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Paper Short Abstract:

In sustaining their upward mobility achieved through migration, Lebanese-Australian returnees in Tripoli maintain a foreign personhood that is independent from local elite networks. Distinction from the local becomes crucial to avoid falling back into their pre-migration underprivileged status.

Paper Abstract:

Upon their resettlement in Tripoli—a city in the North of Lebanon—return migrants mobilized the economic and cultural capital they accumulated abroad towards projects of upward mobility. I examined, in my preliminary ethnographic fieldwork among Lebanese-Australian returnees, their engagement in entrepreneurial, social, and political projects, as they opened coffee shops and emigration consultancies, ran for parliamentary elections, and established charities and NGOs. While returnees often hailed from marginalized and rural, backgrounds, their return to the city entailed them occupying privileged positions, facilitated by their access to hard currencies in a time of economic collapse, their cultural competencies, and their perceived distance from a ruling elite. Maintaining their status vis-à-vis other residents hinged on their vigilant performance of enlightened citizenship away from local patronage networks, and the city’s “corrupt” political elite. This vigilance took various forms, including discursive acts of publicly criticizing local politicians and those loyal to them, and presenting an alternative model for humble and accountable politicians. The vigilance also took material forms, through installing metal meshes on one’s shop to signal a refusal of paying protection money to the local elite’s gangs. Moreover, returnees performed foreignness, and vigilantly displayed the cultural capital they gained in Australia such as their foreign accent and international connections. I argue that maintaining this returnee personhood—that is both foreign-presenting, and independent from the local—becomes critical for returnees’ social position, as they avoid falling back into the underprivileged status afforded to them by their working-class family names and their rural Arabic accent.