Although popular and academic attention typically turns to migrants and refugees primarily when they reach countries in the Global North, nearly half of international migrants, and more than 80% of refugees, reside in the Global South. Countries once regarded as transit states—which people intended only to pass through en route to other destinations—have consequently become hosts to millions of semipermanent migrants and refugees.

In Reluctant Reception: Refugees, Migration and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa, Kelsey P. Norman asks why these transit-turned-host states permit migrants and refugees to remain indefinitely, and what determines how they treat them. To answer these questions, she develops a new concept: strategic indifference. Migration scholarship usually distinguishes between liberal engagement—in which states provide services and access that encourage integration—and exclusionary strategies that deny such opportunities. Norman astutely argues that this binary misses a third option, in which states allow migrants and refugees to integrate locally into informal economies but invite international organizations and NGOs to step in and provide them with services. This enables states to gain international credibility for hosting large populations and also negotiate tangential benefits, such as development aid or benefits for their nationals. All the while, they expend few resources of their own.

An important theoretical innovation, the idea of strategic indifference explains aspects of migration governance that are otherwise easy to misunderstand. This stance is not inaction, neglect, or an automatic result of limited state capacity, as often assumed. Rather, it is a rational way that poorer states extract domestic and foreign policy benefits from their geopolitical positioning. Understanding indifference as a political choice puts the agency of host states at the forefront of migration dynamics. It also calls due attention to the agency of migrants and refugees, who navigate the opportunities and constraints that strategic indifference affords them. Despite legal and economic precarity in transit-turned-host states, migrants and refugees are not simply waiting to move elsewhere. They are using spaces of flexibility and autonomy to create livelihoods where they are.

Norman illustrates these dynamics in Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey based on nearly three years of immersive fieldwork and 133 interviews. Compelling chapters on each case establish historical context and describe the incentives, laws, and decisions that crystalized policies of strategic indifference. They also trace shifts to different engagement strategies during the first decades of the 2000s. In Egypt, the 2013 coup that removed President Mohamed Morsi brought to power a resurgent authoritarian regime that viewed migrants as security threats. This repressive approach was especially politicized vis-à-vis Syrian refugees. Because the ousted government had been sympathetic toward Syrians, the military government launched a media campaign painting Syrians as terrorists and supporters of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Given the Egyptian government’s confidence that it would receive extensive United States assistance regardless of its human rights abuses, it faced little cost in acting repressively toward migrants and refugees. This stood in contrast to Morocco and Turkey, where greater sensitivity to foreign aid and international shaming encouraged the move from strategic indifference toward liberal reform. In Morocco, civil society groups brought criticism of government actions to international attention, prompting the government to adopt new legislation. In Turkey, the impetus was awareness of how reform could improve the government’s image and leverage in negotiations with the European Union (EU). In both Morocco and Turkey, however, diplomatic rewards for putting more liberal laws on the books did not translate into incentives to implement them. The result was major gaps between de jure and de facto policies, and minimal change for migrants’ and refugees’ actual lives.

Three additional empirical chapters extend this comparative case analysis. One uses interviews with migrants and refugees to challenge the view that states privilege migrants and refugees who are culturally similar to host nationals. Another chapter examines the influence of international organizations on host state policy, considering red lines that organizations ought not cross, domains in which they can nevertheless advocate for their agendas, and strategies that Global South host states employ to advance their own agendas for rebalanced burden sharing. The final empirical chapter traces renegotiation of these power dynamics since Europe’s 2015 “refugee crisis.” Extracting advantage from Europe’s readiness to “throw money at the problem” and then turn a blind eye, Global South states have become skilled in demanding more resources in return for hosting migrants and refugees and blocking their onward migration. Until the EU establishes more effective pathways for legal migration and safe pursuit of asylum, Norman argues, we can expect this pattern to repeat.

Rich and encompassing, this excellent book has many strengths. It brings policy toward both migrants and refugees into a single lens. It connects actors at multiple levels of analysis, including civil society associations, Global South host states, Global North states, and international organizations. It considers issues of law, diplomacy, security, cultural proximity, political economy, and international relations. It is attentive to change over time and across space. It singles out key drivers such as state interests and geopolitics without simplifying complexity and neglecting other factors of causal import. Most of all, it teaches us how much we can learn about migration management when we view it from the perspective of the Global South in general, and transit-turned-host states in particular.

One of the book’s unexpected pleasures is the ethnographic detail woven throughout. Every chapter begins with a captivating vignette that anchors its main analytical takeaway. Demonstrating how indifference creates both opportunities and constraints for migrants, Norman introduces us to a Senegalese man selling items on the streets of Rabat and his acquired knowledge about which police officers joke around and which mean trouble. Revealing how international and state actors negotiate their competing interests, she takes us inside a workshop in Cairo, where International Organization of Migration representatives and Egyptian officials speak past each other. These and many other stories offer a model for how political scientists can present rigorous research while also bringing to life its significance for the people under study. In the concluding chapter, a wonderful reflection on “accidental ethnography” elaborates on this dimension of the book, suggesting how 300 pages of fieldnotes documenting informal interactions and observations deepened Norman’s understanding in ways that formal interviews alone could not.

Such care for what is at stake in migration debates for real lives creates a book whose analytical insight is matched by tremendous humanity and even beauty. Students of migration, North-South relations, Mediterranean politics, and Middle East and North Africa studies will all gain something new from its novel take on a topic that is as essential and timely as it is understudied. They will also find it a delight to read.