Precarity, Hospitality, and the Becoming of a Subject That Matters: A Study of Syrian Refugees in Lebanese Tented Settlements

Abstract

How is it possible to gain a sense that you have a voice and that your life matters when you have lost everything and live your life as a ‘displaced person’ in extreme precarity? We explore this question by examining the mundane everyday organizing practices of Syrian refugees living in tented settlements in Lebanon. Contrasting traditional empirical settings within organization studies where an already placed and mattering subject can be assumed, our context provides an opportunity to reveal how relations of recognition and mattering become constituted, and how subjects in precarious settings become enacted as such. Specifically, drawing on theories on the relational enactment of self and other, we show how material-discursive boundary-making and invitational practices—organizing a home, cooking and eating, and organizing a digital ‘home’—function to enact relational host/guest subject positions. We also disclose how these guest/host relationalities create the conditions of possibility for the enactment of a subject that matters, and for the despair enacted in everyday precarious life to transform into ‘undefeated despair’.

Unpacking “Sense of Place” and “Place-making” in Organization Studies: A Toolkit for Place-sensitive Research

“…Dacin et al, 2018; David et al, 2020). A growing number of qualitative organization studies (Alkhaled & Sasaki, 2021; Cartel et al, 2019; Crawford & Dacin, 2021; Farny et al, 2019; Hultin et al, 2021; Lawrence & Dover, 2015; Siebert et al, 2017; Wright et al, 2021; Zilber, 2018) directly or indirectly grapple with place-sensitive questions to advance our understanding of how the materiality, location or symbolic meaning of specific places—such as communities (Vernay et al, 2022), buildings (e.g. Jones et al, 2019) or streets (e.g.…”

“…By place as experience , we seek to understand how people develop a sense of place: how they identify with or feel attached to a place and develop a strong or weak embodied, emotional commitment of place (Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1974). For instance, by cooking for family and friends, a place may become home (Hultin et al, 2021), by investing in local energy cooperatives which nurtures my local community, individuals strengthen their sense of belonginess (Vernay et al, 2022); and (2) by place as practice , we seek to capture how people, either self-consciously or not, make places and develop a socialized meaning of place (Fine, 2010). Place-making is key to the ongoing emergence, maintenance, renewal, and sustenance of place over time.…”

Organizing for Social and Institutional Change in Response to Disruption, Division, and Displacement: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Their paper, as well as that by Alkhaled and Sasaki (2022, in this issue), speak to the impact of macro-level phenomena such as diaspora (a massive type of displacement), revolution and warfare on the lives of individuals, and the importance that solutions, such as falling back on tradition, play in responding to disruption. These types of DDD can push people into a state of indeterminate liminality, leaving them stranded in disconnection from their previous macro-level sense of belonging (Alkhaled & Sasaki, 2022; Hultin, Introna, Göransson, & Mähring, 2022).…”

Countering Indeterminate Temporariness: Sheltering work in refugee camps

“…Consequently, most refugees lived in informal settlements, primarily in the Bekaa Valley (e.g. Hultin et al, 2022). Others settled into existing Palestinian refugee camps, such as the Shatila and Burj Al-Barajneh camps in Beirut – the sites for this study.…”

“…Temporariness is particularly acute for refugees who often experience discontinuities with their past and live in a precarious present with radical uncertainty over their futures, imposed by powerful authorities (Griffiths, 2014). As Lebanon, a country of fewer than five million citizens, struggled to absorb the influx of Syrian refugees, it imposed indefinite temporary status upon Syrians, severely restricting their social and economic lives, constraining their movement, and foreclosing their future opportunities (Hultin, Introna, Göransson, & Mähring, 2022). We investigated how an entrepreneurship programme run by Basmeh & Zeitooneh (B&Z), a local NGO, helped refugees living in the Shatila and Burj Al-Barajneh refugee camps amid radical uncertainty and constant threats.…”