MESA Banner
Brothers, Workers or Syrians? The politics of naming in Lebanese municipalities
Abstract
Displaced Syrians in Lebanon face a multitude of legal, social, and political categories that operate together to structure their lives and opportunities. One important site of juxtaposition of these various categories can be found in the area of municipal governance. Most prominent among municipal policy tools has been the bannered discriminatory curfews that line the public squares of many of Lebanon’s urban neighbourhood, towns and villages. The various named “targets” of these curfews — whether foreigners, Syrians, displaced, labourers, brothers, or the disembodied “motorbike” — instantiate the complexity of issues of Syrian belonging in the country. This paper aims to unpack these categories through their historical, political, and social dimensions, and through the lived experience of Syrians who encounter, negotiate, and - at times - resist them. As categories, these “targets” do not operate entirely separate from one another and serve primarily as a form of social ordering – defining the “other” in distinct forms – rather than a legal or political one. Building on over a year of fieldwork in Lebanon from October 2015 to December 2016, this paper relies on a diverse set of sources, including ethnographic observation, documents, and interviews with a wide array of actors including Lebanese citizens and displaced Syrians, mayors and municipal police officers, as well as lawyers, journalists, aid workers, and central government officials.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Lebanon
Syria
Sub Area
Ethnography