Can humanitarianism make the city?
Check my new chapter on the encounter between urban and humanitarian actors in A. Triandafyllidou, M. Kelly, A. Moghadam, Z. Şahin-Mencütek (eds.), Migration and Cities. London: Springer.
Open Access here:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-031-55680-7_14
يدرك لاجئون ومهاجرون عرب وأفغان من المقيمين في تركيا أن خطر وقوع زلزال مدمر محدق بهم، غير أنهم لا يحركون ساكناً ولا يمكنهم ذلك، كيف ولماذا ومن المسؤول، هذا ما تجيب عنه دراسة حديثة لأربعة باحثين من جامعة لندن.
عمل الباحثون بين مجتمعات اللاجئين والمهاجرين العرب والأفغان المقيمين في إسطنبولوتوصلوا إلى أن لديهم معرفة ووعياً باحتمال وقوع كارثة في المدينة التي دقت بلديتها ناقوس الخطر في فبراير/ شباط الماضي، بعد تكرار التحذيرات من إمكانية أن يضربها زلزال مدمّر قد تبلغ قوته أكثر من سبع درجات، غير أن ظروف المهاجرين واللاجئين المعيشية تعوق أحلامهم بالحصول على سكن وحياة آمنة وتمنعهم من الانتقال من مكان إقامتهم الحالي رغم خطورته.
وتوضح الدراسة كيف لا يمكن ترجمة المستويات المتزايدة من الوعي باحتمالات وقوع الكوارث، إلى فعل نشط للبحث عن مساكن آمنة ومقاومة للزلازل بين العديد من المهاجرين واللاجئين.
وضرب زلزال كبير جنوب تركيا في السادس من فبراير 2023 وتسبب في مقتل 50 ألف شخص، ودمار كبير في البنى التحتية في عدد من ولايات البلاد، علاوة على آلاف الجرحى ومئات الآلاف من النازحين، والذين انتقلوا إلى إسطنبول وأنقرة ومدن أخرى تقع في الداخل التركي، ويخشى متخصصون تكرار الأمر في إسطنبول.
ونشرت الدراسة التي حصل “العربي الجديد” عليها (مرفقة في المادة) على موقع موسوعة أبحاث أكسفورد لعلوم المخاطر الطبيعية في إبريل/ نيسان 2024، بعنوان “في انتظار الكارثة؟ خيارات السكن ومدى المعرفة بالكوارث بين المهاجرين واللاجئين في مناطق جنوب غربي إسطنبول” Waiting for Disaster? Housing Choices and Disaster Knowledge Among Migrants and Refugees in Istanbul’s Southwestern Districts، وعمل عليها فريق متعدد التخصصات، وهم الأكاديميون إستيلا كاربي وسامان غفاريان وكاسيدي جونسون من جامعة لندن وأويس حمص، الباحث المستقل في الهندسة المعمارية، بهدف تقييم مدى التأهب وحجم القدرات المعرفية بالكوارث لدى شريحة المهاجرين واللاجئين الناطقين بالعربية والفارسية المقيمين في المناطق الجنوبية الغربية لإسطنبول (أفجلار، زيتون بورنو، كوتشوك شكمجة، باكركوي، باغجلار، الفاتح، إسنيورت، باهجيليفلر، باشاك شهير، بيليك دوزو)، والتقى الباحثون 71 مهاجراً ولاجئاً من أجل تقييم خيارات السكن الآمن ومدى العوائق التي تواجههم وتمنعهم من الاستعداد في حال وقوع الكوارث في ظل خصوصيات حياة هذه المجموعات.
تحقيق متعدّد الوسائط
وتناولت الدراسة القضية محل البحث من منظور متعدد التخصصات يشمل علم الاجتماع الحضري، والدراسات الحضرية، والهندسة المعمارية، والعلوم البيئية وعلوم الأرض، إذ دمرت هذه المناطق خلال زلزال مرمرة عام 1999، والذي أودى بحياة ما يقرب من 18000 شخص، وشرّد ما بين 400000 إلى 600000 آخرين، وتسبب في تدمير 35000 مبنى، وألحق أضراراً بـ 80000 آخرين في جميع أنحاء إسطنبول والجزء الشمالي الشرقي من البلاد.
ولفتت الدراسة إلى أن الأحياء المشمولة بُنيت على رواسب التربة المعرضة للتسييل في حالة وقوع الزلازل، وبالقرب من خطوط الصدع التي تمتد من الشرق إلى الغرب على طول ساحل بحر مرمرة.
ويحدث تسيّل التربة عندما تفقد أجزاؤها المشبعة أو المشبعة جزئياً صلابتها وقساوتها تحت تأثير إجهاد مطبق، مثل الاهتزاز أثناء حدوث الزلازل أو أي تغيّر مفاجئ في الحالة الإجهادية، إذ تسلك المادة التي عادةً ما تكون صلبة في هذه الحالة سلوك السائل، وتقع تركيا على خط صدع زلزالي رئيسي في العالم، ويحذر الجيولوجيون من أن عدد الفوالق في تركيا يصل إلى نحو 500 فالق نشط، ما قد يسبب زلازل بقوة تزيد عن 5.5 درجات.
الأرشيف
وتحدد درجة الزلزال وفق مقياس أو مؤشر ريختر العددي، وتقاس بدرجات من 1 إلى 10، والمرحلة الأولى تحدّد بأنها من 1 إلى الدرجة 4 وتوصف بأنها زلازل قد لا تُحدث أية أضرار، أي يمكن الإحساس بها فقط. ومن 4 إلى 6 تعد زلازل متوسطة الأضرار قد تُحدث ضرراً ملموساً، بينما الزلازل التي تقيّم من 7 إلى 10 توصف بأنها في درجة قصوى، أي يستطيع الزلزال تدمير مدينة بأكملها.
وتوضح الدراسة أن المهاجرين واللاجئين من خلفيات عربية وأفغانية لا يمكنهم الحصول على مساكن آمنة ومقاومة للزلازل لعدة أسباب، أبرزها الوضع غير القانوني، والقدرة الاقتصادية الضعيفة وعدم القدرة على تحمّل تكاليف السكن الأكثر أماناً؛ والتمييز الاجتماعي ضدهم كمستأجرين أو مشترين أجانب من ذوي الدخل المنخفض؛ والمفاضلة بين اختيار سكن أكثر أماناً لكنه بعيد عن أعضاء المجموعة الذين يسكنون في نفس المنطقة، ويدعمون بعضهم عبر شبكات وعلاقات ممتدة، بالإضافة إلى صعوبة الوصول إلى أماكن عملهم في حال النقل من تلك المناطق الخطرة بسبب زيادة تكاليف المواصلات.
وتقول الدكتورة إستيلا كاربي، المحاضرة في الدراسات الإنسانية بجامعة لندن، وأحد المشاركين في الدراسة، لـ”العربي الجديد”، إن معظم المهاجرين واللاجئين الذين التقينا بهم هم من أفغانستان وسورية ومصر وتونس، وفلسطين والسودان والعراق، وركزنا على الوافدين بعد عام 2010، مع اندلاع ما يسمّى بـ”الربيع العربي” والنزوح القسري الناجم عن الحرب، وبعد عودة طالبان إلى السلطة في أفغانستان في عام 2021. لذلك، جمعنا بيانات عن عامهم الأول، وماذا وقع بعد الوصول إلى تركيا وما هي المنطقة التي يستقرّون فيها بإسطنبول ومتى سكنوا في منزلهم الحالي؟”.
تحقيق متعدّد الوسائط
وتوصلت الدراسة إلى أن 9% فقط من المبحوثين يمتلكون شققهم، ومعظمهم يقيمون في بنايات TOKI (وكالة الإسكان المدعومة من الحكومة التركية)، وهم عراقي واحد وسوريان، يحملان الجنسية التركية؛ بينما كان 91 % من المستأجرين. كما أن معظم المهاجرين واللاجئين الذين انتقلوا إلى مساكن أكثر أماناً باختيارهم (عن طريق الشراء أو الاستئجار) كانوا في الغالب من سورية، ومن المرجح أن يكونوا قد حصلوا على الجنسية التركية أو حصلوا على حماية مؤقتة.
وقال 15% إنهم يقيمون في مبنى مقاوم للزلازل؛ و30% لم يكونوا متأكدين؛ بينما قال 55% إن مبانيهم ليست مقاومة للزلازل. ولم يتمكن أي منهم من الوصول إلى الوثائق التي تدعم آراءهم، لكن جميع أحكامهم كانت مبنية على عمر البناء، بينما ذكر 7% فقط منهم أنهم ليس لديهم أي معرفة بالكوارث التي تتهدد البلاد؛ ويعتقد 90% منهم أن لديهم مستوى مرضياً من المعرفة؛ 3% يمتلكون معرفة متخصصة، على سبيل المثال أنهم يعيشون في حي من المستوى الثاني (الفاتح) فيما يتعلق بإمكانية التعرض لخطر الزلازل.
وتؤثر فكرة احتمال وقوع الزلزال المستقبلي على نفسية المبحوثين، خاصة بعد ما جرى في عام 2023، لكن أوضاعهم المعيشية الصعبة تحول بينهم وبين اختيار مكان آمن في المناطق الجنوبية الغربية لإسطنبول، وتضيف كاربي أن أشكال النزوح المتعددة لهذه المجتمعات مؤثرة على وعي اللاجئين والمهاجرين بأهمية إعادة التفكير في خطر الكوارث المحدق بهم، لكن رغبتهم الكبيرة في الوصول إلى معلومات ووثائق أكثر تحديداً لتقييم سكنهم ومدى كونه آمناً من الزلازل لا يمكن تحقيقها بسبب مشكلات البيروقراطية وانشغالاتهم اليومية.
With the aim of Istanbul-based migrants and refugees being able to access safe housing and rethink disaster risk preparedness (Afet Bilinci Eğitimleri), my new article witht three colleagues of mine advocates for a holistic-yet social group informed-understanding of disaster knowledge.
You can access the abstract here below: it’ll be open access intermittently, so feel free to drop me a message if you are interested in reading it all!
This study documents how disaster knowledge among Arabic- and Persian-speaking, Türkiye-based migrants and refugees residing in Istanbul’s southwestern districts (namely Avcılar, Zeytinburnu, Küçükçekmece, Bakırköy, Bağcılar, Fatih, Esenyurt, Bahçelievler, Başakşehir and Beylikdüzü) cannot fully reflect their housing choices. More specifically, by approaching the issue from an interdisciplinary perspective encompassing urban sociology, urban studies, architecture, environmental sciences, and geoscience, housing choices are considered to explore what possibilities and hindrances are available to migrants and refugees when it comes to disaster preparedness and safer living conditions. By this token, a holistic approach to studying disaster-affected societies (e.g., looking at both local displaced people and migrants) should be combined with an approach informed by group specificities. Indeed, while disaster knowledge may be in place, the conditions to aspire to safer housing—and a safer life overall—are proved to be rarely attainable for migrant and refugee groups.
The study shows how increasing levels of disaster knowledge cannot be translated into an active search for safe and verified earthquake-proof housing for many migrants and refugees from Arabic and Persian backgrounds. The main obstacles for accessing safe housing are: legal status, which, instead, is not seen as an important variable for particular groups of refugees who access better legal protection; the impossibility of reaching their workplace—often located in the southwestern districts—with low commuting costs; the economic affordability of presumably safer housing; social discrimination as low-income foreign tenants or buyers; and the trade-off between choosing safer housing in areas where there is no network in place versus benefiting from the support of ingroup members, who have built longstanding networks in some of these districts. Finally, the interviewees deemed their disaster knowledge as generally broad and nonspecialistic, revealing a desire to access more information and specific documentation to evaluate housing safety. The findings point to the importance of rethinking disaster knowledge contextually within societies which have become home to large numbers of migrants and refugees.
Qui si seguito si puo’ accedere al podcast “Merce di Scambio” della giornalista Teresa Potenza (2024).
Ho personalmente partecipato all’episodio riguardante i rapimenti di profughi siriani nel Libano contemporaneo, conseguenti ricatti, e il modo in cui tali fenomeni intrecciano la questione della compravendita di organi e diverse forme di criminalita’:
https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/mercediscambioanteprima?selected=PODSTAR2651093222
Some ulema have advocated against the illegal depportation of refugees in Lebanon, as this article from May 2023 documents:
https://orient-news.net/ar/news_show/203326
The case in detail:
أنا جمعة محمد لهيب, مدير قسم البحوث والدراسات في تيار المستقبل السوري, هذه رسالة خاصة أرسلها للصديقات والأصدقاء الناشطي في لبنان وخارج لبنان.
بعد مقابلتنا للواء البيسري رئيس الأمن العام اللبناني لتيسير تسجيل الاقامات للسوريين, تقدمت بطلب تجديد اقامتي عبر كفالة مفوضية اللاجئيين.
وبعد عدة أشهر اتصل بي الأمن العام أنه تمت الموافقة على الاقامة, وبعد قدومي لمركز الأمن العام في منطقة جديدة, المتن, تم اعطائي موعدا ثانيا لاحضار أوراق زوجتي وعائلتي لتجديد اقامتهم معي.
اليوم الأربعاء 6/3/2024 أتفاجأ بحجز أوراق أطفالي بحجة أنهم لا يملكون اخراجات قيد سورية, فقط وثيقة ولادة مصدقة بالدوائر اللبنانية, وتم اعطائي مهلة شهر لأخذ أمر تسفير وترجيل من لبنان.
تواصلت مع مفوضية اللاجئين في بيروت وبانتظار اتصال منهم قريب لاعطائي استشارة قانونية.
هذه الرسالة لأخذ العلم لمن في لبنان كي لا يقعوا بفخ تجديد الاقامة, وللأخوة الناشطين بتسليط الضوء على واقع اللاجئين السوريين في لبنان.
فرج الله عن شعبنا
السيدات والسادة في مفوضية اللاجئين، تحية وبعد:
منذ عامين بدأ السيد “جمعة محمد لهيب”، ماجستير في جامعة الأوزاعي، يحمل الجنسية السورية، ولاجئٌ في لبنان – بيروت، وهو أحد كوادر وناشطي تيار المستقبل السوري، والمسجل رسمياً في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية منذ 11/13/2012، العمل لدينا بصفة “باحث سياسي” ضمن قسم البحوث والدراسات التابع للمكتب العلمي لـِ تيار المستقبل السوري.
ولتتم ترقيته بتاريخ 01/01/2024، ليصبح مدير قسم البحوث والدراسات في تيار المستقبل السوري.
تعرّض السيد جمعة محمد لهيب أثناء الفترة الماضية لمضايقات متعددة، بلغت حدّ التهديد، خاصة بعد خروجه في مقابلات تلفزيونية، ليتم التعدي على مكان سكنه في الليل!
لكنّ الأخطر من ذلك جاء على صيغة رفض تجديد إقامته وإقامة عائلته من قبل الأمن العام اللبناني، وتسليمه باليد أثناء دعوته لمراجعتهم أمر ترحيل من لبنان بعد شهر من تاريخ 03/06/2024، علماً أنه مُستوفٍ كافة الشروط القانونية التي تسمح بتجديد إقامته عبر المفوضية، وهو مسجل في مفوضية اللاجئين في بيروت منذ عام 2012، بملف رقم: 245-17c05296
وإن حياة السيد جمعة محمد لهيب، وأسرته المكونة من: زوجته السيدة بدور غسان جقمرة، حاصلة على شهادة الهندسة الكهربائية والالكترونية قسم هندسة الاتصالات، جامعة حلب، سنة 2011م، وأولاده: محمد لهيب مواليد 2016م،
وكنان لهيب 2018م، وكل من التوأم الثلاثي ليلاس، لجين، وسام، 2022م. في خطر بالغ، وتهديد وجودي حقيقي.
ونرى أن وراء قرار ترحيله من لبنان، تضييقاً مقصوداً بطلب من النظام السوري ومخابراته، كونه أحد كوادر تيار المستقبل السوري الفاعلة والناشطة والمؤثرة.
إننا في تيار المستقبل السوري ندعوكم ونطالبكم النظرَ في ملف السيد “جمعة محمد لهيب” وهو موجود لديكم، ومساعدته في منع ترحيله من لبنان إلى سورية، أو الإسراع والتعجيل بقرار إعادة توطينه إلى بلدٍ آمنٍ ومستقر، على اعتباره مطلوباً لدى النظام السوري وأجهزته الأمنية (وكان معتقلاً سابقآ)، ولما يشكل ذلك من تهديد لحياته وحياة أسرته واستقرارهم، من خلال ما بيّناه ووضحناه في كتابنا هذا.
إننا في تيار المستقبل السوري نُحمل مفوضية اللاجئين في بيروت مسؤولية حماية السيد جمعة محمد لهيب وعائلته، ومسؤولية أمنه وأمن عائلته، وسننشر كتابنا الصادر هذا، والموجه لكم عبر ايميلاتكم ومواقعكم الرسمية لدى كافة وسائل الإعلام المحلية والدولية في حال تم المساس بأمنه أو إغفال طلبنا المحق والعادل والطارئ، وسنبيّن للجميع أننا قمنا بواجبنا منذ اليوم الأول لاستلامه قرار الترحيل، من خلال تسليط الضوء على قضيته الإنسانية بامتياز لديكم، متمنين أن لا نضطر لأن نجعل من قضيته مسألة رأي عام لما قد يحدثه ذلك لكم من ضغوط نعلمُها ونتفهّمها، ومنها تلقيكم رسائل جديدة ونداءات استعطاف ونجدة (وربما تجميع عريضة مشتركة بأسماء كل من تأخرت ملفاتهم لديكم منذ سنوات)، وما يزالون ضمن قوائمكم المجمدة والبطيئة.
تيار المستقبل السوري، ولِما له من علاقات سياسية عالمية، وارتباط وتنسيق مع جهات رسمية أمنية سابقاً ولاحقاً (ويمكنكم البحث في ذلك مع المعنيين في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية إن شئتم)، فإننا يتوجه إليكم بأخذ هذه الرسالة على محمل الجدية القصوى، والتعاطي معها بما يحفظ اسم المفوضية ومكانتها، ومستعدون لأي تعاون بنّاء في المستقبل خدمةً للإنسان وحفظاً للروح البشرية المقدسة بغض النظر عن دينها أو قوميتها أو عرقها أو انتمائها.
رئيس تيار المستقبل السوري
الدكتور زاهر بعدراني
Welcome to a double book launch with Heidi Mogstad and Estella Carpi.
In this book talk we will discuss research in the context of humanitarian crises. Estella Carpi and Heidi Mogstad will present their respective books The politics of crisis making and Humanitarian shame and redemption.
The presentations will be followed by a discussion on their research experiences, moderated by Antonio De Lauri. A light lunch will be served.
The politics of crisis making – Estella Carpi
In The Politics of Crisis-Making. Forced Displacement and Cultures of Assistance in Lebanon Estella Carpi exposes how the crisis discourse as well as crisis management are able to shape the social and political membership of the displaced. By documenting different modalities and traditions of assistance, her ethnographic research in Lebanon brings to light interactions among aid workers, government officials, internally displaced citizens, migrants and refugees after the 2006 war in Beirut’s southern suburbs and during the 2011-2013 arrival of refugees from Syria to the Akkar District (northern Lebanon).
Humanitarian shame and redemption – Heidi Mogstad
Following the 2015 ‘refugee crisis,’ many different actors emerged to contest or mitigate the EU’s border policies. This book explores the birth and trajectory of a Norwegian volunteer organisation “A Drop in the Ocean”, established by a mother of five with no prior experience in humanitarian work. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, Heidi Mogstad examines the organisation’s shifting and contested efforts to ‘fill humanitarian gaps’ in Greece while witnessing and shaming the Norwegian public and politicians into action. Moving beyond existing critiques of humanitarian sentiments like pity and compassion, the book focuses specifically on the work of shame and other ‘negative’ emotions.
Bergen Global
Jekteviksbakken 31, Bergen
20.03.2024
12:00 – 13:00
English
Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies Add to calendar
Postdoctoral researcher, CMI
Heidi is a postdoctoral researcher on the project War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience funded by the European Research Council. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2021).Read more
Assistant Professor, University College London
Estella Carpi is an Assistant Professor in Humanitarian Studies at University College London.Read more
Research Professor, CMI
Antonio De Lauri is a research professor at CMI and the director of the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies. He has conducted ethnographic research in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe and has published on issues related to war and post-war, humanitarianism, human rights, and borders.Read more
Estella Carpi, The Politics of Crisis-Making. Forced Displacement and Cultures of Assistance in Lebanon (Indiana University Press, 2023).
Front cover artwork by Syrian artist, visual storyteller, and clown Dima Nashawi.
https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45712
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Estella Carpi (EC): This book is not the planned output of a single project; this means I did not start this research with the a priori purpose of writing a book. This book is instead the result of my engagement with the practice and thought of humanitarianism and other forms of crisis management, as well as of my relationships with people in Beirut’s southern suburbs (called Dahiye Janubiyye in Arabic) and the northern governorate of Akkar. As such, the book is an attempt to weave together years of doctoral and postdoctoral research on the identity politics of humanitarian aid provision and the relational history between humanitarians, political actors, and ordinary residents of Dahiye and Akkar.
As an author, I believe, I have been quite demanding with my readers, as they will need to process a large number of accounts from different segments of Lebanon’s society, including refugees from Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Sudan, and Lebanese internally displaced people. In this sense, it is a polyphonic ethnography, where I really wanted to unearth the complexities that underlie everyday talk around the humanitarian experience in Lebanon.
I also intended to interrogate the unquestionably positive aura with which humanitarianism vests itself: an unquestionability which makes any sort of critique a taboo, and some acts of assistance—especially those championed by the Western world—well-intended. In my critical analysis, humanitarianism emerges as a pillar of today’s neocolonial morality, centered on including and taking care of the war-affected Global South. Against this backdrop, this book conveys my endeavor to question the taboos of the humanitarian lifeworld where we always need to talk about “refugees” or “IDPs” and impersonal “crises” but not about the economic status of those who assist the crisis-affected, and not about the fictitious boundaries of such social memberships. The purpose was also de-exceptionalizing humanitarianism, that is not an aberration in the contemporary world, as we all ended up dealing with it.
How are the political underpinnings of humanitarianism continuously renegotiated across different social groups and polities, and how does it become a lifeworld?
J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?
EC: This book’s main rationale revolves around how it is not crisis per se that impacts people’s lives in positive or negative ways, but it is rather crisis management and the crisis discourse which can powerfully reshuffle social relations, polities, and class-based groups. Naming this reshuffling as “crisis-making,” it primarily speaks to three tropes of academic literature: the wrestling between politics, neutrality, and ethics; the ethnocracy of the assistance regime; and the moral economy of transnational humanitarianism in Lebanon.
Much has been written on humanitarianism as a form of politics; I also corroborate this idea, but it should not be the end of the story. How are the political underpinnings of humanitarianism continuously renegotiated across different social groups and polities, and how does it become a lifeworld? These are the generative questions that the book grapple with.
In this framework, a recurrent theme is the negative fetishization of local politics, while Western politics, extensively operated through humanitarianism in Lebanon, is always out of the question as a problematic source of partisanship, favoritism, and epistemic violence. With such a predominant politics of blaming the local and self-indulging, a common broken record from NGOs is that, “in a country like this,” they do what they can. By this token, anthropologists critical of humanitarianism are often accused of generating an echo chamber of armchair ranting; instead, I believe that shrugging off the politicization of aid only because—from Yugoslavia’s to Sri Lanka’s and Lebanon’s war-induced humanitarian economies—is not a new discussion, and is problematic, to say the least. It should still be discussed right because its workings—as much as the denial of the actors using aid as a political strategy—are deeply rooted and longstanding.
Finally, war cannot be the mere ecology of humanitarianism in Lebanon, which experiences repeated urban destructions and a collapsed welfare system. By acknowledging such an intersection, the book also provides a brief review of the local history of assistance provision and the histories of urban and infrastructural reconstruction, such as the Elyssar and Solidere projects in the 1990s, the Waad project after the July 2006 war in Dahiye, and the reconstruction of the Beirut eastern suburbs in the aftermath of the 2020 Beirut port explosion.
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
EC: This book embodies my first manuscript-length effort to weave a fil rouge across different research endeavors which happened over a decade-long span. As an output combining more than one research experience in Lebanon, it enabled me to use my previous expertise in a twofold way: first, as someone who had worked in the charity sector and, indeed, came up with the book’s research questions for a PhD project some years after. And second, I found my expertise in linguistic anthropology and my previous MPhil research on Lebanon’s everyday speech of great help. Indeed, conducting fieldwork in Levantine Arabic and knowing the theoretical areas where identity work and everyday speech intersects made me well-placed to question humanitarianism as an encompassing terminology (for example, when I discuss Lebanese Shiite NGOs) and as a politics of self-identification influenced by social atmospheres.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
EC: I hope I will have academics as well as practitioners and policymakers among my readership. While the book largely speaks to long-standing academic debates such as political neutrality and social cohesion, it intends to inform practice and policy by offering historical evidence of how solidarity and empathy, the presumably underlying messages of humanitarianism, are getting lost in the contemporary bureaucratization of the humanitarian experience. I particularly hope this work impacts the way professional recruitment in the humanitarian sector is organized across unequal political geographies, and how crisis response, often being decontextualized, is (mis)understood in hegemonic policy and practice.
In terms of social impact, I can already affirm that the book is often being perceived as standing “against humanitarianism.” In a sense, it certainly is: who would not stand against it, if they care about a healthy functioning of politics and society? Humanitarianism, indeed, comes as a litmus paper of such a functioning. However, I am still strongly hopeful that the book succeeds in also unravelling the vastly nuanced ways of being a humanitarian.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
EC: At the moment, I am pursuing two research ideas that are about different geographic contexts but, importantly, they relate to one another. First, I am presently exploring how group-oriented ideas and practices—such as access to and choice of healthcare—travel from one group to another. I am broadening my knowledge of crowd psychology and of the healthcare biographies of Syrian and Lebanese Turkmens in Akkar. For this purpose, I question identity politics and sectarianism as the exclusive start of any conversation in Lebanon. In line with the “ethnicization of needs and services,” a key concept I unpack in the book, my endeavor is to document the fluid character of social membership in Lebanon.
Likewise, in Istanbul, a city historically affected by earthquakes, where I also lived, I am interested in understanding how to make state and grassroots-led disaster knowledge cognizant of migrants’ and refugees’ living conditions and access to safer housing. Both research ideas—apparently antithetical in that they question the social group as a well-bounded entity to then reinstate it—suggest how, on the one hand, there is no self-evidence in any group belonging but, on the other, the peculiarities of each group should not go unheeded as they reveal a lot about the outgroup’s gaze and the ingroup’s response to it.
J: What is the impact of the presence of such a huge number of organizations on the Lebanese workforce and the economy?
EC: I address this matter in chapter four, when I discuss the moral economy of aid work and its structural inequalities, and in chapter six, where I refer to some later research I carried out on refugee livelihoods in Akkar, which shows no lasting positive impact of the international humanitarian presence on the governorate’s economy. Overall, the so-called process of “NGOization” affects society at different scales.
From an employment perspective, it tends to provide temporary jobs for Lebanese people, especially those in their twenties and thirties, holding university diplomas and owning a good command of English. In Akkar, at a time when the Syrian crisis was attracting more funding (2012 to 2016), several Western-funded NGOs used to recruit local professionals. However, in the years that followed, a gradual decline in job opportunities with international NGOs was as tangible as the decline in services for the refugees from Syria. The ephemeral foreign humanitarian presence—and its temporary resourcing of the local economy (for example, employment of local drivers, increased local food consumption, hiring of facilities and properties)—caused a further precarization of skilled work for a class of local practitioners who, due to less privileged mobility rights and a lower professional authority generally assigned to them, were unlikely to continue a transnational career in the humanitarian sector.
Moreover, from a social perspective, the temporary employment of local people in Western-dominated humanitarian organizations did not even challenge this arbitrary hierarchy of internationals versus locals, including unjust inequality in pay-scales, expertise, and exposure to risk.
Excerpt from book (from Chapter 4, pp. 130-132)
In parallel with the climax of compensatory humanitarianism and the formalization of the Syrian refugee crisis, the media portrayed Lebanon as a vexed host state, triggering microsocial responses to the crisis in Akkar’s society. On the one hand, from the orthodox perspective of long-term displacement, refugeehood historically evokes the global need to label receiving societies as hosts who receive public acknowledgment for their protracted hospitality. On the other hand, the Halba experience shows that the formal humanitarian response to the crisis encouraged Lebanese residents to reconfigure previous Syrian migrants as refugees in a bid to reclaim their homes. While some Syrian migrant workers ran shops in Akkar before 2011, in the wake of the official response to the crisis—institutionally enacted only with the first LCRP in late 2014 and becoming visible with the emplacement of an unprecedented number of INGOs—they became homogenously portrayed as refugee guests whose presence had to be temporary. This was especially relevant for Lebanese residents returning from abroad, having worked for different periods in places such as South America or other Arab countries. Owning and managing shops and discouraging Syrians from accessing public spaces were collective practices of homemaking that allowed the Akkari hosts to reinvent their relationship with the Syrians.
Halba’s residents opened shops selling a combination of hardware, tires, carpentry, and garden tools. The shops containing hardware and tools (locally known as mahallet khardawet w adawet zira‘iyye) were seen as a guarantee of local ownership: “There’s no Syrian refugee or migrant that ever opened such shops in the area. They normally work in this sector as occasional assistants. In the beginning, during the war, there were only two or three shops like this,” affirmed Hadi, a Lebanese resident. “It eventually became the largest business in Halba.” Many shops were owned by Lebanese who had lived in Tripoli and decided to go back to Akkar during the Lebanese Civil War as there was “less political trouble” in the villages if they wanted to open a shop. Many shop owners had personal stories of past mobility and economic migration, especially during the 1980s, when, as some locals recall, Syrian nationals worked in hardware shops in greater numbers. Waleed migrated to Baghdad to work as a waiter for one year before he decided to return to Lebanon and inherit his father’s shop, which is still located close to Halba’s roundabout. Likewise, Hadi migrated to Venezuela, where he ran a clothing shop for eleven years. In 1986, he decided to come back to Lebanon to give his children access to the same education he had received, and he opened a hardware and agricultural tool shop.
A temporal dimension now divides Syrian nationals, who previously managed these hardware shops, and Akkari returnees. From a local perspective, Syrians have always been entitled to provide temporary labor in Akkar as they used to do in the capacity of migrant workers before the Syrian conflict. Throughout the twentieth century, indeed, Syrians mostly provided seasonal work with neither the intention nor the social comfort to create a proper Syrian community in Lebanon by bringing their families with them. The concept of circular mobility describes such migration and inhabitation patterns. Aubin-Boltanski and Vignal found a continuum between preconflict mobility patterns and the current situation of refuge. The return of Lebanese migrants and their exclusive entitlement to own hardware shops contrast with Syrian nationals’ inability to cultivate a sense of personal stability in Lebanon, leading refugees to experience a sense of “permanent temporariness”. Local refusal to have Syrian nationals in the same jobs as Lebanese not only highlights the typical rejection of sharing life and welfare with the refugees, which happens everywhere, but also points to a struggle over the Other’s temporal horizons.
This tension between refugees and locals, along with the increasingly long-term perspective of the humanitarian system (traditionally thought of as providing temporary and short-term action), gives rise to a double clash of temporalities in which permanent Syrian nationals in Akkar are considered threats. While refugees seek to expand their temporal perspectives (lacking other options), residents struggle over their exclusive right to return to, live, and proliferate in Halba with no temporal restrictions. Among the so-called host communities, the role of returnees in this practice of homemaking has gone unheeded.
The expectation for Lebanese returnees to work in Halba’s hardware shops is locally experienced as a collective act aimed at morally and economically monopolizing a commercial activity. It also illustrates the interface between human experiences of migration—in this specific case, between Lebanon, Venezuela, and Iraq—and historical trajectories of socioeconomic practices. Hardware shops in Halba mark an assertive, collective form of home-making to which refugees are not entitled. In other words, owning and managing a hardware shop becomes the local signifier of national legitimacy to “home” and implement comfortable patterns of social order. Such practices of homemaking and order-making are the local response to the officialization of crisis. The resulting existential divide between Lebanese residents and Syrian refugees in respective ability and inability to develop long-term perspectives in Halba—echoing the lack of temporal perspectives for Iraqis and Sudanese in Dahiye—plays a role in negotiating territorial permanence. As Brun incisively writes, “this emptying of the future [of refugees]—or the rendering of an abstract future—shows that the emergency imagery decontextualizes and ‘de-situates’ the lives of people experiencing a crisis.” In this way, the historical sociology of the Syrian presence in North Lebanon was swept away by the institutionalization of the so-called Syrian refugee crisis, shifting the global focus from political terror to individual trauma and giving rise to the denormalization and pathologization of the Syrian presence in Akkar.
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