Marie-Noëlle AbiYaghi

This report examines both the historical development and current situation of Syrians working in Lebanon through the analysis of policies established and implemented by the Lebanese government. While the report is not an assessment of these policies, it nevertheless reflects on its impact on Syrians’ working conditions and livelihoods. In this vein, this report notably focuses on emerging dynamics of increased informality, exploitation, and dependence.

This report aims to explore the fragmented organisation of healthcare services in Lebanon, for Syrian refugees. Although it is not an assessment of the Lebanese healthcare system, this report does nevertheless reflect on the challenges and underlying dynamics of the current Lebanese system, which are reproduced in the healthcare provision for Syrian refugees. In this sense, the report highlights the privatised, rather ad hoc, and irregular provision of healthcare in Lebanon, notably for Syrian refugees, which tends to take on a more curative rather than preventive approach, resulting in significant costs on the patients. Consequently, a great number of vulnerable Lebanese and non-Lebanese residing in Lebanon, notably Syrian refugees, are unable to access health services.

This policy brief analyses the socio-political implications of the so-called October policies, and suggests legislative, political, and practical measures to improve the situation of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. It also aims to inform policy formulation regarding Syrian refugees from a human rights-based perspective, while discussing modalities for enhanced programming at the civil society level. This policy brief is the fourth publication of a research project investigating the social effects of political and legal measures on Syrian refugees’ daily lives. The brief is based on a consultative process with stakeholders that aimed at identifying literature and policy gaps regarding Syrian refugees. Hence, three areas of interest have been identified: entry and residency conditions, decent living and livelihoods, and access to healthcare services.

During the 2010-2011 uprisings that swept through the Middle East and North Africa region, mass protests against the existing allocation of profits drawn from the main economic activities, took place on industrial sites that more often than not symbolised state-promoted developmentalism of the post-independence period. These social movements ought to be replaced against the backdrop of changes that had objectively affected the economic environment and social balance built around the usually state-owned industries. This thematic section explores how these "material" demands are embeded in clientelist relations. While this joint research builds on several contemporary studies in political sociology that reject the supposedly dialectical opposition between clientelism and protest, its main goal is to lay the stress on the added value of a comparative approach that confronts monographic studies, without restricting itself, as often tacitly done, to the division in geographic or cultural "areas". Emphasis will be put on the impact of industrialization's paths and histories on the structuration of social demands. The second contribution of this work is to give its fair share to the study of social situations emerging in industry-related contexts.
The expression "Industrial worlds" refers here as much to the context in which protests emerge - a local community whose structure in terms of social relations, solidarities, fault lines or power relations heavily depends on a given economic activity - as to the physical space in which they occur - the workplace, be it actual or desired.  This joint study explores the ways conflictuality is expressed and protest organised, as well as the ways in which these protests and conflictual patterns are inscribed within social interactions from which it results the asserting of "rights", "moral" references or logics of vulnerability/protection.
 
- How to define "social rights" in these specific industrial worlds?
- Does the material aspect of the claims favor clientelistic logics in the management of protests?
- What networks are mobilized to settle conflicts on the workplace?
- How do these modes of conflict management affect the way protests are organized and expressed?
- How do they affect the ordinary relations of power and the relation towards the dominant authority?
- What are the roles of mediating institutions (unions, political parties, etc.) in these processes?

During the 2010-2011 uprisings that swept through the Middle East and North Africa region, mass protests against the existing allocation of profits drawn from the main economic activities, took place on industrial sites that more often than not symbolised state-promoted developmentalism of the post-independence period. These social movements ought to be replaced against the backdrop of changes that had objectively affected the economic environment and social balance built around the usually state-owned industries. This thematic section explores how these "material" demands are embeded in clientelist relations. While this joint research builds on several contemporary studies in political sociology that reject the supposedly dialectical opposition between clientelism and protest, its main goal is to lay the stress on the added value of a comparative approach that confronts monographic studies, without restricting itself, as often tacitly done, to the division in geographic or cultural "areas". Emphasis will be put on the impact of industrialization's paths and histories on the structuration of social demands. The second contribution of this work is to give its fair share to the study of social situations emerging in industry-related contexts.
The expression "Industrial worlds" refers here as much to the context in which protests emerge - a local community whose structure in terms of social relations, solidarities, fault lines or power relations heavily depends on a given economic activity - as to the physical space in which they occur - the workplace, be it actual or desired.  This joint study explores the ways conflictuality is expressed and protest organised, as well as the ways in which these protests and conflictual patterns are inscribed within social interactions from which it results the asserting of "rights", "moral" references or logics of vulnerability/protection.
 
- How to define "social rights" in these specific industrial worlds?
- Does the material aspect of the claims favor clientelistic logics in the management of protests?
- What networks are mobilized to settle conflicts on the workplace?
- How do these modes of conflict management affect the way protests are organized and expressed?
- How do they affect the ordinary relations of power and the relation towards the dominant authority?
- What are the roles of mediating institutions (unions, political parties, etc.) in these processes?

This report aims to analyze how formal and informal security providers implement their respective social order agendas through a security “assemblage”. It also aims to inform the debate on refugee protection and security provision in urban settings, in the context of Lebanon’s hybrid security system. The accounts collected illustrate how state security institutions tacitly accept – or even rely on – informal security actors, managing at times to achieve their political and strategic goals through decentralized and/or illegal forms of control. In this vein, local municipalities imposed curfews and street patrols, which, far from being an institutional measure, follow a flexible and unpredictable pattern. Three localities have been selected for the purpose of this research - namely Aley in Mount Lebanon, Ebrine in North Lebanon, and Shebaa in South Lebanon. The choice of these localities was driven by their different political and social history, their demo-graphic homogeneity or diversity, and their relationship with surrounding regions.The investigation of the Syrian refugees’ access to security systems constitutes an interpretative lens through which the analysis of securitization processes in Lebanon can be undertaken. The notion of security we will discuss here is polysemantic: it does not only encompass regional or domestic conflicts, but also suggests a particular social form of waiting; a climate of fear portending the worse that is yet to come. As a matter of fact, this climate of fear encourages preemptive security measures and serves as a deterrent against violent outbursts. Therefore, manifestations of insecurity or security threats are often routinized perceptions and, as such, integrated into accounts of ordinary everyday life. Security plays a multifaceted role in the three settings selected for thorough analysis. It builds the cohesiveness of the local communities, while fending off endemic societal fragmentation. This is mainly because local people tend to identify with a single homogenous entity that needs to protect itself against external threats, with these threats being represented nowadays by Syrian refugees, who may become “radicalized” and destabilize the “host” space. And since security goes beyond the exclusion of risk and jeopardy, the official discourse of local security providers entails the protection of refugees. While we draw on the classic normative distinction of security providers into formal and informal, our analysis moves beyond such a rigid differentiation. The formal/informal dichotomy fades away when security is discussed as a hybrid assemblage of unpredictable and situational forces enforced in particular circumstances. Our findings confirm that formal security is partially implemented through informal local actors, providing a terrain of common interest in the preservation of social order. In addition, security cannot be viewed as a given “social fact”: it is rather a contextual process embedded in multiple power relations that preserve social order in a given space and reinforce social status and community identification.