72
Marieke Schöning
4. Discussion
To view the research respondents’ engagements as instances of active citizenship im-
plies that they acted as political subjects within the aid sector. It has been found striking
that being political was nevertheless either avoided or perceived as restricted, also by
certain practices within the internationalised aid sector, although fostering active citizen-
ship serves as a strategy to realise participation, self-determination, and responsibility in
the international development sector. Empowerment of the individual is even said to lie at
the heart of development policies.
As a first point of critique, it can be stated that the experiences of young, educated
Syrians with international aid practices for refugees from Syria in Lebanon were found
to contradict these aspirations. The respondents felt restricted rather than empowered
as political subjects, which for one hampered the practical effectiveness of international
aid. Unequal power relations were secondly by-passed under the veil of a depoliticised
narrative of global citizenship and humanitarianism. This promotes an incomplete, depo-
liticised version of active citizenship, namely one that solely expects from young Syrians
to fulfil their (trans)national citizen obligations, without ensuring them their rights. The
finding, that active citizenship as civil commitment, and therefore obligation, constituted
the most prevalent manifestation of active citizenship in the case of this research can
be taken as an indicator that young, educated Syrians are not sufficiently supported as
active citizens in a holistic sense. The question thus needs to be posed to those shaping
international development discourse if they effectively practice what they preach, or if the
intertwined levels of humanitarian aid, development cooperation, and diplomacy rather
impede each other on the ground.
The mismatch was further illustrated when respondents reported their perspectives on
the aid sector as an economic space, in which profit overruled purpose. Such neoliberal
absorption has also been criticised as a general problem in international development. In
our case, the competitive climate blighted newly emerging signs of Syrian civil society,
which rather demanded support on at par (instead of the ongoing brain drain caused
by the current hostile conditions), given a decades-long lack of experience. Personal,
negative experiences with international development actors can severely harm a trust-
ful relationship between the international community and young, ambitious Syrians. It is
surprising that this does not gain more attention, given that levels of trust towards West-
ern actors have been found to be rather low in countries of the Middle East (Staeheli &
Nagel, 2012). Moreover, given that the preceding empirical chapter detected that many
respondents identified with the ideals of global citizenship, it can be assumed that the
interviewees were sympathetic of the concept of liberal democracy, which was indeed
advocated by many young Syrians during the uprisings in 2011. The scenario of alien-
ated Syrian youth thus ought to be seen as moving in an entirely unfavourable direction
