Municipalities and forced migration. (c2019)

Abstract

After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Lebanon has witnessed large-scaled displacement from Syria. Though Lebanon has not signed the 1951 Convention, it has always been a refugee hosting country. However, with a number of almost 1.1 million Syrian refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - at the time of writing - and much more who are unregistered, Lebanon has now the highest number of refugees per capita in the world. This unprecedented mass influx happened in a context of policy divergences and worsening security. Against this background, tensions between host and refugee communities have been on the rise. The absence of an asylum framework and the existing loose policy framework on how to deal with the incoming influx of refugees have exacerbated the situation of the country already grappling with various endemic constraints. Indeed, Lebanese political parties are divided into two major camps, each of which holding divergent policy stances towards governance issues and foreign policy priorities including Syria’s neighboring conflict. In a context of divisions, municipalities have been able to develop adhoc measures to deal with refugees, framing them as threats on the different economic, ecological, and societal sectors. Notwithstanding this, little research tackles the securitization of refugees by municipalities in Lebanon. This thesis examines how municipalities have portrayed Syrian refugees as a threat to their internal security in order to apply measures that would not have normally applied in the immigration field. To that end, it draws on the theoretical framework of securitization that was first advanced by the Copenhagen School of Security Studies to explain the politics of securitization applied by municipalities in Lebanon on refugees. In this light, the thesis explores the various sequences of the securitization process, starting with how municipalities were able to frame refugees as an existential threat, then moving on to how they suspended normal politics and took extraordinary actions to deal with the so-called “threat. Finally, the thesis explains how constituencies have generally internalized this discourse, making the securitization process possible. Notwithstanding prevalent acts of securitization, the thesis accounts for counter-narratives in the public spheres that have sought to undo securitization.