China Sajadian

The tiny state of Lebanon hosts the highest number of refugees per capita in the world. Yet, contrary to the dominant image of deracinated refugees in unfamiliar territory, significant numbers of Syrian refugees in Lebanon are former labor migrants. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research in the Lebanese-Syrian borderlands, this dissertation traces “debts of displacement” that have emerged from Syrian farmworkers’ loss of seasonal mobility during the Syrian war. This unique case of migrants-turned-refugees demonstrates that displacement encompasses more than the traumatic event of wartime uprooting. Displacement is, rather, an ongoing process embedded in debts across generations, bound by histories of agrarian labor, wealth distribution, and forms of interdependence on both sides of the border.

“Debt and Refuge” is an ethnography of Syrian refugees who have long-standing ties to Lebanon as seasonal farmworkers. Based on long-term fieldwork at the Lebanese-Syrian border, the project analyzes why and how countless numbers of these farmworkers-turned-refugees went into debt throughout the ongoing Syrian conflict. Linking together the politics of mass displacement, mass indebtedness, and the global food system, it makes a case for radically rethinking forced migration as an agrarian question of labor and a feminist question of social reproduction, as debt at every scale of life governs how people move across borders.