Dignity in Practice: Navigating Humanitarian Response and the Right to Stay Amid Lebanon’s Multiple Migrations

Executive Summary This piece will examine the complexities of the “right to stay” within the overlapping and multiple migratory contexts of Lebanon. I argue that standard right to stay frameworks fall short in addressing the complex interplay of Lebanon’s local context, the role of humanitarian response, and the importance of agency and control in the lives of those affected by forced displacement. Based on the work of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Lebanon with Syrian refugees, local Lebanese residents, and diverse populations of migrant workers, I offer several lessons learned for humanitarian work on the right to stay in similar contexts. First, based on our engagement with Syrian refugees, I argue that, in practice, JRS understands the right to stay as a control right which is grounded in human dignity and the subjective importance of control of intimate space. I argue that understanding this right as continuous with the migratory vision of Pope Francis, which places free choice, control, and agency at the core of a person’s choice to migrate, offers humanitarian actors pathways for response, even in contexts of actual and ongoing displacement. Altogether, this framework enables JRS programming focused on fostering spaces of intimate control, mental health, and psychosocial support for those whose dignity has been violated, and facilitating agency within the limits of the Lebanese context. Second, based on JRS’s growing engagement with local Lebanese populations, I describe how this dignity framework requires broad inclusion in programming. At the same time, Lebanon’s overlapping migratory flows necessitate greater attention to the dynamics between ongoing displacements in Lebanon in order to navigate tensions around aid access. Finally, drawing from JRS and Jesuit work with migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, I describe how our work engages the complexity of migrants’ temporary displacements and their link with home countries, highlighting questions of agency and attention. Ultimately, I argue that humanitarian organizations need to pay closer attention to these spaces of multiple migrations, engaging the actuality of many migrants’ mobility, and grounding work for the right to stay in more expansive visions of human dignity through support for migrants’ control and agency. Governments, particularly the government of Lebanon, must reduce violations of this basic control by ceasing programs of involuntary return and long-term migrant detention.