Debts of Displacement: The Paradoxes of Patronage in a Syrian Refugee Farmworker Camp

The Anthropology Department welcomes China Sajadian to give her lecture titled, “Debts of Displacement: The Paradoxes of Patronage in a Syrian Refugee Farmworker Camp.”

The tiny state of Lebanon hosts the highest number of refugees per capita in the world. Yet, contrary to the dominant image of refugees living in unfamiliar territory, many Syrians in Lebanon have integrational ties to Lebanon as seasonal labor migrants that long predate their refugee status.

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork at the Lebanese-Syrian border, this talk examines the forms of debt that Syrian farmworker families incurred as they became immobilized in Lebanon throughout the uprising-turned-war in Syria (2011-present). Specifically, it traces the conflicting moral, economic and emotional attachments that bound Syrians to shawish, patron-like figures who lend cash, broker jobs and run camps for refugees.

For many perceived farmworkers facing the challenges of long-term displacement, these camps provided a vital source of livelihood, offering not only affordable housing and services, but also a sense of moral community and baseline security. Paradoxically exploitative and life-sustaining, these patronage relations existed on a tense continuum between coercion and interdependency. The talk follows how farmworkers negotiated these tensions in everyday life, leading some to work off their debts and return to Syria, while keeping others bound to Lebanon.

China Sajadian is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Vassar College. Bridging migration studies, critical agrarian studies, economic anthropology and feminist political economy, her research examines links between histories of displacement and contemporary conflicts over land and labor in the Middle East.