During its development as modern Syria in the middle of the XIX century, the country faced a challenging situation of instability as opposing forces within the same political boundaries were aiming to take control over the territory. Its borders have been in a state of contingency and the discrepancies among different parties within the population have hindered their consolidation. These prominent cultural and social differences as well as divergent ideologies are the main factor that caused the country to fail as a what Giorgio Agamben would call a nation-state.

After the outburst of civil war in 2011, generated by conflicts that were taking place previously and discontent from the Syrian people, the country gradually split into different territories controlled by five forces: the government of Syria, the Kurdish forces, ISIS, the al Nusra front, and the Syrian opposition forces. The control each one of these groups had in its area extended itself to the countries’ borders causing friction in the movement of people and goods.

This violated Kant’s notion of cosmopolitan right where possession cannot be by setting on land that is already lived on by another people unless through an agreement. The Syrians became hostage in their own house and their lands were occupied violently without any form of mediation.

Both the control over territory and the migrations produced a series of economic shifts. On the one hand, massive migrations have been taking place for the last four years pushing certain markets to move the networks where they operate to other regions and creating new demands for itinerating populations. On the other hand, owing to the impossibility of circulating through some crucial spots for commerce, trade routes were completely reconfigured in order for goods  to arrive to their particular destination. In spite of president’s efforts to keep trade lines open, all cross-border trade was ceased due to different events.

Movement of goods interrupted 

Syria’s economy collapsed mainly because it depended on this cross-border movement. This territory has been for many years a vital artery between Europe and Jordan, and consequently, to the rest of the Middle East. During the last decades, the main gateway to move goods between both countries was Jaber, a border crossing that connected an ancient road from Damascus to Amman. This was also the node where most people would cross from one country to the other.

Last April, fighting barrel and bombing took place in this crossing when rebels linked to Al-Qaeda captured it. Jordan responded sealing the only entry point left between the country and Syria —Ramtha, the other one, was closed in 2011— and ceasing the movement of people and goods into the country. Only refugees could move one by one after a military inspection which limited the flow of and made it more difficult for them to cross the border.

One month prior to this, the government of Turkey closed its last three border gates and officials  announced that the country would close commercial traffic from Syria and into Syria because of the dangers that having the borders opened entailed. Before this events took place, Isis was already controlling border trade passages in the east by imposing fees for goods to pass. As for July 2014 the east points in Syria are heavily restricted.

Some of the neighboring countries are already relying on alternative commercial routes. Jordan and Turkey are now sailing around Syria and using Haifa and Jaffa, Israel’s ports, to move goods. Some sources say that a new railway between the ports and the Jordan river is already being planned. This flexibility opens new interactions between Israel and the Arab countries which have never had good relationships.

This means that Syria is almost out of the picture in terms of moving goods: It cannot trade with eastern countries because the border with Iraq is taken by ISIS, it cannot trade with Eastern and Northern Europe because Turkey has no entry points left and it cannot trade with southern countries or Arab states of the Persian Gulf because there is no connection to Jordan left. 

Syria has only four trade routes left: two crossings with Lebanon and its own two ports. Thus, the only direct connection Syria has with other countries is with Lebanon —which is practically isolated due to its borders that are shared with Syria and Israel— and the mediterranean sea which connect the country to the western countries. This doesn’t help Syria that much as a series of sanctions from the western states have been imposed to the country, limiting its trade with any if them.  

Russia already started helping the government of Syria upon this situation by moving goods through Crimea into the Syrian ports. China and Iran are also expected to help Syria though no official declaration on the routes they’re planning to take has been made. In spite of this help the country is supposed to be receiving, Syria is already facing an emerging economic collapse caused by this economic blockade and its citizens are facing the consequences of this.

This event also created alternative trade routes and new exchange dynamics that are overlapping with the informal ways of crossing the country and together with them are reshaping the existing borders. As one door closes another one opens: Informal channels and clandestine smuggler routes are being developed because the interruption of trade with strategic partners is leaving the country out of resources.

But the economy is also being affected by how industries are shifting to other areas and populations are creating new niches of trade not only in the countries where they migrate but also the ones that are on their way.

Commodities of Emergency

An estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of civil war. The risks of staying in their homelands were they are exposed to attacks, siege and different ways of human rights violations, pushes them to move to more stable countries. It could even be argued that most of them are also migrating due to the unstable economy and a lack of resources in their hometowns. The different screening procedures and bureaucratic processes related to cross-migration movement that have to go through, forces them to stay in different periods of time in each territory they go through. allowing for concentrated amount of refugees to stay in different areas for different periods of time.

This allows for concentrations of people in different areas for specific periods of time. In each stage, the refugee has particular demands not only in services but also in goods. The massive distribution of them in strategic areas attracts different industries. As a consequence, the refugee goes from being a political entity to a potential consumer. As the refugee acquires political membership, he also becomes a target for certain businesses and the crisis an event where many enterprises can lean on to become richer.

A good spot to understand this phenomenon is the island of Lesbos and its two contiguous hubs: the neighboring coasts of Turkey and the coast of Athens. The territorial border Turkey shares with Europe is not permeable, therefore, in order to reach Europe the refugees have to cross through the sea. Nearly half a million refugees entered by boat this year and in the past 4 months, Lesbos had the highest number of refugee arrivals. Since they have to go through an arduous registration process, they are held in this location for a couple of days. Within the island they have to go through different stages until they are ready to leave.

The coastal cities of Izmir and Asos mean the departure point for these refugees. Here the streets are packed with the products they need before leaving the Turkey. Since most of the smugglers don’t provide life jackets when the refugees get on the boats, people buy them on different retail establishments. From clothing stores to kebab shops, every business has found in these products a good source of profit. 

The lifejacket market was boomed with the refugees. Yamaha’s signature orange lifejackets manufactured in China have been the most prominent refugees choice. They can be bought for up to 25 euro in most of the street retailers. The Japanese company also sells Black and blue jackets  that are less durable and are less expensive than the former ones. Through the life jacket every refugee is wearing one can already speculate how much they are aiming to spend almost as if they were indicators of every refugee’s economic capability. Though Yamaha’s was the main provider of life jackets, many turkish factories started churning out ineffective vests. These are the least expensive ones but can be completely useless. A journalist bought one of them and tested it on a bathtub. As the water in the bathtub rose, the life jacket stayed on the bottom, drowned by its own weight.

After this, they usually meet their smugglers in one of the many privately owned parcels where boats take off. The smugglers who were paid in advance directly or through a third party actor around 2000 euro, usually have an agreement with the owners of the lands. Since an estimate of 250 boats left Turkey each day the last month, their demand has been increasing as days go by. There was even a point were suppliers ran out of boats and the smugglers started to use clapped out wooden boats. One of the suppliers said that he is selling 4000 rafts a month.

One of the main sellers of rubber boats is the Hungarian company Kolibri which manufactures  30 foot long inflatable rafts in eastern Hungary. These are later transported to warehouses all around the world. Smugglers get the boats from different suppliers in Turkey for around 5000 euros. 

But smugglers also spend on the machinery the boats need to cross the ocean.They usually buy cheap engines that do not last long. Yamabisi motors manufactured and sent from China can cost up to 1000 euro. According to some, once the boat lands, it is dismantled and the engines are sent back to Turkey in order to be re used. Some others say that the engines are so cheap that they cannot be recycled leaving the locals the only choice of taking them to dumps where they are burnt. If every of these boats costs around 6000 euros fully equipped, and it holds up to 50 people, then each passenger costs the smuggler an average of 120 euro, less than 10% of what they spend.

After a journey of approximately 3 hours, migrants reach the coast of Lesbos. Among the three points of arrival, Molyvos is the main one. There, they are received with Blankets handed in by  different humanitarian organizations and they have to wait in temporary camps until they are assigned a bus that takes them to Stage 2, a settlement where refugees are split between Syrians and non Syrians and then to different refugee camps. These buses were donated by Medicins Sans Frontiers and UNHCR. Both organizations spent around 2 million euro in this infrastructure. The buses, although manufactured by international companies like Volkswagen and Suzuki were already owned by local companies who used them for tourist transportation.

Once they reach Mytilene where they have to register, they either stay on Moria or Kara Tepe. Many would chose to reach the main streets to stay in hotels, but the few ones are usually full of capacity. Usually when they get to the camps, vendors are in the entrance selling SMS cards. One of them said that he sells 30 cards per day. 

The camp in Kara Tepe is provided with tents donated by the UNHCR that partnered with Ikea to manufacture them. Prior to the IKEA collaboration, the UNCHR was only able to provide tents or converted mass-shelters for the influx of refugees into countries around the world that lasted about 6 months. Now, these tents can last up to 3 years.

Each one of the tents costs 1150, three times more than the previous one. They spend from 2 to 3 days approximately in these facilities where they also get medical assistance and can buy food from different Kantinas. These food trucks hold snack bars or small cafeterias and sell meals for less than 10 euros. Locals manage these businesses and get the food from markets around the island, especially those in the main commercial cities: Mytilene, Mithymna, Eresos-Antissa and Petra.

When they are done with the registration process, they move to the Mytiliene ferry station. Hundredths of people line up to take a ferry from one of the four companies: Hellenic Seaways, Anek Lines, Nel Lines and Blue Star Ferries. There they have to pay 50 euros and 25 euros for children. Before the crisis, one ferry would leave to Athens per day but today 3 ferries are leaving with 2500 to 300 refugees each. 

Once they reach Athens, they continue their journey upwards to reach their country of destination. Most of them want to get to either Germany or Sweden who have publicly opened their borders to refugees. Lesbos becomes an ideal location to understand refugees’ first contact with Europe. As opposed to how they would displace sparsely in Athens and further on in the following countries when they leave Greece, in Lesbos they are concentrated in an enclosed island just for a few days.

Many different actors performing different tasks get involved within the set of exchanges that take place in the island to the extent of allowing the refugees to have access to each commodity. The smuggler, the humanitarian organization or the retail establishment, they are all facilitators of these exchanges. Beyond them, there is sometimes a local industry and other times a global network that builds up every stage of the journey these commodities take: First an enterprise’s headquarters, then the manufacturer and finally the supplier and all these levels comprising more inter networks between them that enhance the complexity of these relationships.

As mentioned before, these exchanges can occur at both at an international level and at an interstate one but frequently, there are moments when these different levels overlap. For instance, the humanitarian organizations that provide the infrastructure for moving to the camps, spend on buses manufactured by German companies that are at managed by a Greek companies. In this example both companies —Volkwagen and Zorpidis— work in a certain way of partnership without actually having an agreement between them where both levels have gains.

The resulting economies happening in Lesbos perform as overlapping systems whose boundaries are permeable. Different transactions were brought about with the crisis that forged links between Lesbos and other countries with which there was no interaction before. The feasibility of this channels favors both the refugee and the vendors.

Some of the companies circulating goods are very well known global enterprises  and some others are more low profile. Yamaha has been circulating in the press in the form of visual propaganda owing to the fact that all images that show refugees on boats would show them wearing the typical flashy life jackets with huge logos on them. Ikea, divergently, opted for no exposure by choosing Better Shelter as the brand to be displayed on the tents they provide.  

It could be argued that the negotiations with certain high profile companies that have a strong presence in a global market enables the possibility of monopolies. It is well known that the UNHCR has certain agreements of exclusivity with different vendors, preventing any kind of competition. Good Shelter tents is an example of this. The UNHCR signed a frame agreement of 30 000 shelter units in 2015. 

It’s striking to see how much revenue is being made from some of these commodities. When a any Greek has to pay 10 euros to get to Turkey, a refugee has no other choice than paying around 2000 euros to do this by getting smuggled on a boat. The way in which someone has to pay third party actors and other such as the owner of the parcel suggests that there is a network behind the smuggler itself where many people is earning a lot of money.

The humanitarian organizations on the other hand, donate most of their goods and have regulated transactions with their vendors where they offer them at prices of wholesale. Few information about reduction of taxation is available but some of the companies providing these goods have been featured in the lists of donators thus it could be assumed that there are already certain fiscal reductions for them.

The small shops are usually gaining regular profits. For instance, Kantinas are not selling their products much higher than they would be found somewhere else in the island. Some very basic conventional formulas state that restaurants spend 1/3 in food and other resources, 1/3 in paying their employees and the 1/3 left is revenue for the owners. Their prices seem to be close to these proportions and one could infer that their revenue is very high due to the number of refugees spending money on their food.

Overall, the refugee crisis is bringing a world economic interdependence that is enabling more movement across certain borders and thwarting it in others. The existing exchanges between countries that had to go through Syria to reach their destination found other territories which they also ended up depending on to move their products. This situation seen through the economic lens shows how fragile borders can become and how they are used as a political tool. Added to this, as the examples mentioned here show, the massive migrations that are resulting from this crisis call for the intervention of international markets and exchanges in different levels, from local to global.