Rebuilding Beirut to forge the Lebanese citizenship: Circulations of a civic role-model between NGOs agenda and local receptions

This presentation will address the attempts by two local NGOs to build a "legitimate" Lebanese citizenship in a needy neighborhood of Beirut, and the local reception of this civic model. Since 2019, Lebanon experienced an economic, social and political crisis leading to a major mobilization which illustrated the desire for a more transparent democratic regime. Demonstrators called for the fall of the political system marked by confessional clientelism. The Beirut’ Port Blast on August 4, 2020 was interpreted as the ultimate evidence of corruption. Additionally, the situation amplified tensions between the Lebanese population and the numerous Syrian refugees who have settled in Lebanon since 2011. In the absence of public intervention, many Lebanese NGOs financed by international donors provide relief, while implicitly conveying political values. As part of my doctoral research, I conducted an ethnographic fieldwork in an impoverished district of Beirut between 2020 and 2023 (12 months of participatory observation, 98 interviews). Its heterogeneous population includes different social classes, Lebanese Christians and Muslims, as well as numerous Syrian refugees. Greatly affected by the economic crisis and the explosion of 2020, the neighborhood experienced a massive influx of relief NGOs. I will analyze how two of these Lebanese NGOs promote the ethos of the "good" Lebanese citizen through their intervention on urban space. By reconstructing buildings and public spaces and by involving residents in their activities, they intend to foster a civic norm centered on the figure of the urban, responsible, open-minded and entrepreneurial citizen. This ideal is opposed to the illegitimate figure of the corrupt religious leader, who fuels sectarian tensions for his own benefit. The sociological profile of the humanitarian workers (Lebanese from well-off, educated and internationalized classes, involved in the 2019 social movement, unlike their "beneficiaries") explains why this citizenship education is inspired by liberal democracy and Welfare State models. Somewhat implicitly, they intend to transform Lebanon "from below" by modifying the daily practices of their fellow citizens. As for the reception of this civic norm, some residents endorse it as part of various strategies (coping with the crisis, social mobility). However, most of the time, the humanitarian injunction of peaceful coexistence clashes with the dwellers’ sense of identity. Indeed, this urban area is marked right down to its architecture by the memory of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) and the by the Syrian military occupation of Lebanon (1990-2005). In the face of this social, historical and spatial reality, the civic education promoted by the two NGOs faces resistance. Finally, I will examine the limits of this humanitarian "citizenship performance". For the dwellers, the latter doesn’t come with the acquisition of genuine social rights that would materialize a sense of belonging to the national community. Humanitarian services remain part of a logic of charity via short-term project and thus maintain the inhabitants’ sense of uncertainty and illegitimacy.