Ambivalent Hospitality. Coping Strategies and Local Responses to Syrian Refugees in Lebanon (2013) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Against Ontologies of Hospitality: About Syrian Refugeehood in Northern Lebanon
This essay explores the relationship between Syrian refugees and local Lebanese. In particular, it discusses the dominance of the discourse of ‘hospitality’ in the international media depiction of this relationship and in the humanitarian response informed by it. As this essay will show, these tendencies have resulted in the ‘hospitality’ discourse informing and reinforcing the international response to the Syrian refugee influx into and presence in Lebanon. More specifically, the essay unpacks the dominant ‘hospitality discourse,’ which rests on three interrelated notions. First, hospitality employed as a social order instrument characterizes the relationship between refugees and local Lebanese as defined chiefly by the latter’s generous offers of sanctuary. Second, hospitality as a media narrative and epistemic construction portrays Lebanon as a country straining under the weight of the refugee burden, depicted as “existential problem.” Finally, hospitality as a local way to respond to the official declaration of emergency crisis has allowed the “hosts” to “other” the refugees and instability threats.
Refugee Hospitality in Lebanon and Turkey. On Making 'The Other'
This paper examines the hospitality provided to Syrian refugees during the refugee crisis spanning from 2011 to 2016 in the border areas of Gaziantep (southeastern Turkey) and the Akkar region (northern Lebanon). Hospitality, apart from a cultural value and societal response to the protracted refugee influx, is a discursive strategy of socio-spatial control used by humanitarian agencies, local and national authorities. This paper, first, argues against hospitality as an assessment to ethically compare host countries (i.e. more welcoming versus less welcoming states). Second, drawing on Walters' notion of " humanitarian border " , it shows how the governmental , humanitarian, and everyday workings of hospitality exercise an assertive politics of sovereignty over the social encounter between locals and refugees. We examine the state-centered hospitality in the Turkish case and a humanitarian-promoted hospitality in the Lebanese case. We also show how the hospitality discourse shapes the spaces that refugees, citizens, and earlier migrants partake in.
Lebanon hosts around 1.1 million Syrian refugees registered by the UNHCR which is around 25% of the Lebanese population. 17 Students from 10 nationalities conducted a research in Zahle district of Lebanon to measure the impact of economic factors on the social cohesion among Syrians and Lebanese communities. During the 6 days, the 5 in-depth interviews, 5 focus groups and 281 surveys of Lebanese and Syrians were conducted. Findings of the research show that the tensions between Lebanese and Syrian people are increasing due to the formal constraints, growth of informal economy and aid received by refugees.
2017
The Presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has been affecting host communities in different ways. It is true that refugees are suffering from economic, social, health, and legal difficulties; however, one cannot overlook economic and security threats they might pose on Lebanese community. Despite tough circumstances, the Lebanese government did not take any practical steps to organize the presence of Syrian refugees. It only scrutinized hosting policies to discourage mass influx. At a time when repatriation is not an option, this thesis aims to explore hosting models that can accommodate refugees’ needs while exploring the demographic fears of host community. The proposed hosting model is developed based on field research and a comparative case analysis that draws best practices and lessons derived from hosting strategies of Palestinians in Lebanon, and more recently, Syrians in Jordan.
Regional differences in the conditions of Syrian refugees in Lebanon
Lebanon Support and Civil Society Knowledge Center, 2014
Lebanon has entered its third year as a country hosting the highest number of Syrian refugees in the region. All geographical areas with a high concentration of Syrian refugees in Lebanon share a similar protracted marginality, underdevelopment, and weak infrastructure. Syrian refugees experience different levels of legal and political conditions, security and protection, freedom of mobility, access to aid and relief services, access to labor, socio-economic conditions, and prices of goods and rent, all depending on their geographical settlements. These geographical differences are of eminent relevance that affects not only the Syrian refugees and their hosting communities, but also refugee policies and aid programs. This paper explores these variations by analyzing, first, differences among host communities and, second, by examining the dissimilarities among geographic settlements. The paper reveals that the conditions of Syrian refugees depend on the geographical areas of their settlement within Lebanon. Host-refugee relations also show a direct relationship to the variant geographical areas and their sociodemographic compositions. This paper concludes that geographical differences are of vital importance to be considered when studying the living conditions of refugees, developing policies, or designing aid programs.
Lebanon has witnessed multiple waves of displaced peoples throughout its recent history, including the displacement of Palestinians to Lebanon after the occupation of Palestine in 1948, the internal displacement of families from occupied Southern Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1978, and the influx of Syrian refugees after the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011. Many Syrian families had to reconstitute their lives in Lebanon because of the crisis in their country, often in tented and informal settlements or in overpopulated or even abandoned buildings. This article focuses on the process of hosting Syrian refugees in Saida in Southern Lebanon after 2011. It explores service provisions and the two dominant types of housing for Syrian refugees: collective shelters and single apartments within local neighbourhoods. The article argues that mechanisms of exclusion emerge with intensity in cities like Saida that have received and accommodated multiple waves of displacement. Such mechanisms of exclusion in Saida are politically attuned to the historical depth of the hosting experience and emerge at multiple levels, both social and spatial. This is despite Saida's mobilization to provide aid, and its departure from housing refugees Keywords displacement Syrian refugees Lebanon social exclusion housing urban services
Refugees Hosting Other Refugees: Endurance and Maintenance of Care in Ouzaii (Lebanon
This article examines the socio-spatial mechanisms that emerge when refugees host other refugees. It argues that there is an underlying social infrastructure of care that impacts the refugees' choice of destinations and modes of survival. When refugees host other refugees from close networks of relatives and neighbours, they create their own spatial clusters. In the process, the social infrastructure of care offers one mode of security to vulnerable refugees. Care as a concept and an approach is related to ideas of endurance and maintenance. It facilitates multiple dimensions, from space, to affection and to the everyday. It is able to reconfigure a life possible, life-enduring and a life meaningful in an urban setting. We focus on Ouzaii in Beirut, Lebanon. Ouzaii has been a destination for multiple displaced groups over different periods of time. Ouzaii currently hosts an approximate 10,000 Syrian refugees. They chose Ouzaii as their destination after they were helped by existing refugees who offered shelter and access to jobs. The resultant socio-spatial practices, flourishing businesses and leisurely facilities are evidence of successful social networks that form an infrastructure of care. They also play a role in the reconstitution of Ouzaii itself. We conclude with reflections on how urban informality may offer refugees an alternative right to the city while allowing them to escape the gaze of the humanitarian-aid apparatus that can signify their vulnerability by reducing them to only being aid recipients. Instead, they form protective socio-spatial networks that have proved to be powerful in sustaining their livelihoods, guarding them from possible social discrimination or political threats.
Security Dialogues, 2018
Lebanon is receiving most Syrian refugees per capita of all countries surrounding Syria. The most marginalized within Lebanon, the Palestinian refugees that came to Lebanon in 1948 are also hosting arriving Syrian refugees. This study aims to better understand the interplay and interrelations between hosts and refugees. This study is concerned with the overarching question: What is the relationship between the Palestinians hosting the Syrian refugees, and how do they cope with already increasingly narrow resources they have at their disposal, and how is the social relationships between the two refugee groups in Lebanon? Theoretically this study explores and develops a synthesis of a pluralist society model and the ethno-class model, a new approach that best can describe how interrelations in the refugee context in Lebanon are developing. The refugee camp Wavel outside the city of Baalbek in the north serves as case for this study. Semistructured interviews and focal group discussions have been made with both Palestinian hosts, as well as Syrian refugees.