Caught between two worlds: Syrians in Europe grapple with the right to return
- Written by Marine Caleb
- Edited by Ruby Russell
- Illustration by Eva Procee
Since the Assad regime fell in December 2025, Europe’s 1.4 million Syrian refugees have been navigating the legal, emotional and security challenges of going back to a country they thought they may never see again.
On March 5 this year, Thaer Al Tahli stood anxiously at the check-in desk in Hamad International Airport in Qatar. Checking the clock, again, he waited while staff examined his Paris-issued travel documents. Again. Trying to stay calm, he explained once more that no, he didn’t have a visa, but his document of safe conduct meant he didn’t need one.
Missing any flight is stressful. But this wasn’t just any flight. This was the journey that would take Thaer home for the first time in 13 years.
Eventually, one of the airline staff got off the phone. Yes, okay, Damascus had confirmed he was clear to travel. Finally, Thaer’s boarding pass ticked out of the printer on the desk in front of him. “You cannot imagine my feelings at this moment!” he says of the relief that swept him to the flight gate moments before it closed.
It’s little wonder that airline staff struggled with the document he presented. Thaer was one of the first people to obtain a special pass issued by the French state that makes an exception to normal asylum law by allowing Syrian refugees to visit home.
Syria has been a test case for how Europe treats asylum seekers. On the one hand, there have been civil society efforts to welcome Syrian refugees and European countries fast-tracked asylum applications. But by 2015, there was also a steep rise in anti-immigrant racism and dehumanizing far-right rhetoric about Europe being “flooded” by a “tide” of refugees.
A decade later, the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship is bringing into focus the tenuous place of 1.4 million Syrians in Europe. From legal and logistical barriers to the complexities of lives and identities split between different cultures, many Syrians are also grappling with their relationship to a home they thought they might never see again.
“I almost forgot I had a country,” Thaer says.
To be a part of reconstruction
A journalist, activist and outspoken critic of the Assad regime, Thaer was one of 8 million Syrians who watched from afar as Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) took Damascus and overthrew the dictatorship that had been in power for more than five decades. “December 8 was an earthquake – personally and professionally. I spent days without sleeping and the adrenaline stayed for a week,” he says.
Finally, Syria had the chance to rebuild, and Thaer wanted to be a part of that effort. But as a refugee – status he had finally been granted in July 2020 – making a visit back posed a problem. The Geneva Convention states that refugee protection ends if a person “voluntarily reclaims protection from the country of which they are a national.” In practice, this usually means that without special permission, visiting home can result in forfeiting refugee status.
At the same time, it became clear that some European authorities were keen to put an end of any hospitality shown to Syrians since the start of the war. Within days of Assad’s fall, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Italy were among the countries to freeze Syrian asylum applications. In December, The French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) put 700 applications on hold but resumed processing them in April as Syria remains politically unstable and engulfed in continuing violence.
Within days of Assad’s fall, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Italy were among the countries to freeze Syrian asylum applications.
Some European politicians even threatened to revoke Syrians’ refugee status and deport them. Most of these hasty threats have not been realized, but on July 3rd, Austria became the first European country to deport a Syrian man, since the start of civil war in 2011, raising concerns that others may follow suit. A few days later, Germany announced that it would start deporting Syrians with criminal records.
All this has turned a historic and liberating moment into a source of instability and fear for many Syrians in Europe.
Restricted freedom of movement
Thaer says that particularly in his line of work, Syria remains dangerous: “It’s not 100% safe for journalists. I received 50 messages of death threats after a message I posted online.” But his profession was an advantage when he applied to the French state for formal permission to make a temporary visit home. “I immediately sent an email to Ofpra and went to the prefecture saying that I want to go back to Syria without losing my refugee status,” he says.
Permission came from the Colmar prefecture in February in the form of a “safe-conduct” document, which allows a refugee to visit their country for an urgent or humanitarian reason. In most cases, the French state has recognized Syrian journalists as having an urgent professional reason for making a return visit. “I was so desperate that I asked to be able to go even for a week. So, they gave me one week only,” Thaer laughs.
For others, the situation has been more challenging. “When Bashar fell, all the journalists I know went to Syria,” says Bushra Al Zoubi, a 31-year-old Syrian activist living in Paris, where she juggles translation work with a position as an assistant for Reporters Without Borders. “I was so jealous at first, I wanted to go too. If I could, I would have gone the next day – but I would have lost my protection.”
Bushra left her hometown of Deraa when she was 18. “Deraa was the birthplace of the revolution and there are many women in my family, and we were in danger of rapes. Houses were being burned, and so on. So, it wasn’t possible to stay,” she says. She and her family crossed the border into Jordan on foot, where she spent nine years in Amman.
“By pure chance,” in 2022, she received a study grant to attend the prestigious Sciences Po in Paris and gain a master’s degree in human rights and humanitarian action. She then managed to secure a ten-year residence card after being recognized as a refugee.
But asylum turned out to be a double-edged sword. Having fought to secure her protection, she is free to travel anywhere in Europe, but not to her own country. Since fleeing Syria, Bushra’s life has been defined by restrictions on her freedom of movement. “In Jordan, I wasn’t even authorized to travel within the country. Then in France I’ve spent two and a half years trapped and stressed,” she says. Although she began her emancipation in Jordan, Bushra says that it was in France that she experienced a “political shock.”
“I thought it was a democracy, but I was shocked – there’s a lot of racism. So, I started to become more politicized here,” she explains. She joined Sciences Po’s Refugee Help organization to support asylum seekers and expanded her network as an activist. Since graduating she’s joined group working to raise awareness of the tens of thousands of Syrians who were disappeared under the Assad regime. “I’m very involved in advocating for Gaza and refugee rights in general,” she adds.
In Jordan, I wasn’t even authorized to travel within the country. Then in France I’ve spent two and a half years trapped and stressed."
Freedom to act, right to return
Within these activist circles in particular, many Syrians abroad want to be a part of their country’s political and democratic transition. Which is why, in February 2025, Bushra and fellow activists formed the collective Liberté d’agir, droit de revenir (Freedom to Act, Right to Return) to fight for the right to visit Syria with an “absolute guarantee of return to France.”
“It all started with a discussion with fellow protesters,” she says. “This situation is so extraordinary that we need an extraordinary decision.” With help from two lawyers, Raphael Kempf and Romain Ruiz, the collective published an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron with their demand in January.
A few weeks later, the Ministry of Interior made an exception to safe conduct regulations specifically for Syrians, announcing that “the new context in Syria may justify the inclusion in these humanitarian grounds of the need to make an ‘exploratory’ return to the country, for example to renew contact with members of their family or to ascertain the state of property left behind.”
Laurent Delbos of the NGO Forum Réfugiés says that safe conduct “is a procedure known well in asylum law, which allows a person to return to the country they fled for an urgent reason.” For Syrians, the “urgent reason” requirement has now been suspended. Instead, they can simply apply for “humanitarian reasons, such as visiting their relatives, checking the damages on their house,” he explains.
But Bushra says that the criteria remain unclear, and some Syrians are still having their safe conduct applications refused. Responses vary from prefecture to prefecture and on the individual agent handling the application. “Some prefectures refuse, arguing that there is no written circular [an official order sent by the Interior Minister to all prefectures to guide the agents work and evaluation of applications] justifying the granting of safe conducts,” she says.
Liberté d’agir, droit de revenir are continuing their campaign, calling for the process to be harmonized across all prefectures. “We need a written directive from the Ministry of the Interior distributed to all prefectures. We want it to be systematic. We check in regularly with our lawyers to increase the pressure,” Bushra says.
Returning to rubble
Despite her dedicated activism, Bushra herself hasn’t yet applied for safe conduct. Having the right to visit the country of her birth, and to remain in the country that is now her home, means the freedom to make her own choices. But these choices remain difficult – particularly after so many years split between different countries and cultures.
Bushra has a sister in Syria she longs to see, and a niece whom she has never met. But she is also anxious about reconnecting with family in Syria. “I have family and social fears, because I used to wear the hijab and I took it off, and I’m afraid that my family and the village I come from won’t accept this change,” she says.
Since her initial urge to return immediately, Bushra has also seen the security situation deteriorate. “Today it’s much riskier to go there, because of Israeli strikes, but also because of inter-confessional clashes,” Bushra says.
In March 2025, more than 1,000 Alawites were killed, and in April deadly clashes broke out in Druze areas, which have displaced close to 200,000 people since they escalated in July, with Israel intervening against the interim Syrian government. In June, a terrorist attack on a church in the heart of Damascus killed at least 25 people. At the same time, the country faces dire economic crisis and a battle to rebuild most of its infrastructure in the midst of ongoing conflict.
“I’m afraid of what it will be like to go back. So many things have changed.”
Maryam Al Rashi and her husband, who live in Marseille, were recently granted safe conduct. “When I went back, I felt like a tourist,” she says with a sad smile. “It’s weird.” The couple found their former family home in Damascus almost unrecognizable. “It was still there, but it was damaged, there were broken things. It’s a metaphor for the country,” Maryam says.
Their daughter Judy Al Rashi did not join them on the trip. Asked whether she wants to visit, Judy says the question itself is something she’s still adjusting to. “I have political refugee status, so when I arrived with my parents 12 years ago, I had to tell myself that I would never go back to my country,” she says. “I never asked myself if I could – or if I wanted – to go.”
Judy is now an actress in France, her adopted home. Yet she has never felt integrated into French society. “They always bring me back to my difference. If it’s not the accent, it’s my looks,” she says. “When Bashar fell, many Syrians said, ‘We have a country now’ because you can’t feel good in France,” she adds.
She’s excited to see people and places she left behind: “I have to see my country again without Bashar, visit my school and my teachers, see the apartment where I grew up, my cousins, my friends, my aunt.” But despite this anticipation, she remains apprehensive: “I’m afraid of what it will be like to go back. So many things have changed.”
Reconstruction from diaspora
Reuniting with loved ones, rediscovering the sounds and smells of a past life, or navigating neighborhoods forever changed by violence, every return journey to Syria is momentous and emotional. “The first five minutes I spent in the taxi from Damascus airport to Homs, I was thinking of leaving,” Thaer says of his arrival in Damascus. “I was so afraid, so shocked by the situation. Everyone is poor and the country is very tired.” In his hometown, he saw his two sisters for the first time since he left. He also found his apartment destroyed.
But going back is about more than personal ties. Around the world, diaspora Syrians want to see their homeland through transition and be part of the effort to rebuild the nation.
Thaer founded Yallah Syria, a journalism platform to “help the youth who don’t know what they want” and a civil society organization that brings together young Syrians through workshops and training sessions. “We want to equip them with knowledge about democracy, civil rights, gender equality and active citizenship,” Thaer says.
Bushra says she and fellow activists feel a responsibility to help put the country on a better path. In particular, she’s passionate about increasing the rights and representation of women in the southern Syria. “Being from Deraa, I am a woman of the South, and this region is never shown. But this is really important, to make it more visible, and especially to put the women of the South on the map,” she says.
At the same time, Bushra feels “psychologically exhausted” by the ongoing violence. Thaer isn’t ready to give up France as a home either. “I don’t know if I can go back permanently, because it’s not safe,” he says. Thaer has applied for a second document of safe conduct but having already been back once to see what his country looks like in the wake of 14 years of war, he believes the French are authorities are unlikely to give him permission twice.
Thaer, Bushra and Judy have each applied for French citizenship – which would allow them to travel freely back and forth to Syria. Ironically, to play an active role in rebuilding their country, they may need European passports to ensure their safety.
About the author:
Marine Caleb is a freelance journalist based in Marseille, covering the Mediterranean region. She specializes in migration, minorities and women’s rights, and writes for media outlets around the world.
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