Logics of Vulnerability and Integration in Humanitarian Assistance: The Case of Emergency Social Safety Net

Since 2017, international aid agencies have targeted cash assistance to Syrian refugees in Turkey through the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) using criteria of family vulnerability. ESSN allows vulnerable refugees living outside of the refugee camps to benefited from unconditional monthly cash assistance delivered by smart debit cards. The card is distributed to families meeting six demographic vulnerability criteria: elderly headed households; single headed household; single women; families with over 4 children; families with more than 2 disabled members; families with a dependency ratio of 1.5 and above. However, the designation of vulnerable households in practice does not depend solely on these criteria. Based on field research carried out in Istanbul in 2019, this paper explores a key sources of uncertainty: the link between ESSN eligibility and the registration status of refugee families with Turkish authorities, which can lead to the most vulnerable refugees being excluded from assistance. This observation reveals a second logic at work, based on legal and social integration, which is only partly compatible with the logic of humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable embodied by the demographic criteria. In terms of this logic of integration, as put forward by Turkish authorities, the goal of ESSN is to ensure the transition of low-income Syrian families first into the existing Turkish social welfare system and, ultimately, into the local and national market economy. In this context, administrative integration, i.e. proper registration, is a necessary first step. This example brings to light a more general feature common to refugee and migration situations, but not often considered explicitly: the clash between these two logics – vulnerability and integration – each of which has considerable internal coherence. Insisting on administrative registration as a condition for receiving ESSN assistance, in other words, is not a disfunction but rather is evidence of a clash of rationalities. Is the goal of intervention to assist the neediest or to encourage the type of behavior most conducive to integration? To what extent does emphasis on either of these hinder progress in the other? This abstract question can be put into practical terms. Does insisting on formal registration exclude individuals and families who are the most economically vulnerable? Does providing cash assistance regardless of registration status discourage individuals from entering the formal labor market, which is seen as the first essential step toward longer-term integration? Initial observation suggests that the answer to both of these questions is yes, emphasizing the stark trade-off facing policy makers. Based on the author’s participant observation in the World Food Program’s evaluation teams, along with semi-directed interviews with Intergovernmental and NGO officials as well as with both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the ESSN program, this paper sheds new light in the specific case of Turkey on the role of registration status as an important intervening variable between objective need and ESSN benefits. Beyond the Turkish case, it invites a more general debate on the practical implications of these two logics and of the trade-offs between them.