Programme

Abstract:

Whilst some scholars have examined the situation of foreign domestic workers in Lebanon, the issue of migrant labour as a whole (its contribution to the labour market, the status and situation of different categories of workers, and their impact on the Lebanese social structure) has largely been ignored. The high proportion of foreign workers in Lebanon results in an increasing fragmentation of the working class, and the embeddedness of the Lebanese class structure in globalization.

The research presented is based on fieldwork that was conducted in 2012 and 2013 in two different sectors, the food industry and cleanings services. It addressed the social impact the imbalance between Lebanese and different categories of non-Lebanese workers had on labour relations.

The discussant is Dr. Marie-Noëlle Abiyaghi, Head of Research at Lebanon Support, Associate Researcher at the Institut Français du Proche Orient (Ifpo)

Short biography:

Elisabeth Longuenesse is a French sociologist, researcher at CNRS and member of Printemps laboratory at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin en Yvelines. She has been working for several decades on Middle Eastern Societies. She recently headed the Department for Contemporary Studies at the Institut français du Proche-Orient in Beirut-Damascus-Amman. Her main research interests concern work, labour and professions, labour migrations and professional circulations, in the Middle East and on a global level. She studies the place and role of different categories of workers, employees, and professionals in society, as well as the legal and symbolic status of different types of work and knowledge, or labour and professional solidarities, in a comparative perspective.

This talk is part of the seminar series “At the Margins of Wage Labour? Work and Protests in Lebanon: From migrant work to large retail chains”

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