For more than a century, writers of Arab origin have unevenly circulated between Brazil and the U.S.. Based on historical and literary sources, my paper focuses on three moments of Arab intellectual crossings in the Americas: the early twentieth century mahjari literary collectives in Sao Paulo and New York City; the mid-century American University of Beirut alumni network between the Universidade de Sao Paulo and Princeton University's Philip Hitti; and the late twentieth century rise of two novelists, Milton Hatoum in Brazil and Diana Abu-Jaber in the U.S.. I suggest that a North-South hierarchy took shape in the Arab diaspora during the two earlier periods but was disrupted in recent times. Through the mid-twentieth century, only U.S. Arab intellectual production was translated into Portuguese and released in Brazil. Yet, starting in the 1990s, this flow was reversed as Hatoum's Brazilian novels with Arab tropes were translated from Portuguese to English and published in the U.S.. In confirming and disrupting North-South asymmetries, Brazilian and U.S. writers with Arab ancestry show that they, too, are the Americas.

From Morocco to Syria, labor emigration of the best and brightest constitutes a "brain drain" akin, in the words of the U.N. 2003 Arab Human Development Report, to a "hemorrhage." At the same time, migrants' remittances account for some 20 percent of GDP in Jordan, 7 percent in Yemen, and 15 percent in the West Bank and Gaza. The impact of outmigration upon the populations and economies of the Middle East is thus sweeping. But how does emigration affect politics in the countries left behinde This paper probes this question through analysis of contemporary Lebanon. While polls show that most Lebanese citizens are "fed up" with corrupt politicians and woeful public services, change remains elusive. Most attribute entrenched patterns in Lebanese politics to sectarianism or clientelism. I suggest that neither explain political outcomes in the absence of outmigration. About one fifth of Lebanese citizens, and almost one-third of those with tertiary education, live outside their home country. The IMF ranks Lebanon first in the world among recipients of workers' remittances per capita. I suggest that emigration contributes to the reproduction of nondemocratic politics in several ways. Emigration serves as a "safety valve" that prevents residents from reaching the level of distress that the poor state of the economy and public goods provision might otherwise induce. It offers an "exit option" that reduces the imperative of working for political reform, be it among those who leave, those who expect to leave, or those who receive funds from loved ones abroad. In addition, migration depletes the ranks of those best positioned to bring new ideas and skills into public life; the departure of large segments of the middle class solidifies the polity left behind as one of patrons and clients. It also detaches diasporic citizens' nostalgic love of homeland from a commitment to improving its governance. Finally, outmigration undergirds clientelist relationships by continually infusing migrant wealth into politics. The cumulative effect of outmigration is hence to reinforce the status quo, despite pervasive dissatisfaction. This research has wide-reaching implications. While Lebanon's sectarian composition and political system are unique, the essence of its politics is similar to the rest of the region in that it is characterized by endemic corruption, weak rule of law, and lack of accountability. In exploring the heretofore overlooked relationship between emigration and nondemocratic politics, this project offers fresh insight into the politics of the Arab world, at large.

The extraordinary visibility of Mashreqis- Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians- in positions of power and wealth in neoliberal Middle America is best understood through a history of the present. Migrant trajectories, polarized early in the migratory process into those of a small migrant elite and a much larger working class, have been structured by axes of differentiation that reflect distinct colonial projects and the pulse of capitalist and imperial expansions throughout the twentieth century. The early socioeconomic diversity of the migration and the French mandate over the Mashreq in the first half of the twentieth century afforded the cultivation of relationships of patronage within and beyond the migrant population that were crucial to class trajectories. Class formation emerges as mediated by discursive practices of sectarianization, racialization, and representation, and includes both the accumulation of resources by increasingly powerful mediators and the erasure of undesirable migrant bodies and categories through material and discursive displacement. The migrants' experience has been shaped by the transnational practice of a variety of agents: transnational migrant families, which shift their centers of gravity according to political and economic crises; French officials, who imagined imperial administration as a global project; religious officials with regional jurisdictions; postcolonial diplomatic missions and revolutionary projects. The intersection, entanglement, and structural and discursive inscription of French imperial, Middle American postcolonial and Mashreqi post/colonial logics of construction of the subaltern and the dominant have allowed Mashreqi migrants to Mexico and Central America to settle into the top deciles of the population in terms of property and into a position of prestige within the popular imagination. The paper is based on ethnographic and archival research.