This edited volume investigates how refugee communities in the Middle East have adapted to secure their livelihoods within the informal economy. Focusing on Lebanon and Jordan, which between 2011 and 2020 received more refugees as a proportion of their population than any other countries in the world, this edited volume investigates the informal mechanisms that Syrian refugees have adopted to fit into the informal economies of Lebanon and Jordan in the face of significant challenges and barriers. The volume investigates how legality, temporality, connectedness, gender, and geography, among other factors, have influenced the emergence of refugee communities’ informal adaptive mechanisms. Drawing on in-depth, original research among Syrian refugee tribal communities, agricultural workers, female-headed households, and micro-entrepreneurs, the volume provides tangible policy and practice recommendations to help to improve the situation of refugees and vulnerable populations that are employed in the informal economy. Highlighting the resilience and agency demonstrated by refugees, this edited volume’s original community-based analysis will be of interest to students, researchers, and professionals from across Middle East studies, refugee studies, informal labor economics, and development studies.

This book examines the ways in which Arab civil society actors have attempted to influence public policies. In particular, the book studies the drive towards a change of policies that affect women and their well-being. It does so through the lens of women civil society activism and through analysis of cases of policy reform in three Arab countries namely: Lebanon, Morocco and Yemen. The book addresses the tension between policy change and state repression; between Islamic traditional/religious values and civil/secular ones; between the formal and the informal channels for policy-making. One of the first books to reflect on the capability of Arab civil society actors to influence change, it traces recent policy evolution from before the Arab Uprisings in 2011 until the present day, and describes the limited ability of civil society actors to induce change and substantiate it over recent decades. The book explores the use of policy theories in the analysis of cases, and reflects on the possibility of applying and "adapting" those concepts, largely applied in the Western world, to encompass policymaking in the Arab world without conceptual 'overstretch'.