New Approaches to MENA Research for COVID-19 and Beyond

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The global COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated challenges to research on the Middle East and North Africa, at the same time that it has underscored the imperative for thoughtful analyses of critical issues including global and local governance, armed group and domestic violence, and the fieldwork undertaken to study such issues. Before travel restrictions and social distancing, researchers conducting fieldwork in the region contended with challenges to themselves, related to security and conflict, and to their research teams and subjects, including vulnerability and sensitivity. What previous considerations have served them during the pandemic? What have they innovated during the crisis? And what new adaptations will outlast the present circumstances?

The papers on this panel take new approaches to the study of MENA for COVID and beyond. The authors of one paper examine migration management practices encouraged by donors and implemented in countries in migrant-receiving states to varying effects; their data collection and analyses approaches creatively overcome fieldwork limitations. Another paper seeks to better understand trends in gender-based violence, aggravated by lockdown restrictions, and social media interventions to support victims; their partnership with a grassroots organization illuminates enhanced research practices toward sensitive topics. The authors of a paper on disjunctures in local-level policy-making during the pandemic and weak central coordination highlight issues in multi-level governance with implications for refugee populations; an original survey design using a popular phone application holds promise for survey research. Finally, a paper on disruptions to fieldwork examines the conditions under which field-based research is abandoned, and guides researchers in when and how to recover their projects. Common threads emerge from among these papers including the role of local research assistants, interpreters, and organizations as facilitators and gatekeepers to difficult research, and the ethics and best practices associated with research in the MENA region and conducted at a distance. Taken together, they speak to literatures on conflict, governance, and mobility, as well as on qualitative and quantitative research designs and the ethics underlying them.

Sub Unit

• Division 57: Middle East and North African Politics

Individual Presentations

• Migration Management Aid and Governance in Recipient Countries - Kelsey P. Norman, Rice University; Nicholas R. Micinski, University of Maine

• Using Social Media to Combat Gender Based Violence in Egypt amid COVID-19 - ELIZABETH Parker-Magyar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Fotini Christia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Horacio Alejandro Larreguy, Harvard University; Norhan Muhab

• How To Say “Khalas:” Abandoning Projects in the Middle East and Beyond - Sarah E. Parkinson, Johns Hopkins University; Faten Ghosn, University of Arizona

• Transregional Authoritarianism: Sino-Arab Collaboration in the COVID-19 Context - Julia Gurol, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

• COVID-19 and Municipal Policymaking in Lebanon - Melani Cammett, Harvard University; Lama Mourad, Carleton University

Chair

• Rana B. Khoury Princeton University

Discussant

• Marwa Shalaby University of Wisconsin-Madison