The Great Escape? Converging Refugee Crises in Tyre, Lebanon
This article analyses the convergence of two refugee crises, Palestine (1948-present) and Syria (2012-present), having brought old and new refugees into close, and increasingly, conflictual contact. While the former settled and gradually integrated with a view to return to Palestine, the new wave of self-settled refugees from Syria seek to migrate and resettle in Europe, having the means and opportunity to do so. Both staying and leaving involve processes of identity change from refugee to resident non-citizen and displaced (nazihin). Drawing on field material from Tyre (South Lebanon), the article compares the plight of Palestinian old-timers with the newly arrived refugees from Syria settling in and among Tyre's refugee camps and gatherings, and analyses where their trajectories intersect. For both groups, the only way to escape poverty, destitution and discrimination is by emigrating, thus contrasting escape and belonging as key features of refugee mobility and asylum migration.
https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdx018
Are John Knudsen
