Why Did I Choose Syria? How Did I Create My Question? What Was the Research Like?
Since 2015, I've heard about the Syrian refugee crisis on the news, in online articles, Youtube videos, and being spoken about among my family and friends. Although I had gathered some information about this situation, I was largely ignorant of its true severity. I live a life which affords me privileges which go unnoticed by me everyday. I have access to food and clean water whenever I need them, I can go to a doctor when I am sick, and I have access to education at no charge to me or my family. All of these, and more, were things that I had taken for granted; not truly realizing that there are people in the world who don't have any of them. When we received this assignment, I wanted to expand my point of view and really dedicate study into the hardships faced by those I knew had been forced to abandon their homes in Syria. I wanted to learn what was driving these people to leave, and how they survived the hard lives of people without privilege. I wanted to know how people who had lost almost everything could go to such lengths to find sanctuary.
Before deciding my research question, I did some research about the Syrian Civil War. I wanted to know more about the conflict before I determined what I would try to answer with my paper. After some time learning about the war's causes and effects on the people of Syria, I noticed a few articles pointing to a historic drought as the "spark" which ignited the conflict. This piqued my interest as someone interested the environment's effects on global affairs. After I had skimmed through the few articles I could find about the environment's relation to Syria's refugee crisis, I knew what I wanted to explore with this issue: Does climate change have any effect on the amount of people fleeing Syria? And if so, how?
Because I knew that most of the refugees leaving Syria were relocating to the European Union states, I wanted to focus on the flow of people into the European continent. However, the research question I formulated to explore this was too vague due to the broad expanse of the Union. After turning back to research to develop a more concise question, I discovered that Germany had accepted the vast majority of Syrian refugees migrating to Europe. With this knowledge, I narrowed down the scope of my question, instead asking: How do the effects of climate change in Syria exacerbate the number of people applying for asylum in Germany? After my question was accepted, I began the hard process of collecting my evidence.
Due to the specificity of my research question, finding the information I needed proved to be a struggle. The majority of information published about the factors behind the refugee crisis cited only the outbreak of war as the cause of migration. Because of this, I initially had to rely on scientific studies about climate change in the Middle East for the bulk of my evidence. After a few days of great frustration and deeper research, however, I found more information about the link between a changing climate and mass migration. I had expected to learn that intense drought and desertification was forcing some Syrians to abandon their country, but I was somewhat surprised that most climate-induced migration out of the region was motivated by crop failure. People were not struggling with thirst in Syria, but with hunger.
As the effects of climate change continue to become more pronounced, Syrians continue to leave their farms and communities to escape them. There is no simple or quick solution to this problem; climate change will only force millions more worldwide to seek new homes as it intensifies. The only thing that can be done now is to provide those displaced with a place to go and to work to stop the changing world in its tracks.
Before deciding my research question, I did some research about the Syrian Civil War. I wanted to know more about the conflict before I determined what I would try to answer with my paper. After some time learning about the war's causes and effects on the people of Syria, I noticed a few articles pointing to a historic drought as the "spark" which ignited the conflict. This piqued my interest as someone interested the environment's effects on global affairs. After I had skimmed through the few articles I could find about the environment's relation to Syria's refugee crisis, I knew what I wanted to explore with this issue: Does climate change have any effect on the amount of people fleeing Syria? And if so, how?
Because I knew that most of the refugees leaving Syria were relocating to the European Union states, I wanted to focus on the flow of people into the European continent. However, the research question I formulated to explore this was too vague due to the broad expanse of the Union. After turning back to research to develop a more concise question, I discovered that Germany had accepted the vast majority of Syrian refugees migrating to Europe. With this knowledge, I narrowed down the scope of my question, instead asking: How do the effects of climate change in Syria exacerbate the number of people applying for asylum in Germany? After my question was accepted, I began the hard process of collecting my evidence.
Due to the specificity of my research question, finding the information I needed proved to be a struggle. The majority of information published about the factors behind the refugee crisis cited only the outbreak of war as the cause of migration. Because of this, I initially had to rely on scientific studies about climate change in the Middle East for the bulk of my evidence. After a few days of great frustration and deeper research, however, I found more information about the link between a changing climate and mass migration. I had expected to learn that intense drought and desertification was forcing some Syrians to abandon their country, but I was somewhat surprised that most climate-induced migration out of the region was motivated by crop failure. People were not struggling with thirst in Syria, but with hunger.
As the effects of climate change continue to become more pronounced, Syrians continue to leave their farms and communities to escape them. There is no simple or quick solution to this problem; climate change will only force millions more worldwide to seek new homes as it intensifies. The only thing that can be done now is to provide those displaced with a place to go and to work to stop the changing world in its tracks.