For more than a decade, Syrians have been the world’s largest refugee population.
More than 6 million Syrians have fled the country since 2011, when an uprising against the regime of Bashar Assad transformed into a 13-year civil war. Most ended up in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, while a sizable minority wound up in Europe. But the overthrow of the Assad regime in late 2024 by opposition forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has seemingly opened a window for their return, and tens of thousands of former refugees have since made the decision to go back to their homeland.
How many and who decides to go back, and the circumstances under which they reintegrate into Syrian society, will have enormous implications for both Syria and the countries they resettled in. It also provides an opportunity for migration scholars like ourselves to better understand what happens when refugees finally return home.
Previous research has shown that Syrian refugees who are trying to decide whether to return are motivated more by conditions in Syria than by policy decisions where they’ve resettled. But individual experiences also play an important role. Counterintuitively, refugees who have been exposed to violence during the Syrian civil war are actually more tolerant of and better at assessing the risk of returning to Syria, research has shown.
But such research was conducted while Assad was still in power, and it has only been several weeks since Assad fell. As a result, it’s unclear how many Syrians will decide to go back. After all, the current government is transitional, and the country is not fully unified.
The risk of return
In the month after Assad’s fall, about 125,000 Syrians headed home, primarily from Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. But for the majority of those yet to return, important questions and considerations remain.
First and foremost, what will governance look like under the transitional government? So far, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s rule under Ahmed al-Sharaa has suggested the group will embrace inclusivity toward Syria’s diverse array of ethnic and religious minorities. Even so, some observers worry about the group’s prior connections to militant Islamist groups, including al-Qaida.
Similarly, initial fears about restrictions on women’s participation in public life have mostly been assuaged, despite the transitional government appointing only two women to office.
Syrians debating whether to return home must also confront the economic devastation wrought by years of war, government mismanagement and corruption, and international sanctions placed on the Assad regime.
Sanctions blocking the entry of medications and equipment, along with Assad’s bombing of infrastructure throughout the war, have crippled the country’s medical system.
In 2024, 16.7 million Syrians – more than half the country’s population – were in need of essential humanitarian assistance, even as very little was available. In early 2025, the U.S. announced that it was extending a partial, six-month reprieve of sanctions to allow humanitarian groups to provide basic services such as water,