How Do Consociations Craft Asylum Policy? Lebanon’s Response to Conflict-Induced Displacement as an Exploratory Case

How do consociations craft their asylum policy, and how do they deal with the rights of “others”? Research has started to explore the relationship between consociational governance and non-ethnic or non-sectarian social groups. Yet, we still know little about how consociations interact with refugee flight on the one hand, and with the ethics of refugee protection on the other. As a form of thick institutional complexity, consociationalism risks limiting the ability of the state to respond to refugee displacement in a manner that is timely, effective, and which respects the rights and dignity of displaced individuals. We draw on Lebanon’s response to the arrival of some 1.5 million displaced individuals in the country since the start of Syria’s lethal conflict in 2011 as an exploratory case study that seeks to further knowledge on how consociations craft and implement their asylum policy. Specifically, we consider three mechanisms of immobilism that constrain the crafting of unified, responsive, and inclusive asylum policy and that are posed by the consociational state apparatus itself: ethnicization/sectarianization, procrastination, and fragmentation. Building on Lebanon’s patterns of refugee policymaking, we show how these mechanisms mutually reinforce one another, backfiring on policy congruence as well as refugee rights and protection.