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To Be or Not To Be Political: An Investigation of Active Youth Citizenship Among Young, Educated Syrians in Beirut to Question International Development Discourse
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
These statements corroborate the foregoing analysis of the engagements at hand as ac-
tive citizenship because they show that even decidedly apolitical engagement influences
the political processes. Despite his emphasis to ‘put politics back’, Mahmoud believes
that his engagement can eventually effect political change. This resonates with Boekelo’s
(2016) perspective that “it’s in the effects of the things people do that the political lies”
(240).
In summary, two tendencies recurred throughout the interviews with respect to being
political within the engagements. The first standpoint laid out above was more common
and proposes that the engagement is and should be ‘purely humanitarian’, following
the principles international humanitarianism. To the contrary, a small second group of
respondents traced the humanitarian mission back to the roots of the uprisings in 2011,
and highlighted the need for political struggle in the form of overt activism. But even
this politically committed standpoint admits that engagement in the aid sector cannot
be politically effective. This failure is in parts interpreted as stemming from patronising
practices within the internationalised aid sector. Against its claims to be neutral, the aid
sector was perceived to be entangled in politics.
What can be extracted from the interviews is that the majority of research respondents
tended to not perceive the international humanitarian response to the refugee influx from
Syria into Lebanon as ‘neutral’ and truly interested in supporting the Syrian people on
an equal footing – both regarding the refugee population and Syrians engaged in the
aid sector. ‘Politics’ – as broader geopolitical interests and inner-sector priorities guided
by the international aid economy – were seen to play a decisive role. Power relations
were clearly felt, but perceived to be ignored or withheld by the dominant actors in the
aid sector, namely international donors and INGOs. It is however important to bear in
mind that the internationalised aid sector was interpreted in a unanimous and unequiv-
ocal manner. Some of the interviewees also expressed gratitude for international efforts
and commended fruitful examples of cooperation between local and international actors;
both accounts even occurred within the same interview. Hence, this article does not aim
to draw a frontline between international and local actors, or to demonise the interna-
tional side. The research findings still reveal a distinct gap between what international
development discourse preaches, and what the international actors in the aid sector for
Syrian refugees are perceived to practice in Lebanon. Viewing that the boundaries be-
tween humanitarian and development aid blur in the case of this increasingly protracted
displacement, and given that the funding for both approaches stem from at least partly
identical donors, it has been found to be relevant and necessary to elaborate on the
fact that the empirical findings question some of the assumptions on which international
development discourse of promoting active youth citizenship bases itself. The upcoming
discussion section tackles this paradox.
