Refugee Hospitality in Lebanon and Turkey. On Making ‘The Other’
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| Author | Estella Carpi,H. Pınar Şenoğuz |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12471 |
Refugee Hospitality in Lebanon and Turkey.
On Making ‘The Other’
Estella Carpi*and H. Pınar S
ßeno
guz**
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the hospitality provided to Syrian refugees during the refugee crisis span-
ning from 2011 to 2016 in the border areas of Gaziantep (southeastern Turkey) and the Akkar
region (northern Lebanon). Hospitality, apart from a cultural value and societal response to the
protracted refugee influx, is a discursive strategy of socio-spatial control used by humanitarian
agencies, local and national authorities. This paper, first, argues against hospitality as an
assessment to ethically compare host countries (i.e. more welcoming versus less welcoming
states). Second, drawing on Walters’notion of “humanitarian border”, it shows how the gov-
ernmental, humanitarian, and everyday workings of hospitality exercise an assertive politics of
sovereignty over the social encounter between locals and refugees. We examine the state-cen-
tered hospitality in the Turkish case and a humanitarian-promoted hospitality in the Lebanese
case. We also show how the hospitality discourse shapes the spaces that refugees, citizens,
and earlier migrants partake in.
INTRODUCTION
In this article, we examine the hospitality provided to Syrian refugees in staggered stages from
2011 to 2016 in the Akkar region (northern Lebanon) and the border city of Gaziantep (south-east-
ern Turkey). According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) statistics
in 2017, nearly 254,000 Syrian refugees were in northern Lebanon, while the border city of
Gaziantep had approximately 350,000 off-camp refugees. In both border regions, the ratio of the
refugee population to the local population was highly significant (nearly 22% in Akkar and 17% in
Gaziantep).
Differently nuanced from refugee reception, hospitality has gradually become a paramount dis-
cursive strategy to enhance socio-spatial control and promote accountability for humanitarian agen-
cies, local authorities, local citizens, and the international community concerned with the Middle
Eastern region. As will be made evident, while hospitality (Shryock, 2008: 406) and humanitarian
action (Prendergast, 1996) purport to act beyond politics, both actually act as assertive politics of
sovereignty over social encounters. In this article, national borders echo such assertive politics.
From the vantage point of the “humanitarian border”, where assistance and the search for liveli-
hoods are attempted (Walters, 2011), we approach these two border regions as sites of humanitarian
governance, which, lacking the sophisticated screening technologies associated with the migration
control pertinent to asylum contexts, nevertheless interlock institutional and everyday workings of
hospitality (Da
gtasß, 2017).
* University College London
** University of G€
ottingen
doi: 10.1111/imig.12471
©2018 The Authors
International Migration ©2018 IOM
International Migration Vol. 57 (2) 2019
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
By unpacking hospitality as a multi-purposed strategic discourse, we unfold the social and ethical
implications of hospitality when it comes to comparing host societies neighbouring crises through
binary accounts of greed and generosity. We will therefore question the rigid classification of social
groups into “refugees”,“hosts”, and “guests”, in order to reflect on their encounters in northern
Lebanon and south-eastern Turkey.
Both border regions are historically characterized by smuggling activities, economic exchanges,
and socio-political ties, which historically made the border particularly porous. A vast border econ-
omy was the primary source for countless livelihoods before the Syrian crisis and, in particular,
prior to the closure of the Lebanese-Syrian and Turkish-Syrian borders. The intervention of interna-
tional humanitarian actors as a new actor governing the border (Walters, 2011) between Syria and
its neighbouring countries altered the local development of coping mechanisms and access to
sources of empowerment.
In legal terms, while Lebanon is not a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention for Refugees
and the 1967 Protocol, Turkey retained a geographic limitation to its ratification, recognising dis-
placed people from Europe as refugees, and it currently adopts a “temporary protection”framework
for Syrian refugees (Art. 7 of the national regulation).
1
Lebanon, which officially remains a country
of transit, has lately enacted official policies on Syrian displacement. In Lebanon, informality domi-
nates the legal framework, which humanitarian practices and ordinary people need to navigate. This
made crisis management decentralized, fragmented, and often informal. Most refugees reside in
cities, unofficial camps, or informalgatherings (Yassin et al., 2015).Unlike international humani-
tarian agencies, municipal and central government authorities took a direct role in the response to
the Syrian crisis only at a later stage, with the enforcement of the 2015/16 Lebanon Crisis
Response Plan, which was meant to strengthen local cooperation and inter-agency coordination
and, to a greater extent, involve local authorities (Boustani et al., 2016).
Indeed, Syrian migrant workers historically populated the Akkar region by carrying out menial
and seasonal labour (Chalcraft, 2009). While the majority of Syrian labourers were seasonal, return-
ing to Syria on a cyclic basis, where the cost of living was more affordable and service provision
more effective than in Lebanon, some of these migrant workers brought their families to Lebanon
when violence escalated after the spring of 2011 street protests. That is to say, some Syrian nation-
als in Akkar were perceived as intra-group strangers (the Greek x
enoi) but never as unknown for-
eigners (the Greek barbaroi) (Pitt-Rivers, 2012: 504). Today’s refugees in Akkar are an
unavoidable spectre of Syrian control of Lebanon, sanctioned by the so-called 1976–2005 Pax Syri-
ana, which ended the Lebanese civil war. Due to a complex historical relationship, Syrian refugees
in Lebanon are now perceived as tangible signs that war may come closer at some stage. As a con-
sequence, large segments of Akkar’s residents associate those who fled the government’s shelling
from 2011 with the historical memory of the Syrian regime’s repressive measures in Lebanon,
despite a long porous border history. Indeed, the 1993 Agreement for Economic and Social Coop-
eration and Coordination for goods and persons officially marked an open border policy between
Syria and Lebanon. When the Syrian crisis broke out in the spring of 2011, nothing similar to the
2003 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the UNHCR and Lebanon’s government,
which tackled the Iraqi refugee inflow, was introduced. In June 2014, only Syrians living in border
areas where there was fighting could enter Lebanon. In January 2015, the first comprehensive pol-
icy on Syrian displacement was enacted, establishing a kafala system of business sponsorship or
trade reasons for a six-month stay (Dionigi, 2017). According to the same decree, Syrian refugees
are now not allowed to work in Lebanon in sectors other than cleaning –now classified as “envi-
ronment”–gardening, agriculture, and construction (Janmyr, 2016) due to increasing local unem-
ployment.
In Turkey, a new Law on Foreigners and International Protection came into force in 2014. Syrian
refugees entered the temporary protection regime once they registered with the Disaster and Emer-
gency Management (AFAD), then replaced by the General Directorate of Migration Management
Refugee Hospitality in Lebanon and Turkey127
©2018 The Authors. International Migration ©2018 IOM
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