Abstract
This article discusses how the Lebanese state has responded to displacement from Syria (2011-17), and how the resulting policy formulation processes and discourses have constructed the relationship between the hosting state and the refugee. It focuses especially on how this small state has negotiated its politics of reception and choice of policy tools amid dysfunctional institutions and political disputes. To this end, it uses the lens of Lebanon's model of sectarian power sharing to understand the polity's response to mass displacement. This process has been structured by the defining dynamics of the country's politics of sectarianism: Slack governance, an elite fractured model, and a politics of dependence on external and domestic nonstate actors. The Lebanese model offers broader insights into types of coping mechanisms that emerge in the context of forced migration, notably when a formal refugee regime is absent. The article contends that states lacking a legal asylum framework and grappling with various governance hurdles are likely to draw on the repertoire of their political regime to deal with displacement.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | International Journal of Middle East Studies |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Pages (from-to) | 681-700 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| ISSN | 0020-7438 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:50International Center for Human Sciences, Lebanese American University and International Alert, “Syrian Refugees’ Access to Formal and Informal Justice in Lebanon” (survey findings presented at the roundtable discussion on Syrian refugees’ access to justice in the framework of the project “Syrian Communities Justice Concerns” funded by a grant from WOTRO Science for Global Development, Lebanese American University, Beirut, 1 March 2016).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Cambridge University Press.
Keywords
- Governance
- humanitarianism
- policy making
- refugees
- sectarianism