The agnopolitics of refoulement: Migration diplomacy and the un/knowing of regional refugee deportation to Syria

Abstract Lebanon and Türkiye are key partners in the EU’s containment of refugees. Before the unexpected fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the EU insisted that conditions for safe return to Syria were not in place. Nevertheless, Lebanese and Turkish authorities increasingly assertively coerced refugee returns. In light of this, European actors reiterated refoulement as a red line. Follow-up on documented cases of potential refoulement, however, was rare. This paper analyses such silence and inaction through the lens of agnopolitics. It demonstrates how some European actors mobilize ignorance claims to fall in line with host country authorities’ emphasis on the voluntariness of return and contentions that deportations are small-scale and incidental. Building on interviews and document analysis, the paper identifies three mechanisms that enable such diplomatic ambivalence: (i) ontological agnopolitics, relativizing applicability of the non-refoulement principle; (ii) epistemological agnopolitics, questioning the validity of existing knowledge on potential refoulement; and (iii) material agnopolitics, perpetuating funding logics that obstruct knowledge production on refoulement. The paper thereby contributes to understanding how European migration diplomacy navigates between international norms and rights and geopolitical interests to appease regional partners in refugee containment.