Sender, Hannah; (2023) Extending displacement: Young residents’ experiences of living in expectation of ongoing place-based rupture in Central Beqaa, Lebanon. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

In this thesis, I explore trajectories of rapid urban change in small towns to which forced migrants have fled, through the knowledge and experiences of young residents. Little is known about how forced migration to small urban areas becomes enmeshed with longer-term urban processes, and how this enmeshment affects young residents from recent forced migrant and long-term resident communities. This thesis presents findings from a case study of three towns in the Central Beqaa region of Lebanon, which have dramatically increased in size since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011 and the arrival of tens of thousands of people from Syria. Using an expanded definition of ‘displacement’, which focuses on temporalities of displacement, I consider the possibility that the event of forced migration intersects with other experiences of displacement in Central Beqaa. Drawing on conversations with young residents and their families, I argue that both Syrian and Lebanese young residents are experiencing a form of slow violence which I term ‘extending displacement’: an experience of ongoing rupture between oneself and one’s surroundings, which is expected to continue into the future. I argue that this is a consequence of long-term inequitable planning practices. I then explore how young residents living in extended displacement orient themselves towards the future. I show that they expect slow violence to continue, anticipate direct violence in their everyday lives, and maintain hopeful attachments to their futures. I conclude that the discipline of urban planning would benefit from examining changes in small urban areas through the narratives of young residents, to improve understandings of how urban planning processes enact specific forms of violence on communities of small urban places. I also suggest that it is important to recognise different forms of displacing violence, including direct and slow violence, as being interrelated, sited and contingent on historical processes and contemporary actions.

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