Lebanon Can't Give Him a Future: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Syrian Rebel-Workers in Beirut

This chapter traces the Syrian crisis through the lives of Syrian labourers in Beirut. Lebanon has maintained a significant population of migrant workers for decades. 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 settling permanently across the border. The chapter describes how and why — when the first rumbling of the uprising began to break — a number of migrant workers expressed support for what they called ‘the revolution’. From this, it moves to chart the overbearing harsh realities of the present, that is, realities of intense legal, economic and social precarity against which men hope only to survive.