Sudanese Refugees and the “Syrian Refugee Response” in Lebanon: Racialised Hierarchies, Processes of Invisibilisation, and Resistance

Abstract

By focusing on Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers in Lebanon, who in 2018 constituted 4 per cent of all persons of concern to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in that country, this article explores how the UNHCR protects and assists refugees not encompassed by the mainstream humanitarian response. The article finds that in terms of refugee recognition, resettlement, and overall protection, Sudanese refugees receive differential treatment when compared with the more dominant refugee groups. More precisely, it argues that the humanitarian practices contribute to structural processes of invisibilisation of the particularities of the protection concerns and circumstances of Sudanese refugees. It spotlights how, while racism and racial discrimination remain major protection concerns for the Sudanese community in Lebanon, humanitarian vulnerability assessments are altogether blind to these categories of harm. In examining how Sudanese refugees respond to and resist such processes of invisibilisation, the article also examines two key collective action approaches through which Sudanese refugees seek to access better protection and assistance: the establishment of representative refugee committees, on the one hand, and refugee protest, on the other. It finds that refugee protest was an important means of countering humanitarian processes of invisibilisation.