Collecting Rents, Contesting the "State": Untangling Contradicting Practices of Mobility Control Among State and Non-State Actors in Lebanon

Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Lebanon has hosted the world’s largest refugee per capita population. Increasingly, a complex dynamic has emerged, with various state and non-state actors advocating and facilitating refugee returns to Syria. This paper examines practices of mobility control within Lebanese borderlands and across the Lebanon-Syria border (2011-2023), focusing on the Lebanese "state" and Hezbollah as a non-state actor. It argues that both employ conflicting modes of mobility control to gain political and material rents, asserting and contesting power within Lebanon and the broader region. Thereby, two forms of mobility control – laissez-faire and (forced) exit – are compounded by another form, enabling circular migration. One key contribution of this paper is challenging the state as the primary actor in engaging in mobility control practices for state transformation, highlighting how Hezbollah strategically uses mobility control to contest and reshape the Lebanese "state’s” authority and influence. The paper presents a nuanced conceptualization of how simultaneous, competing, and conflicting mobility control practices in borderlands can facilitate the transformation of states by challenging political power. Insights from the case study can inform research on other refugee-hosting states seeing state/non-state dynamics, such as Afghanistan, Libya, or South Sudan.