Insecurity Migration and Return the Case of Lebanon Following the Summer 2006 War

Abstract

In essence, this project considers two closely-related questions. First, LERC has attempted to determine the extent to which the July/August 2006 war in Lebanon accelerated the emigration process, while simultaneously discouraging Lebanese abroad from returning to their country of origin. Second, we set out to ascertain whether Lebanon’s post-war political crisis, which actually began in the last days of the Summer 2006 War, merely prolonged the war’s migratory consequences, as we assumed when we began our research in late September and early October. By the end of 2006, we were more inclined to believe that the rise in mutual recriminations between rival confessional power elites, the radicalization of public political discourse, the assassination of a minister in the pro-Western Lebanese government – a minister who was also political heir to one of the country’s most powerful Maronite dynasties – and the ongoing wave of pro- and anti-government demonstrations represented a unique, independent and self-sufficient emigration push factor and a deterrent to return migration. In other words, it seems likely that the most recent migration trends are less a result of the Summer 2006 War and more a distinct manifestation of a new political crisis in an already troubled land.