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The Fragile Yet Unmistakable Long-Term Integration of Syrian Refugees in Jordan

Months after former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown, there remains no definitive answer to the question that hangs over the Middle East: Will the millions of Syrian refugees displaced since civil war broke out in 2011 finally return home?

In Jordan, home to more than 1.4 million Syrians, refugees are not yet returning at scale. Although about 62,500 registered refugees returned to Syria from Jordan in the first five months after Assad’s government fell in December 2024, for most the idea remains a distant prospect. Instead, what has quietly taken shape is a fragile form of long-term integration—imperfect and uneven, yet unmistakable.

Although Jordan has not offered Syrians citizenship or permanence, its policies have gradually shifted from emergency relief to managing prolonged displacement. About 450,000 work permits have been issued to Syrians and hundreds of thousands of their children have cycled through public schools. Northern cities including Irbid and Mafraq now host large Syrian populations that are deeply embedded in local economies and neighborhoods. The Jordan Compact, once a bold experiment to increase refugees’ access to employment and education, has become the scaffolding of refugee policy that links international aid to refugees’ inclusion, however partial.

Yet the system is showing signs of strain. International donor fatigue is rising, foreign aid is declining, domestic patience is thinning, and the Jordanian government is beginning to ask out loud whether it can—or should—sustain this situation indefinitely. For refugees, meanwhile, the future is uncertain; few trust that Syria is safe for return under the new government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, but life in Jordan still offers no path to permanence. Jordan’s situation is particularly precarious. It is home to one of the highest refugee-to-native population ratios in the world, second only to Lebanon, and beyond Syrians has long-established communities of Palestinian refugees as well as migrants from countries including Iraq, Sudan, and Yemen. This demographic reality has placed exceptional pressure on Jordan’s limited natural and economic resources, including water, energy, employment, and public services.

This article explores that uneasy balance. While official policy has stopped short of full legal integration of Syrians in Jordan, de facto integration is well underway. In the absence of political solutions, that quiet permanence may continue to linger for Jordan—and the broader region.

Refugee-Hosting Context and Initial Response to the Syrian Crisis

When Syria’s uprising began in 2011 and quickly escalated into civil war, Jordan responded by opening its borders to its Syrian neighbors, driven by humanitarian impulse and historical precedent. Within just a few years, hundreds of thousands of Syrians crossed into the kingdom; the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) registered approximately 546,000 living there as of April 2025, more than any country except Turkey (2.7 million registered Syrian refugees) and Lebanon (722,000). The true number is significantly higher—exceeding 1.4 million according to the Jordanian government—once unregistered Syrians are included.

Jordan’s rapid mobilization included setting up temporary shelters, expanding municipal services in border communities, and working with international agencies to build refugee camps, most notably Za’atari, which opened in 2012 and quickly became one of the world’s largest refugee camps, hosting as many as 140,000 in its early years, though the population had shrunk to nearly 78,000 people as of early 2024.

Jordan’s role as a host to displaced people was far from new. The country had long played a central part in the region’s refugee history, absorbing large numbers of Palestinians in the aftermath of the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars. The 2.4 million registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan as of this writing comprise a larger Palestinian refugee population than in any other country. Unlike Syrians, many Palestinian refugees were granted Jordanian citizenship and have integrated more fully into the social and political fabric of the state. This legacy shaped both domestic expectations and international comparisons for the Syrian crisis. While Syrians were offered safety and access to education and health care, they were not granted citizenship and remain in a more precarious legal position. Still, the memory of Jordan’s past refugee integration efforts informed its approach to Syrians as one grounded in hospitality but also in caution.

The early years of the Syrian influx were also marked by significant international solidarity. Donor funding supported emergency shelter, food aid, water services, and health infrastructure.

Lives in Limbo: Integration, Barriers, and Syrians’ Protracted Refugee Experience

Jordan’s early response succeeded in preventing a humanitarian catastrophe. But over time, the policy emphasis shifted from simply hosting refugees to managing protracted displacement. As the Syrian crisis persisted, international attention waned and support lagged rising needs. Over time, Jordan shifted from crisis response to a longer-term, resilience-based approach marked by both innovation and constraint. Results have been mixed, showing a country that has upheld its humanitarian obligations while also confronting the limits of its capacity.

The Za’atari camp, once a symbol of crisis, has evolved into a semi-permanent settlement complete with schools, clinics, and marketplaces. Yet more than 80 percent of Syrians in Jordan live outside camps, in urban areas such as Amman, Irbid, and Mafraq. For these refugees, integration has been more complicated.

Unlike Palestinians, Syrian refugees remain legally designated as temporary guests. This status has limited their access to basic rights and services, restricting integration from the outset. Key initiatives to expand integration have included the Jordan Compact: an agreement between Jordan, the European Union, and donor countries that tied foreign assistance and trade concessions to expanded refugee work opportunities and educational access. The compact reframed the crisis as a potential economic opportunity, pledging work permits for Syrians in exchange for international support. It became a model for development-based refugee policy and garnered wide praise for its ambition.

Approximately 450,000 work permits had been issued under this framework as of March 2024 (this number includes many renewals; the number of beneficiaries is likely to be much lower). However, most Syrians are limited to low-wage sectors such as agriculture and construction. Informal employment also remains widespread, exposing refugees to poor working conditions and legal uncertainty. Women in particular face sharp barriers to entering the workforce.

About half of all refugees in Jordan are children, and education, too, reflects this pattern of partial inclusion. While public schools have opened their doors to Syrian children, dropout rates have risen, especially in secondary education and for boys. By 2023, enrollment of Syrian children had declined to around 170,000, with poverty, pressures to work, and academic challenges driving many out of school. Palestinian refugees’ education, historically managed by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has offered more consistent—though increasingly underfunded—support.

Beyond economics and schooling, social integration has remained elusive. Many Syrians report feeling isolated, without legal residency or full participation in public life. Though Jordan has largely maintained social cohesion, tensions have occasionally surfaced in host communities burdened by rising rents, job competition, and overstretched services. Meanwhile, public services in host communities have struggled to keep pace. Local health clinics, water supplies, and classrooms have been stretched, particularly in northern governorates near the Syrian border. Municipal budgets have been overburdened. Despite these challenges, social cohesion has largely held, and public attitudes—while varied—have not tipped into open hostility.

These outcomes are closely tied to deeper structural and legal constraints. The bureaucracy governing refugee registration and permit renewal is inconsistent and often difficult to navigate. Refugee governance in Jordan involves a crowded field of actors—government ministries, municipalities, UN agencies, international donors, and nongovernment organizations (NGOs)—each operating with different mandates and timelines. The result is a fragmented policy landscape, where local application of national initiatives often depends on geography, resources, and institutional capacity. In the camps, strict limitations on residents’ ability to freely exit and re-enter further restrict opportunity. Access to affordable health care has diminished and as of 2021 two-thirds of refugees were living on less than $5.50 per day; these individuals rely heavily on shrinking international assistance.

A Crossroads: The End of the Assad Era

With Assad toppled and Syria undergoing a political shift, questions about the long-term future of Syrian refugees in Jordan are once again front and center. There has been a growing sense, at least in official circles, that Syria is entering a new phase. While the Jordanian government has not announced formal policy changes, some officials have signaled that the presence of such a large refugee population is becoming harder to sustain. Public sentiment, shaped by economic hardship and concerns about competition over jobs and services, has grown more vocal in recent years. Conversations about refugees’ return—once dormant—have begun to resurface. Whether future policies will promote deeper integration or instead prioritize return remains one of the defining questions of the next phase.

At the same time, the view from within the refugee community is more cautious. After more than a decade in Jordan, many Syrians have built new lives, however fragile, in urban neighborhoods across the country. Children born and raised in Jordan have no memories of Syria. For many Syrians, the idea of return is emotionally complex and logistically daunting. Surveys and interviews suggest that while some still harbor hopes of returning to Syria one day, many now feel rooted in Jordan. Safety in post-conflict Syria remains a top concern for refugees, amid continuing reports of pockets of violence, political repression, and arbitrary detention. Many refugees are also concerned about access to housing, work, and education in a country that remains deeply unstable. An estimated one-third of Syria’s housing was damaged or destroyed during the conflict, and the economy has been in freefall. The overwhelming sentiment captured in recent surveys points toward uncertainty and hesitation. Increasingly, many Syrians in Jordan view their current place of residence not as a stopgap, but as a long-term home—even without the legal clarity or guarantees that would typically accompany such permanence.

Jordan, for its part, continues to walk a delicate line. It has avoided coercive return policies and has repeatedly called for international assistance to help shoulder the burden of hosting. Officials have emphasized the need for sustainable support—not just for refugees, but for the Jordanian institutions and communities that have supported them. Yet with donor fatigue setting in, recent reductions in foreign aid budgets by key international actors, and regional dynamics shifting, the country’s ability to maintain this approach may be reaching its limits.

Future Prospects

Well more than a decade since the start of the Syrian conflict, Jordan’s refugee policy has become a long-running test of endurance marked by international recognition as well as growing fatigue. The country’s experience reflects the resilience of its institutions and the constraints of a protracted crisis. What began as an emergency humanitarian response has gradually evolved into a long-term governance framework—one shaped by pragmatism, international diplomacy, and the realities of protracted displacement.

In some areas, the response has yielded notable results. Through frameworks such as the Jordan Compact and a series of bilateral aid agreements, Jordan has been able to issue hundreds of thousands of work permits, enroll countless Syrian children in school, and maintain relative stability despite immense pressures on housing, infrastructure, and public services. Local communities, especially in the northern governorates, have shouldered these changes with resilience, even as economic and social tensions have occasionally flared. Host communities have had rising concerns over jobs, services, and aid equity.

Yet challenges remain stubbornly persistent. Economic integration for Syrians continues to lag, as does educational attainment. Meanwhile, health services and housing have come under increasing strain, especially as donor funding becomes less predictable. Frameworks such as the Jordan Compact have enabled partial economic and educational inclusion, but many Syrians remain marginalized, working in informal sectors and facing limited access to long-term legal status.

Within this complex landscape, there is growing discussion—though not yet consensus—about how the approach towards refugees should evolve. Some observers point to the need for more coherent coordination between international and national actors, and for greater attention to long-term planning, not just short-term relief. With Syria entering a new political phase and international assistance declining as partner countries pull back their aid, Jordan faces mounting challenges in sustaining its current refugee governance model.

For now, Jordan’s approach continues to be a careful one: providing refuge, managing expectations, and advocating for international support. Whether this model can hold in the years ahead will depend not only on the situation in Syria but also on regional politics, donor commitment, and the capacity of Jordanian institutions to adapt to a reality that is increasingly permanent.

As the line between temporary refuge and permanent settlement continues to blur, the Jordanian government must carefully navigate between humanitarian obligations and domestic pressures exacerbated by a strain on resources and government coffers. More importantly, the international community must not view Jordan’s continued hospitality as a given. Renewed commitment to long-term investment, shared responsibility, and inclusive development are essential—not only for refugees’ welfare but for Jordan’s own stability and resilience. Even in the post-Assad era, the future of Syrian refugees in Jordan may remain uncertain. But what is clear is that without durable political solutions and sustained global support, the burden of displacement will continue to fall disproportionately on host countries such as Jordan, whose contributions deserve both recognition and reinforcement.

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