The city of São Paulo has been governed by three men of Lebanese descent since the 1990s: Paulo Maluf, Fernando Haddad, and Gilberto Kassab. The former president Michel Temer is a descendant of Lebanese migrants as well. These examples are evidence of the prominent role occupied by Lebanese migrants and their descendants in Brazil. Nearly 6% of all Brazilian lawmakers during the 2015-2019 term claimed Lebanese descent. This phenomenon––which has parallels with other Latin American countries, among them El Salvador and Ecuador––is particularly surprising given that Lebanese migrants form a smaller percentage of the Brazilian population. This paper makes sense of that apparent over-representation. Drawing on oral history testimonies, diplomatic cables, and secondary literature, it starts by analyzing the history of the political participation of Lebanese migrants and their descendants, arguing that the explanation combines four factors. First, Lebanese migrants were particularly engaged in the politics of their homeland even after settling in Brazil and managed to transfer their experience to local Brazilian politics. Secondly, political participation served as a means of social mobility, through which migrants continued earlier processes of enrichment in commerce and investment in education. Thirdly, Lebanese migrants encountered a favorable environment for pursuing public office in Brazil, as the strongman Getúlio Vargas excited the political participation of minorities during the 1930s as a way of counterbalancing the power of the traditional Brazilian elites. Fourthly, Lebanese migrants spread throughout Brazil, in part as a consequence of their commercial activities and peddling, and, as such, they could represent diverse constituencies. After this historical analysis, this paper presents a particular case study: the Grupo Parlamentar Brasil-Líbano, a caucus that congregates politicians of Lebanese descent. The case study analyzes the caucus’ list of members during the term that spanned from 2015 to 2019 in terms of their geographical origin and political affiliation. Initial findings show, for example, that these politicians are present throughout the Brazilian territory and occupy both the left and the right of the political spectrum—they are concentrated, nevertheless, in the Southeast and conservative parties. In this sense, this paper contributes to a still scant scholarship on the political participation of Arab migrants, particularly in the Latin American mahjar, where they achieved remarkable success.

Using an ethnographic approach, this essay examines the integration of Syrian refugees into local communities in USA. Based on in-depth interviews with Syrian refugee families, this project analyzes the complex ways in which women assumed the role of agents in adapting to the new life. We specifically ask: How has the need to adapt to the new environment and step outside their comfort zone shape Syrian women’s gender performances and restructure their ideas about rights within the family? Focusing on how they challenged gender norms through engaging in economic activities, our findings suggest that women demonstrated a growing awareness of the economic challenges in the United States and normalized this awareness based on their situation. Their responses varied between exerting agency as active participants in shaping their new lives, exercising ambivalent agency by mechanically embracing work and English learning for their families’ sake, or as passive—and sometimes helpless— subjects of yet another form of social control.

While a majority of Arab-Americans are foreign-born, a substantial proportion of the community is native-born United States citizens. The attitudinal differences between these first- and second-generation cohorts are key indicators of the degree to which this minority population is following a “typical” assimilationist path or one that is more staggered and segmented. These indicators, in turn, are arguably of greater consequence among Arab-American Muslims given their status as both an ethnic and religious minority. That is, assimilation in the American context is a far less complex (though not necessarily simple) proposition for members of the Christian majority; an assertion underscored in the Arab context through the historical circumstance of this population’s legal whiteness being in large part tied to the first claimants’ Christianity. This paper assesses the effect of nativity among Arab-American Muslims through the three waves of Pew’s nationally representative surveys (2007, 2011, and 2017) and pooled data from three waves of the American Muslim Poll (2016-2018) fielded by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. The analysis highlights whether and to what extent nativity conditions social attitudes, religiosity and self-identification/expression, discussing in each instance ex ante expectations and ex post implications. This examination thus offers a wide-ranging, empirically grounded assessment both for scholars looking to expand the dearth of research on this salient yet understudied community, and those interested in the comparative politics of race and ethnicity more broadly.

As of 2016, 81% of Canada’s self-identified Arab population were concentrated in provinces of Ontario and Quebec, primarily nestled in cosmopolitan city areas such as Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau and Toronto and is one of the largest and fastest growing ethnocultural groups in the country. Canadians of Arab descent are also among the youngest with a median age of 30.2 years old. As crisis in the Middle East saw millions take part in mass global migration from the region into Western countries, we investigate the premise of cultural reductionists who have questioned Arabs’ integration, identity formation and sense of belonging to Western values and nations. We surveyed nearly 1000 Arab youth across 12 Canadian cities, coast to coast, to get a clear sense of how they navigate their identities between their ethnocultural roots and their sense of belonging as members of the Canadian community. In addition to the data collected through the survey, this study also gathered qualitative data in focus groups held in Ottawa and Montreal (where Arabs represent the second largest visible minority group in each city) to augment our quantitative findings and to capture other dimensions of the intended research and validate the survey findings. We found that among factors that influence the balance between maintaining their ethnic Arab identity and adopting a civic Canadian identity are, but not limited to: age, familial relationships, connections with country of origin, consumption of Arab media, language proficiency, experience with discrimination, and other socialization factors and practices. Highlighting the empirical illustrations of acculturation, this paper will expand the discussion beyond these frameworks by asking how to mitigate this tension between ethnic identity and civic/national identity. We utilize mixed methods to illustrate the complex personal decisions and voices of Arab youth within Canada. We argue that Arab Canadians embody the idea of transnational citizenship which connotes strong connections to homeland while simultaneously holding strong civic values to being Canadian. With transnationalism, ethnocultural minorities are less likely to discard the socio-cultural identity of their origin country. As Arab-Canadian youth use modern technologies to stay connected to homelands, they also keep their identity as they navigate a sense of belonging to their new country. These findings indicated that instead of this transnational community abandoning their old identities, they form hyphenated identities, integrate well into Canadian society, mix their cultural practices in their new societies, and contribute to the broader notions of Canadian multiculturalism.