The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon

Based on ongoing ethnographic research on war and displacement in Lebanon, I explore how Syrians living in the city negotiate the complexities of the “push and pull factors” of taking on journeys of asylum into Europe. While motivated by desperations of the prolonged conflict in their home country, as well as tightening of their work permits in Lebanon, I aim to show how decisions, such as staying or leaving, are further embedded in the renegotiations of social and economic ties both at home and in their newly adapted residence. I argue that an anthropological perspective on the everyday conditions of displacement should count for the complex histories of social and economic mobility of Syrians in Lebanon and the human consequences of the war on the Syrian social body.