The financial crisis seems to be entering a new phase in 2015 following the shift in Greek policy and its possible effects on EU response mechanisms. In this dynamic context, this project aims to provide ways for understanding the new political behaviours arising at the junctures of economic and ethnic conflict. While focused largely on research, the project's findings, even at its preliminary phase this year will be instructive for the ways in which the Cyprus conflict may be approached anew in the current conjuncture. One of the chief aims of the project will be to show the relevance of observations from Cyprus vis-à-vis similar situations across Europe, where ethnic conflict has been overlain by social ills arising from the crisis.
This project extended from 2016 as the refugee crisis continues to mire the region. Migration continued to be a challenge within 2017, especially as it brought Cyprus into closer contact with regional situations it had thus far been shielded from. In 2017 the project developed a regional comparative aspect that will begin untangling the complex conflict and migration dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The project is a study of the intersections between migration and conflict dynamics in the region and local perspectives on displacement and the Cyprus conflict. A second comparative project on responses to the refugee crisis in the region articulates and expands these findings. Both of these projects continue into 2018.
