Abstract
In this article, I discuss the tendency of the humanitarian system in areas affected by crisis to provide services to people in need on a national basis, by using Lebanon as a case study. Through the research I conducted with Syrian, Iraqi, Sudanese and Palestinian refugees between 2011 and 2019 in Lebanon, I will illustrate, first, how hospitality can be employed both as a practice and as a discourse. In the latter case, I will explain how it can problematically turn into an “ethnicization” force in humanitarian aid provision. As a result of a conservative use of the hospitality discourse, second, I will introduce the concept of “compensatory humanitarianism” that caters for the locals as a consequence of the refugee presence. Against this backdrop, I will finally show how the current humanitarian system is far from being inter-group despite its efforts to make programs nationally mixed. Indeed, it simply proposes mixed programs to presumably dissipate inter-group tensions, therefore revealing an actual neo-ethnicization of care.
Keywords:
ethnicization; humanitarianism; syrian refugees; Lebanon; displacement