Studies of migration and perceptions of environmental change in Vietnam and Tanzania, however, found that drought rather decreased the likelihood of internal migration (Koubi et al., 2016;Ocello et al., 2015).Similarly, a study of climate effects on international migration from Burkina Faso and Senegal found that adverse climate conditions, such as drought and heatwaves, generally inhibit international migration (Nawrotzki & Bakhtsiyarava, 2017).
Recent studies have looked into large scale statistical relationships linking temperature and precipitation anomalies, and asylum applications (Abel et al., 2019;Missirian & Schlenker, 2017;Schutte et al., 2021).While Missirian and Schlenker (2017) found a link between temperature anomalies (both positive and negative) in origin countries, and asylum applications to the European Union (EU), they found that precipitation could not predict such international migration.While some (Schutte et al., 2021;Owain & Maslin, 2018) argue climate factors are weak or not significant predictors of asylum migration and displacement, Abel et al. (2019) find a relationship between drought severity and asylum applications for the three-year period between 2010 and 2012 in Syria and North Africa, and suggest that there is a causal link between climate, conflict and asylum for that subset area and period.
It has been more than a decade since the protest movements against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria turned into a fullscale war in the country.There are over 6.8 million Syrians who live outside of Syria, 1 while nearly 7 million Syrians remain internally displaced (Ambrus (ed.) et al., 2021).Turkey continues to host the largest number of Syrian refugees with an estimated 3.7 million Syrians under temporary protection (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2022).According to figures shared by the Presidency of Migration Management in Turkey, Istanbul hosts the largest number of Syrians under temporary protection (approx.530.000), followed by Gaziantep (approx.450.000),Şanlıurfa (approx.350.000),Hatay (approx.330.000),Adana (approx.245.000), and Mersin (approx.340.000) (Presidency of Migration Management, 2023).In the meantime, Syrian farmers in Syria continue to face challenges due to a variety of factors including drought, economic difficulties (e.g.high inflation rates, weakening currency, energy and fuel shortages), as well as poor agricultural and water management (ACTED, 2022).
The main motivation of the 2011 protests in Syria was to end repression and injustices, inspired by the protests in Egypt and Tunisia earlier that year (Daoudy, 2020).At the same time, the Syrian Civil War has been portrayed as a climate-induced conflict both in media and in research (Ash & Obradovich, 2020;Gleick, 2014;Kelley et al., 2015;Werrell et al., 2015).In this narrative, climate induced migration, caused by a severe drought, is a central mechanism that links climate change with the start of the protests in 2011.This narrative has received much criticism for being oversimplified, deterministic and for ignoring important contextual information (Eklund & Thompson, 2017;Hoffmann, 2018;Selby, 2020;Selby et al., 2017aSelby et al., , 2017b)).So far, much research on the topic has focused on the meteorological aspects of drought and the different estimated numbers of migrants (Ash & Obradovich, 2020;Gleick, 2014;Kelley et al., 2015), only a small part of the literature has talked to the subjects of the matter (e.g.Syrian farmers) (Zuntz, 2021;Daoudy, 2020;Fröhlich, 2016), and no thorough analysis focusing on the question of climate induced migration in Syria has yet been carried out.
In this paper, we address these gaps and provide a more thorough understanding of the migration patterns of Syrian farmers from 2006 onwards, and their links to climate adaptation, land abandonment, armed conflict, and mobility.Through land assessment and extensive fieldwork with former Syrian farmers who now live in Turkey, we aim to answer the following three questions: 1. How can we differentiate 'forced displacement' and 'migration as an adaptive response' with reference to the 2007-2009 drought in Syria and the civil war in 2011? 2. How did drought, land abandonment, and migration interplay in Syria since 2006? 3. How can we broaden our understanding of 'trapped' people, considering the mobility restriction they face in the country of asylum, instead of focusing only on immobility in the country of origin?
With these research questions we aim to dive deeper into the migration part of the climate-migration-conflict nexus and untangle aspects that have so far largely been neglected in the literature on the role of the drought in the Syrian conflict.Through interdisciplinary methods that combine land abandonment assessment and accounts of former Syrian farmers, we explore the nuances between forced displacement and migration as an adaptation strategy; ask if and how drought, land abandonment and migration interplayed; and reconsider the concept of 'trapped populations' and explore alternative perspectives on forced displacement and migration as adaptation strategies.

Drought, conflict, and migration in Syria
Syria, and the larger Fertile Crescent area in the Middle East, experienced a severe drought that began in the winter of 2007/2008 and lasted three years (Eklund & Seaquist, 2015;Eklund & Thompson, 2017;Trigo et al., 2010).The drought has been portrayed as the 'worst 3-year drought in the instrumental record' (Kelley et al., 2015) and resulted in significant agricultural failures and internal migration (Gleick, 2014).Since 2014, a debate on whether climate change, manifested through a prolonged drought, was a contributing factor in the Syrian protest wave in 2011 has been ongoing.While a group of scholars argue for this hypothesis (Gleick, 2014;Kelley et al., 2015;Ash & Obradovich, 2020), others have argued that the role of drought has been overstated and that there is no clear causality between drought and migration (or conflict) in Syria (Daoudy, 2020;Eklund et al., 2022;Ide, 2018;Selby et al., 2017aSelby et al., , 2017b;;Selby, 2019).Among this literature, Fröhlich's (2016) article stands out for building her arguments on 30 semi-structured interviews she conducted with Syrians in Jordan.She finds that other factors, such as unemployment, food prices, and corruption, played a role in political protests in Daraa, Syria.Eklund and Thompson's research (2017) also shows that the effects of drought in the same period were significantly different in Syria and Turkey, two neighbouring countries with similar climate conditions, indicating the importance of political and socioeconomic factors that led to increased drought vulnerability in Syria.Similarly, Iran was able to adapt various strategies and projects to cope with water scarcity and frequent droughts in the region (Delfiyan et al., 2021).Syria, however, did not have the necessary adaptive capacity to help rural producers tackle the climate and weather-related risks (Bobojonov et al., 2014).
Previous research also shows that the drought during 2007-2009 was part of a downward trend in land productivity in Syria since the early 2000s (Eklund & Thompson, 2017).This decrease in productivity coincided with a change of course in Syria's economy: the development of a 'social market economy' (Daoudy, 2020), which, according to Selby (2019), became the main cause of the agricultural crisis in the country.The new economic policy meant that Syria's economy was liberalized, state farms were privatized, and the previous price controls were reduced (Selby, 2020).In 2005, a law was passed that prohibited the drilling of new wells to reduce the strain on groundwater reserves, but the law was not implemented and thus groundwater levels continued to drop (Ababsa, 2015).
Another key change was that fuel prices, previously subsidized by the government, increased by 350 percent, affecting medium-scale farmers who used tractors and motor pumps to extract water for irrigation (Ababsa, 2015).Fuel prices thus increased to a level where wheat and cotton production in large parts of the country became economically unsustainable, resulting in widespread rural-to-urban migration even before the 2007-2009 drought (Mohr, 2021;Selby et al., 2017a).Zuntz's (2021) study also shows that migration has long been a tactic Syria's rural poor used, and these preestablished transnational ties were mobilized by Syrians after 2011 to find jobs in agricultural as well as other (e.g.humanitarian) sectors in Jordan.

Methods
To explore the conflict, drought, and migration nexus in Syria, we apply an interdisciplinary approach by collecting data in three categories of empirical research in climate mobility research (De Sherbinin et al., 2022): (1) Migration focused survey methods, (2) Qualitative field studies, and (3) Land use activity data based on satellite images.We focus on the period between 2006 and 2022 (when fieldwork was carried out).We start from 2006 to include a short period before the 2007-2009 drought, without going further back in the past to avoid recollection bias for our respondents.Whenever our respondents made comments about earlier periods than 2006, we took note of their responses.
Ethical approval was not required for the survey and indepth interviews, as the qualitative empirical research was carried out in Turkey (a non-EU country).We did not collect any personal data from the research subjects.Our data collection complies with both EU legislations and national legislations in Turkey.Information we collect does not include sensitive information (ethnicity, political opinions, health, union memberships, sexual orientation, etc.) that could be traced back to living individuals.No personal data is collected or transferred from an EU country to a non-EU country.Collected research data, which does not include any personal information, is transferred from Turkey to Sweden.The transfers comply with the laws of Turkey, where the laws state that informed consent and transfer to a country that is a party to the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals about Automatic Processing of Personal Data (the Convention) are the main requirements.Our research subjects were informed about the research project and their contribution, and the consent was taken in oral format, where the researchers noted the date and place when oral consent was taken.

Migration focused survey
The fieldwork with former Syrian farmers in Turkey was carried out in collaboration with the Development Workshop Cooperative (DWC, Kalkınma Atölyesi Kooperatifi), a cooperative based in Turkey that carries out extensive research in the areas of development and sustainability.A research team composed of the authors of this article and DWC researchers carried out fieldwork in two stages.In the first stage, between December 2021 and January 2022, we did 82 surveys with former Syrian farmers in the Çukurova region (including provinces of Adana, Hatay, and Mersin) and the Middle-Euphrates Valley (including provinces of Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa and Kilis), in southern and south-eastern parts of Turkey (Figure 1).Although Istanbul hosts the largest number of Syrians, we excluded it from our research and instead focused on the agricultural zones of the Çukurova region and Euphrates Valley, where many Syrian agricultural workers live.The six provinces where we conducted surveys and interviews are home to more than 1.2 million Syrians.
Our research participants were selected from four different Syrian governorates located in north-eastern Syria (Figure 1).Using a combination of surveys and interviews, we targeted individuals who were engaged in agriculture in Syria, whether on their own lands, rented lands, or as sharecroppers.Our sample was drawn from the Jazira region, an area with significant agricultural production that was severely affected by the 2007-2009 drought (Eklund et al., 2022;Selby, 2019).The majority of our interviewees came from Aleppo (48%), with 18% coming from Al Hassakeh, 17% from Deir Ez Zor, and 17% from Raqqa (Figure 2).The total average size of the land cultivated by our respondents was approximately 1270 hectares.
The survey was composed of 33 questions in total, with subsections to several questions.The survey was organized into three main parts, where we asked questions to understand the intertwined nature of social, economic, political, demographic, and environmental drivers of migration (Black et al., 2011;Foresight, 2011).In part 1, we asked our respondents (and their household members') current conditions/ demographic information such as their age, marital status, education, and employment status, and income.In Part 2, we asked about their migration during the period between 2006 and 2011, such as when they migrated, their migration routes, and the political, environmental, social, and economic reasons of their decision to migrate.In Part 3, we asked our respondents about Syria in the pre-2011 period.The questions in this section mainly included information about their agricultural production (e.g.products, use of fertilizers, use of irrigation, soil quality, cultivation, harvesting).In the last section of Part 3, we asked our respondents about their projections about the future.We directed both open-ended and closed-ended questions to our respondents, and therefore our analysis of the survey data includes quantitative and qualitative content.
The research team used its existing fieldwork experience and prior connections with the Syrian agricultural workers in the region.We used snowball sampling technique and asked Syrian farmers to refer us to other Syrian farmers they knew.The surveys were consent-based, and the names of our respondents were not collected.The survey questions were prepared in English, but then translated into Turkish and Arabic before fieldwork.In a few cases, our respondents used some Turkish expressions or sentences during the interviews, but the interviews were mainly carried out in Arabic by the two research team members who spoke Arabic.
The gender balance among respondents were uneven, with 14 female and 68 male respondents.The research team  expected this imbalance, and therefore paid special attention to noting down female household members' comments during the surveys.Since the main communication with the respondents were carried out by a female researcher, females in the household felt comfortable sitting with the research team during the surveys and occasionally participating in the discussion.
Qualitative field studies: in-depth interviews In the second stage, we carried out semi-structured in-depth interviews.The interviews were carried out in the provinces of Adana, Mersin, Hatay, and Gaziantep in Turkey in July 2022.The main purpose of the interviews was to gather more detailed information about their lives as farmers in Syria (e.g.agricultural activities, coping strategies with drought), causes and routes of their migration, and their current lives in Turkey.Before selecting potential interviewees, we made a list of survey respondents who mentioned drought and/or water scarcity as a factor that affected their decision to migrate.We categorized these respondents into three groups: Those who identified drought and water scarcity as reasons for migration between 2006 and 2010, after 2011, or both periods.We then selected respondents based on our ability to reach them and their availability to participate in the second stage of fieldwork.We were able to reach 16 respondents.Interviews were consent-based, consents being taken orally on site.We have not collected any personal information and did not audio record the interviews.One of the interviews were carried out at a café as requested by the interviewee, and two were carried out over the phone because the interviewees were doing seasonal agricultural work in different provinces elsewhere in Turkey during the time of fieldwork.The rest of the interviews were carried out in the households of the interviewees, which were sometimes apartments and more frequently the container or tent areas they lived in.We had the same Arabic and Turkish speaking researchers who carried out the survey, which provided acquaintance and sense of trust between the research team and interviewees.
Although we are aware that the survey and interview data cannot be representative for all former Syrian farmers, we find this empirical data crucial in providing in-depth and ground-based accounts of former Syrian farmers about their experiences with drought, conflict, and migration.Such indepth knowledge is also important to cross-check our findings in remote sensing analysis.

Land abandonment assessment
To link migration during the drought (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) and early conflict (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) periods to land abandonment, we used a dataset on cropland activity/fallow patterns that covers Syria and Iraq for the period 2000-2016 (Eklund et al., 2020).The dataset is based on a year-by-year classification of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument, with a spatial resolution of 250 metres.Cropland activity/fallow patterns were derived by defining a normal cropland extent based on the most frequent land cover class for the period and then comparing each year's cropland extent to that normal cropland extent.Accuracy evaluations show that the accuracy for cropland activity/fallow patterns is around 90% (Eklund et al., 2022).
We summarized fallow data for the drought (2006-2010) and early conflict (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) periods by counting the number of fallow years for each pixel.We defined land abandonment as being fallow for three years or more.For each of the two periods, we summed the area that was fallow for 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 years per governorate.

Findings
Forced displacement or adaptive response?
Forced displacement is a general term that involves cases when individuals and communities are forced or obliged to leave their homes in cases of conflict-, development-, or disasterrelated events or situations (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al., 2014;Zetter, 2018).Adaptive response, on the other hand, refers to a more conscious assessment of alternatives to cope with these situations which might eventually include the decision to migrate (Barnett & Webber, 2010).These two concepts may be differentiated by considering post-migration circumstances of migrants, and whether or not they 'can live equally well or better after their migration' (Vinke et al., 2020).To retrieve empirical knowledge about the process that leads to migration of former Syrian farmers, we asked them questions about their internal and external (cross-border) migration and other adaptive strategies they used since 2006, including periods of drought and conflict.
Our findings show (Figure 3) that between 2006 and 2010, migration was dominantly within Syria (n = 29).Among those who externally migrated in this period (n = 13), some went to Lebanon (n = 11), while others went to Qatar (n = 1) and Saudi Arabia (n = 1).All 13 respondents who went abroad to work came back to Syria, only to migrate again after 2011.The number of respondents who internally migrated after 2011 (n = 28) is almost the same as those who internally migrated between 2006 and 2010.As we have done the survey with former Syrian farmers who now live in Turkey, all 82 had eventually migrated externally (to Turkey).
Internal migration among our respondents was highest in 2006, and then in 2012, whereas external migration persistently increased from 2011 to 2014, and continued to remain high in 2015 (Figure 3).Very few of our respondents migrated during the most severe drought years (2008 and 2009), and most migration (internal and external) took place during years with close to average precipitation and evaporation levels (see e.g.Eklund et al., 2022).Despite this, the majority of our respondents who migrated between 2006 and 2010, either internally or externally, said they either agreed (n = 6) or strongly agreed (n = 26), while only 6 respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that the drought between 2006 and 2010 was an important factor that affected their decision to migrate.When we added those who internally migrated in the period after 2011, the number of respondents who agreed (n = 9) and strongly agreed (n = 41) increased to 50, whereas only 8 respondents disagreed (n = 4) or strongly disagreed (n = 4) (Figure 4).
We also asked our respondents to identify the most important factors that affected their decision to migrate, where they were asked to choose between (1) War, conflict, security, (2) Financial difficulties such as unemployment, (3) Job opportunities elsewhere, (4) Cultural, political, religious, ethnic, or gender-based discrimination, (5) Lack of access to services such as health care or education, (6) Land degradation such as land becoming less productive, (7) Drought meaning periods with lower water availability, (8) Water scarcity where lack of fresh water resources do not meet standard water demand in longer periods, and (9) Personal reasons.
We did not ask them to rank these factors to avoid recollection bias.Additionally, we wanted to see how different factors coexisted, albeit at different levels of importance.
Our findings (Figure 5) show that for our sample, the main factors that affected their decision to migrate before the war (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) were related to financial difficulties and job opportunities elsewhere.Drought and water scarcity were other important factors in their decision to migrate during this period.Following the beginning of civil war in 2011, armed conflict became a factor that almost all our respondents pointed out.Our findings also show that financial difficulties continued to be a dominant factor that affected peoples' decision to migrate after 2011.After the war in Syria, lack of access to services such as health and education has become a factor that a large group of respondents addressed.We also find that water scarcity and drought were persisting reasons that were identified by former Syrian farmers as factors that impacted their decision to migrate after 2011.
Our survey and interview data reveal that our respondents were using adaptive measures to deal with drought and water scarcity.Some were switching to animal husbandry, some were doing trade (e.g.selling live sheep, diesel fuel, fruits and vegetables), some had short-term labour migration (e.g. for construction work, portage) to larger cities in Syria or other countries (predominantly Lebanon), or short-term agricultural work in other farms in Syria.Although an analysis of gendered dimensions of migration in relation to drought was beyond the scope of our study, we were able to observe that it was predominantly the male research participants in the households who were migrating as an adaptation strategy, whereas the same was not the case for female research participants.
When we asked our respondents about the tipping point that resulted in their long-term migration decision during the indepth interviews, almost all our interviewees identified war and lack of security as the ultimate moment that resulted in their decision to leave Syria.Although war, conflict, and security concerns were commonly addressed, our interviewees often did not blame one side but the co-existence of different armed groups (e.g. the Islamic State (IS), Free Syrian Army (FSA), People's Protection Units (YPG) or Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) led by the Kurds, and regime forces led by Bashar al-Assad).

Nuances between land abandonment, migration, and continued links with the former lands
What are the potential links between land abandonment, migration, and Syrian farmers' continued links with their former lands in the four Syrian governorates: Aleppo, Al Hassakeh, Deir Ez Zor and Raqqa?Land abandonment refers to the discontinuing of agricultural activities, often followed by a subsequent recovery of natural vegetation (Levers et al., 2018).The drivers of land abandonment are manifold and include both biophysical (e.g.water scarcity, land degradation) and socio-economic and political (e.g.challenging livelihood situations, policies) factors.Land abandonment has also been associated with migration in different contexts, e.g. with areas of outmigration in Europe (Levers et al., 2018), labour migration in China (Lu, 2020;Qian et al., 2016;Xu et al., 2019) and migration due to armed conflict (Baumann et al., 2015;Baumann & Kuemmerle, 2016).
We recorded 29 internal and 13 external migration events during the drought period (2006-2010) (Figure 6).Deir Ez Zur was the governorate where most respondents reported that they had migrated during this period, both internally (57%) and externally (50%).Around half of the respondents from Al Hassakeh and Raqqa reported that they had migrated internally during this period.Only 15% of respondents from Aleppo reported internal migration, and no one from Aleppo reported external migration during this period.
To better understand land abandonment, we also asked our respondents if they fallowed their lands (Table 1).We categorized their responses as frequently (i.e. they fallow their lands in regular intervals), infrequently (i.e. they fallow their lands in irregular intervals, e.g.some years only or in response to drought), no (i.e. they did not fallow their lands), and n/a where we did not get an answer.Fallow patterns varied between governorates, with frequent use of fallow ranged from 20 to 47%, and infrequent fallow ranged from 7% to 21%.Between 43% and 59% of respondents said that they never fallowed their land, most of them coming from Aleppo governorate.
The analysis of land abandonment and fallow patterns in the four different governorates shows that most of the land was actively cultivated (i.e.fallow 0-2 years) for both the drought and early conflict periods (Figures 7 and 8).Respondents from Aleppo reported the lowest amount of fallow usage, which corresponds well with the results from the land abandonment and fallow analysis (Figure 7), where half of the land was never fallowed during the drought period.In Al Hassakeh, 82% of the land was fallowed one or two years, but only 54% reported fallow usage (infrequent or frequent).Respondents from the other two governorates reported a slightly lower fallow usage (around 50%), and close to 60% of the land in those governorates were fallowed one or two years.During the drought period, about 31.4% of the cropland in Raqqa could be considered abandoned (i.e.fallow three years or more), while the share of abandoned cropland was much smaller in Deir Ez Zor (14.4%),Al Hassakeh (9.1%) and Aleppo (6.4%).
The share of area which was never fallowed also increased in Raqqa (9%-23%) and Al Hassakeh (9%-38%), suggesting that some areas become more intensely cultivated during armed conflict, as an effect of increased need for local agricultural production or changes in who uses the land.The area that was never fallowed also decreased sharply in Aleppo (from 50 to 24%).
After migrating from Syria, most land was, according to respondents, abandoned or left fallow (44%), while some respondents said their lands were still used by family members or relatives (26%), or they were occupied by soldiers (22%) (Figure 9).This shows that many of the areas belonging to our respondents may have seen a shift in who was tending to the land, either family members or relatives, who may carry out farming activities in similar ways, or from completely new groups, who may change fallow patterns, as the above analysis suggests.
Several of our respondents added further comments, highlighting they got no income or other benefit from their former lands, and that farming is not profitable for their family members either given the little rainfall and lack of water resources.The third most common answer is that their lands were occupied by regime forces or other insurgent groups.One respondent said, 'we heard that they laid mines in our lands' (interviewee no 9), another one said, 'all we had there was bombed and demolished' (interviewee no 27), while another interviewee told us that the government confiscated their lands and that it was now renting out these lands to others (interviewee no 33).Those who said they did not own lands were either renting others' lands to do farming, or they worked as sharecroppers in other larger lands owned by others.Two respondents were classified as 'other' because one said she did not know what her husband was doing in Syria (interviewee no 5), while the other said he was hiring people to work on his lands (interviewee no 14).
While our respondents reported most drought period migration from Deir Ez Zor governorate (more than half of the respondents migrated internally), our land abandonment analysis showed that most drought period abandonment occurred in the Raqqa Governorate.Furthermore, our land abandonment analysis showed that Deir Ez Zor saw the most widespread land abandonment during the conflict period (2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015).Our fieldwork showed that land abandonment/ fallow was also one of the two most common responses to what had happened to the land after leaving Syria, along with occupation for soldiers or other armed groups.In Aleppo, which also had a high rate of abandonment during the conflict period, it was more commonly reported that the land was used by family members or relatives who still live in Syria.
'Trapped' in the host country?Syrian refugees' projections about their future Immobility has been receiving more attention in migration and climate mobility studies.Reasons for immobility may be related to personal and household circumstances (e.g.lacking financial resources, strong familial, cultural, or religious ties) and immigration policies (e.g.border controls) (Boas et al., 2022;Wiegel et al., 2019).Low-skilled and low-income groups, along with women, children, and the elderly, may be 'trapped  in transit' in the instances of forced displacement (Zickgraf, 2018).Although we interviewed only those who were able to leave Syria, our interviewees often emphasized a different form of immobility they perceived to be suffering: immobility in the form of feeling trapped in the host country.This is due to the status of Syrians in Turkey, who are not defined as refugees but people under temporary protection.The Temporary Protection Regulation scheme in Turkey provides Syrian refugees certain rights and benefits, such as access to health and education services, social assistance, and access   to the labour market, but it also restricts their mobility within the country.Syrians, who would like to change their city of registration or have a short-term visit to another province, are obliged to submit a request to the Provincial Directorate of Migration Management (PDMM) (Refugee Rights Turkey, 2017).Syrians who would like to travel are obliged to request a short-term travel permission from the PDMM offices in provinces they live in.These travel permissions are often given for 15 days, with a possibility of extension for an additional 15 days only under the condition that Syrian refugees inform the PDMM upon returning to their city of registration (Refugee Rights Turkey, 2017).These travel permission documents, and the difficulties of getting them, have been addressed as a major challenge by several of our interviewees.One interviewee, who was living in a tent area with his crowded family at the time of interview, explained that they wanted to go back to Hatay from Mersin, but they were unable to do so because they did not have the required travel permission documents.He said, 'When we return to Hatay, we will rent an apartment to stay.It is very expensive here; they ask for 10,000 Turkish Lira [Approximately 550 Euros] for one-year rent' (interviewee no 8).There was one other interviewee who was in Bursa with a travel permission due to a funeral, whom we interviewed over the phone.She explained that things seemed much better in the province of Bursa, and she was asked to stay there and do some seasonal agricultural work to earn more money.She said, 'daily wage here is much higher, work conditions here in Bursa are better compared to Hatay, but I cannot stay here because of the travel permissions issue' (Interviewee no 9).Several other interviewees underlined that not being able to go to different provinces even for seasonal agricultural work, which they identified as an important restriction, especially given that agricultural lands in Çukurova and Middle-Euphrates valley are spread in several provinces.Another interviewee said, 'I feel like I am being choked here.The war in Syria was difficult, but sometimes I say, 'what is this place that I came to'?!I cannot even get a travel permission document' (interviewee no 52).At the time of our interview, she was planning to leave Turkey for Europe through human smugglers.
The literature already emphasizes how different factors such as social class, integration, and desires interplay in determining 'how refugees navigate their incorporation process in their host country and form decision of migrating to another country, settling in, or returning' (Üstübici & Elçi, 2022).In our survey, we asked our respondents about their projections for the future with two open-ended questions: (1) What are your expectations for yourself and your family in the near future?(2) Do you plan to return to Syria or immigrate to another country in the future?In response to the first question, the majority of our respondents mentioned their desires such as good education and life conditions for their kids, end of war and a peaceful Syria, family reunification, better jobs or return to farming business, and getting Turkish citizenship.Some respondents were more doubtful about their future, saying they had 'no expectations, no plans' (interviewee no 17) or 'no future' (interviewee no 43 & 60).Others thought there was 'only death' (interviewee no 51) and their future was 'in grave' (interviewee 41), while a few respondents said it was 'up to Allah [God]' (interviewee no 6, 34 & 46).Our respondents' answers to the second question are classified in 7 groups (Table 2).
While 13 respondents claimed they just wanted to go back to Syria, 29 respondents said they wanted to return to Syria 'if there is peace and security', 'if Bashar al-Assad dies', 'if economy in Syria gets better'.For the 23 respondents who desired to stay in Turkey, four respondents said they wanted to stay if they got Turkish citizenship or if they could not migrate elsewhere.
When the if conditions and but conjunctions are removed from the categories, we find that more than half of our respondents desired to go back to Syria, whereas more than one fourth wanted to stay in Turkey, less than 20% of our respondents wanted to move elsewhere in Europe or North America (Figure 10).
Taking the six-months period between our survey data collection and in-depth interviews, we asked our interviewees if there had been changes in their thoughts about their future or if they still thought the same way they did six months ago.Some of our interviewees said their opinions changed in the past half-year.These interviewees referred to the increasing inflation rates in Turkey and high costs of living, saying they now would like to go to Europe.We also interviewed people who said they had tried (and failed) to smuggle to Europe, and some other who said they were planning to go to Europe through smuggling.One of our respondents explained that he attempted to get to Austria, but he was caught in the border of Turkey.Another interviewee wanted to go to Europe, hoping for an eye-treatment for their baby who has vision disorders.Another interviewee mentioned that her husband would soon try to smuggle to Europe, which would hopefully lead to family reunification later on.These respondents revealed that they felt trapped in Turkey, as they were now considering if they could/ wanted to go elsewhere, such as a new destination like Europe or their home country Syria.This is also an indication of how diverse 'new forms of mobility' emerge based on the migration regimes of host countries and the changing or lasting conditions in the sending country (Valenta et al., 2020).

Discussion
In this paper, we explored the conflict, drought, and migration nexus in Syria with the aim to explain (1) the differences between forced displacement and migration as adaptive response in relation to drought and conflict, (2) the dynamics between drought, land abandonment, migration, and continued links with the former lands after migration to a new country, and (3) the concept of trapped people from a different perspective that considers mobility restriction in the new host countries of migrants.Our empirical research was based on surveys and in-depth interviews with former Syrian farmers now based in Turkey, and land use activity data based on satellite data.
Our findings suggest that Syrian farmers were still able to take adaptive measures to the effects of drought in Syria before the war.They were mainly doing other jobs, such as husbandry, trade, or construction work, both within Syria and abroad.This, however, did not mean that they stopped doing agriculture, as they often either had family members who continued to live and work on their lands, or the respondents were going to their lands once or twice a year for sowing and harvesting.This means that although Syrian farmers took adaptive measures, they were not necessarily abandoning their lands.Similarly, Eklund and Pilesjö (2012) found that farmers in the rural areas of northern Iraq (an area neighbouring Al Hassakeh, Syria) rarely relied solely on agriculture for their livelihoods.Our research also shows that although drought and water scarcity were given as important reasons that affected their decision to migrate, few people had migrated during the worst drought years and the turning point that caused long-term migration was during the war and conflict period after 2011.The finding that few people had actually migrated during the drought is in line with literature that shows that climate stress may impede both internal and international migration (Koubi et al., 2016;Nawrotzki & Bakhtsiyarava, 2017;Ocello et al., 2015) and that the perceived environmental change may be more important for the migration decision than the actual measured change (De Longueville et al., 2020;Parsons & Nielsen, 2021).This suggests that the initial narrative on drought driving migration before the Syrian uprising, as outlined by e.g.Ash & Obradovich, 2020;Gleick, 2014 andKelley et al., 2015, is not as straightforward, and that more research is needed to better understand the migration occurring in Syria during the years before the uprising.
We also found both divergences and convergences between the land use analysis and the survey and interview results.Overall, we find that land abandonment during the drought period was not as extensive as has been portrayed in the literature on climate-migration-conflict nexus (Angermayr et al., 2022;Ide, 2018;Kelley et al., 2015;Werrell & Femia, 2012).Some nuance is provided through the surveys, showing what happens to the lands after leaving for good: abandonment, occupation by armed groups/soldiers or continued use by family/relatives.This shows that migration can take place without land abandonment, depending on the context, however, abandonment can be associated with (conflict driven) migration in the Syrian context.
The difference between migration and abandonment reported by our respondents, and the lack of abandonment detected in the land activity analysis can be explained by several factors.Firstly, the land activity analysis covers the whole area of interest, while the survey and interview data only cover a subset of the population in the four governorates.Secondly, and related to the above point, the people interviewed were all people who had migrated internationally, which means that they are not representative for the whole population in north-eastern Syria.Research has shown that people with internal migration experience are sometimes more likely to migrate abroad (Hugo, 2016;King & Skeldon, 2010), which means that the informants may generally belong to a more mobile subset of the population and therefore may not be representative for the whole population of North and East Syria.Thirdly, the remote sensing dataset is rather coarse, both pixel wise and aggregation level wise, and might not show all land use activity changes that may have taken place.This analysis of droughtand conflictinduced migration and land abandonment is therefore mainly an attempt to explore a question from different perspectives, which can help us get one step closer to understanding how we can use remote sensing in mobility studies.
We also show how refugees can become or feel trapped, or stranded (Valenta et al., 2020), even after leaving their homes.Several of our respondents claimed that they were unable to travel within Turkey, due to the Temporary Protection regulations Syrians are subject to (e.g.travel permits from PDMM).Considering that 25% of Syrians (around 1 million people, 20% of which are minors) in Turkey do not have a work permit, they often work as undocumented workers.The majority of our survey respondents have also been working in temporary works, mainly in agricultural labour market.Çukurova region and the Middle-Euphrates Valley, where we carried out our fieldwork, are regions where agriculture is a major work sector.These agricultural areas are dispersed into several neighbouring provinces, and the inability to travel for Syrians become a key obstacle in working in available jobs in different places during the harvesting season.
We conclude by highlighting some of the implications of this research beyond the Syria-Turkey context.We believe our research provides a useful example of interdisciplinary research, where peoples' accounts on the ground are analysed together with satellite data taken from space.In addition to land abandonment assessment based on cropland activity, we carried out survey and in-depth interviews with former Syrian farmers to get more detailed insights from them.Talking to former farmers from Syria about their experiences during the drought between 2007 and 2009, as well as about the civil uprisings and war after 2011, provided rich insights about their perceptions on the topic, which we would not have been able to find through quantitative datasets alone.Despite an expected recollection bias given the long, traumatic, and difficult process our research participants have been experiencing, they were able to share experiences with drought, conflict, and migration.We find this particularly important since paying attention to peoples' perceptions allows the main subjects to be heard in a discussion that is mainly shaped in a topdown direction.Notwithstanding the implications of such differences in findings, we are aware that our qualitative fieldwork data are not generalizable.Some of the differences in our land abandonment assessment and the accounts of our respondents showcase the need to continue using interdisciplinary research to complement each other and to explain the complex links between drought, conflict, and migration.
Besides its empirical and methodological content, our paper allows a rethink of some of the concepts in climate-migration literature.Our research indicates that we need to reconsider how we define and operationalize land abandonment, especially in connection with temporary migration and the nature of continued links with the lands following permanent, external migration.Finally, our research points out the need to take different forms of immobility into account when we think about 'trapped populations'.We find it important to address the legal uncertainties of forced migrants, particularly in relation to climate migration.These uncertainties, we argue, result in populations being neither trapped nor 'untrapped' but nonetheless highly vulnerable.Although our research focused on Syrian migrants who were able to leave the country, we recognize that many migrants remain trapped in Syria due to legal uncertainties, while others areor perceive themselves to bestuck in their host countries, unable to move to a third country.As a result, many experienced persistent obstacles in their efforts to improve their living conditions and they pursue resettlement in third countries.Consequently, semi-trapped people continue to seek different waysfrom formal applications for asylum to illegal migration through human smugglingto reach a third country.

Note
1.The Syrians have diverse statuses in the hosting countries.In Turkey, Syrians do not have a legal 'refugee' status.Instead, they were first referred to as 'guests', which was later changed with 'temporary protection regime'.To avoid conceptual confusion, we will refer to all as Syrian refugees.https://help.unhcr.org/turkiye/information-for-syrians/temporary-protection-in-turkey/

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Study area map showing the locations of the interviews in Turkey and the interviewees origins in Syria.The background map in Syria shows the cropping frequency between 2000 and 2016 (adapted from Eklund et al., 2022).

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Number of respondents and the Syrian governorates they came from

Figure 3 .Figure 4 .
Figure 3. Internal and external migration among research participants since 2006

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Factors affecting the decision to migrate during the two different periods, as reported by the respondents (n = 82).

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Internal and external migration during the drought period (2006-2010) as percentages of total respondents in each governorate.

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Share of cropland that was fallow during the drought (2006-2010) period in northeast Syria overall and each of the four governorates, with years fallow three years or more considered abandoned.

Figure 8 .
Figure 8.Share of cropland that was fallow during the early conflict (2011-2015) period in northeast Syria overall and each of the four governorates, with years fallow three years or more considered abandoned.

Figure 9 .
Figure 9.What happened to the land after respondents left Syria.

Figure 10 .
Figure 10.Desired place to live in the future.

Table 1 .
Ratios showing the respondents' frequency of fallowing their lands by governorate.

Table 2 .
Respondents' desired future country of residence.
Pinar Dinc is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science and a researcher at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University.Her research interests lie in the areas of nationalism, ethnicity, social movements, memory, diaspora, and the conflict and environment nexus in the Middle East and beyond.Lina Eklund is an associate senior lecturer at the Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science and a researcher at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University.Her research interests are focused around using earth observation to study social-ecological systems, e.g.how climate impacts societies or how armed conflict affects land systems.