By Hala Caroline Abou Zaki and Zoë Jordan
A ‘lost generation’, a source of potential instability, and the hope for the future: young people displaced by conflict are increasingly the focus of national and international attention and intervention. Yet there are limited representations of Syrian youths’ own perceptions and experiences of displacement.[i] Our research questions what shapes young people's trajectories from education to employment in protracted displacement in Jordan and Lebanon. In this blog, we explore how the experience of conflict-induced displacement has altered the meaning of ‘youth’ and ‘being young’ for young Syrians living in Lebanon.
Shelter in Saida. Credits: CENDEP, Oxford Brookes University
The official Lebanese definition of youth – 15 - 29 years old – is our starting point; however, ‘youth’ is a contested category. Prescriptive linear models and generic age-based approaches are insufficient for understanding the meaning of youth. Instead, we engage with a more complex notion of youth transitions and of youth as carrying a socially-constructed meaning. Accordingly, we set out to understand with the young research participants how they themselves define youth and how they situate themselves in these categories.
Many of the young people we spoke to in Lebanon expressed the feeling of “not having had a childhood” or youth because of political violence and displacement.[ii] They explained how these events have changed the experiences and roles associated with specific periods and ages in people's lives. This emerged in particular through the question of aspirations, education, responsibilities and family roles and position.
Changing Aspirations and Ending Education
Mounir[iii] is 23 years old. As he says, all of his aspirations changed with the displacement. In Syria, his aspirations were related to education and football, but in Lebanon, work became his main concern. Talking about the situation of other young people like him, he says:
“Each one of us had a dream, and they were studying to achieve it… When they were obliged to move and settle somewhere else, many things have changed… Their responsibilities have changed… They had to prioritize the house and family needs over their ambitions.”
Mounir arrived in Lebanon in 2011 with his family at the age of 13. He had completed grade 7 in Syria but had no certification from his school. In Lebanon, he enrolled in Grade 8 in an informal school that taught the Syrian curriculum. However, the school closed. Mounir did not want to try to register in a Lebanese school because he was afraid of being discriminated against as a Syrian and of not succeeding in the Lebanese system because of language barriers (much of the curriculum in Lebanon is in English or French). His family did not have enough money to pay the school fees so Mounir worked to help his family. One of his brothers was killed in Syria, the other is imprisoned in Lebanon, and his sister is married and lives far from her family. Mounir, alone with his parents, felt responsible for them.
Violence and displacement ended Mounir’s education. For others, it temporarily interrupted their education for a few months or years.[iv] This is the case for Basma, now 15, who arrived in Lebanon in 2013; she was in Grade 1. She waited one year to resume her education until her family situation stabilised and they could locate an informal school she could attend. Continuing school is usually linked to family resources, the presence and proximity of formal or informal schools in the place of residence, and legal restrictions in the country. Indeed, many young Syrians cannot continue their education in the Lebanese school system as they do not have the required residency papers.
The issue of education, or lack of it, has created deep inequalities among Syrian youth and within families. Maher is 20 years old, the youngest of his siblings. He points out how his whole family is educated, except him. He left school at an early stage (he was in grade 6) compared to his brothers and sisters: his brother reached university, while two of his sisters finished secondary school and the third one completed Grade 9. Originally from Homs, Maher experienced several displacements in Syria before arriving in Lebanon in 2012 at the age of 11. He has since then turned away from school and started working.
Household responsibilities and family positions
Working to ensure family livelihoods is another critical factor that changed young people’s perception of life stage and age. Many young people had to help their family to secure food, housing, and clothes, a role that previously fell to parents and especially fathers. Our interlocutors insisted on the relation between being young and not having responsibility. Rania is a 17 years old girl from Aleppo’s countryside. Living in an informal settlement in the Bekaa area (east Lebanon), she works with her younger sisters in agricultural fields to provide for the family. Pointing the difference between life in Syria and Lebanon, Rania explained that “Today, at 15 years old, the person is becoming responsible for the family… If we were in Syria, it is at the age of 20 that they start having responsibility and working… today, at the age of 15, a person should be working”. That echoes what 23-year-old Anas told us. As he explained, before fathers would work and mothers would care for the house and family. Nowadays, everyone must contribute to secure family livelihoods. Conflict and displacement have reshaped generational and gendered roles and responsibilities within families and more largely the society. This invokes a heaviness in young people like Anas, preventing the carefree feelings associated with youth and thus affecting the perception of this life stage.
The changes in family roles are not only about the material issues of family life. Many young people identified how they have become emotional and symbolic supports for their parents. Ghassan was 12 years old at the beginning of the mass protests in Syria and the regime’s subsequent bloody repression. After the death of his brother and the departure of his father because of the divorce of his parents, he moved to Lebanon at the age of 17 with his mother and older sister. As the only male in the household, he felt responsible financially and emotionally. He explained that because of all the difficulties they endured, he decided not to sink into distress and to stay positive in order to alleviate suffering of his mother and sister. Similarly, 15-year-old Maha is trying to protect her parents. This young teenager from Deir Ezzor experienced life under ISIS, including the bombings and witnessing the beheading of her uncle. She never discusses her haunting memories with her parents so as to spare them further suffering, especially as they have lost many other family members.
Young Syrians displaced to Lebanon share an experience of physical and structural violence and are part of the first generation of those to be displaced by the on-going conflict in Syria. Despite these commonalities, the young people described different experiences of ‘youth’, revealing the diversity of positions and experiences of displacement. While young Syrians are frequently treated monolithically as “young refugees”, their experiences of conflict and displacement are varied, and exacerbate existing inequalities while creating new ones. These inequalities affect the way young people perceive themselves and their age position. To neglect of these dimensions risks further entrenching and exacerbating youth inequalities in displacement contexts.
About the authors
Hala Caroline Abou Zaki is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her research focuses on forced migration and exile in the Middle East (Palestinians and Syrians) from different perspectives: refugee camps, family relationships and youth. Her Phd (2017) dealt with social, urban and political transformation of Palestinian camps in Lebanon from the particular case of Shatila.
Zoë Jordan is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), Oxford Brookes University, UK. She researches forced migration and humanitarianism, with a focus on how forced migrants respond to displacement in protracted and urban contexts. Her PhD (2020) addressed the act of refugee hosting among urban refugee populations in Amman, Jordan, primarily working with Sudanese refugees. You can find more information on her website or follow her on Twitter.
[i] Notable exceptions include Jordan and Brun, under review; Chopra and Dryden-Peterson 2020; Adji 2019; Gökçearslan Çifci and Dilek 2019.
[ii] All interviews in Lebanon were conducted by Hala Abou Zaki, Nadim Haidar, Cyrine Saab and Hamza Saleh between August 2019 and January 2020. A focus group was conducted by Hala Abou Zaki and Alexandra Kassir in December 2021.
[iii] All names have been changed to protect the privacy of participants.
[iv] See also Jordan and Brun (under review) ‘Vital conjunctures in compound crises: Conceptualising young people's trajectories from education to employment in Jordan and Lebanon’, Social Sciences Special Issue: Crisis, im/mobilities and young life trajectories