Forced migrants’ agency in first countries of asylum: towards a more holistic Understanding of decisions about secondary movement by Syrian refugees in Turkey and Lebanon

This article examines forced migrants’ decision-making over time on movement from first country of asylum. Building on 150 in-depth interviews with Syrian refugees (A note on terminology: the term refugee is used colloquially by our participants, other scholars, the legal profession, and international actors to denote most Syrian migrants, yet it often means different things to its users. While many of our participants may be refugees, it is beyond our competence to judge and is not a term that describes their legal standing in Turkey or Lebanon. As such, we often use the term forced migrants as all our participants (and all refugees) can be described as forced migrants, whether they are refugees or not.) in Turkey and Lebanon (85 in Turkey and 65 in Lebanon) conducted in 2022–2023, we develop a tri-partite conceptual framework that integrates spatio-temporalities, migration infrastructure, and forms of capital. Methodologically, the study uses purposive, stratified sampling and semi-structured interviews, with coding for social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital and mapping against local legislative, social, and temporal conditions. Our findings show that decision-making is iterative and situational, rather than a simple cost–benefit calculation or a linear trajectory. Spatio-temporal positions determine which infrastructures are visible and how urgent onward movement feels; migration infrastructures—formal and informal, digital and clandestine—translate possibilities into concrete routes and risks; and migrants’ varying capitals shape who can access regularized, document-based pathways versus hazardous, informal channels. Higher starting or converted capital often correlates with a preference for legal, document-dependent strategies and greater willingness to wait and convert capital; lower capital correlates with urgency, recourse to smugglers, and shorter latency between failed attempts and retrying. Digital platforms mediate both safe and exploitative practices, while administrative opacity and high transaction costs distort access to formal routes. The paper offers a dynamic, meso-informed account of secondary movement that foregrounds infrastructure as a relational system that shapes incentives and risk. Policy implications, therefore, call for interventions that reconfigure migration infrastructure, expand affordable, regular pathways, increase institutional transparency, and reduce markets for exploitative intermediaries to lessen harm and broaden durable onward-movement options.