Weak States, Borders and Humanitarian Interventions - The Case of Lebanon

This book focuses on international border and humanitarian interventions in Lebanon, from the Syrian 'refugee crisis' to the current political, social and economic crisis. It sheds light on the centrality of the paradigm of state weakness in shaping those interventions; a paradigm relying on a set of simplistic assumptions that 'pathologise' the state by framing it as absent, afflicted by fragmentation and bad governance, while downplaying its political agency. It shows that those dominant narratives - promoting an essentialised vision of Lebanon and of its capacity limitations - are crucial to the legitimisation of international interventions. In addition, the author points to the prevalence of externalisation logics, discourses and frames: Lebanon has been constructed by the international community as a security problem, a 'dangerized' place prone to foreign interventions, embedded in a European agenda of externalisation of migratory controls.

List of contents

Chapter 1. The construction by foreign actors of Lebanon as a weak, fragmented and dangerized state.-Chapter 2. The centrality of the paradigm of state weakness in shaping humanitarian interventions, from the refugee regime to the crisis response.-Chapter 3. The participation of Gulf states in refugee governance.-Chapter 4. International border interventions: European externalisation and border management policies.-Chapter 5. Against the weakness paradigm: a state showing agency and strategic thinking.-Chapter 6. The instrumentalisation of the paradigm of migration management by the Lebanese authorities: selection and exclusion practices.-Chapter 7. A reconfiguration of the European agenda of externalisation

Product details

• Authors: Clothilde Salelles
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 25.08.2025
• EAN: 9783031922688
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3192268-8
• No. of pages: 280
• Illustrations: Approx. 280 p.
• Series: Mobility & Politics
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science; Internationale Beziehungen, Öffentliche Verwaltung, Menschenrechte, Bürgerrechte, Human Rights, Lebanon, International Relations, auseinandersetzen, Migration Policy, Politics and International Studies, Politics and Human Rights, Border Policy, state power, refugee governance, security actors, migration management, humanitarian emergency, humanitarian interventions, migration control, Syrian refugee crisis, state weakness