Lebanon Can't Give Him A Future | Philip Proudfoot | 14 November 2016

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Lebanon has long maintained a significant population of Syrian migrant workers. Men undertook largely seasonal work with extended periods of wage labour abroad. However, there was little evidence of permanent settlement and few signs that a second-generation of Syrians were making homes across the border. In 2011, when the first rumbling of uprising began to break, a number of migrant workers returned home, hoping to participate through peaceful protest or, later, armed resistance. But now, against the realities of the present, most are just trying to survive. About the speaker: Dr Philip Proudfoot is an anthropologist of the Levant region. In late 2016 he joined the British Institute in Amman shortly after having completed his PhD at the London School of Economics. Currently, Philip is preparing his doctoral thesis — The Living Dead: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Syrian Rebel-Workers in Beirut — for publication. This work was based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork that he carried out amongst a network of Syrian labourers in Beirut. From a bottom-up perspective, Philip describes the personal and political transformations of men whose voices are frequently silenced in the face of today’s brutal proxy war.