Commodified by displacement: the effects of forced displacement on Syrian refugee women in Lebanon’s agricultural sector

Abstract In an effort to contribute to an emergent body of ethnographic work addressing the labour economy of forced displacement and the contribution of women refugee-labour more precisely, the article uses the case-study of Syrian refugee women in Lebanon’s agriculture to uncover how forced displacement has contributed to the exploitation of an already-commodified, invisible, and migrantized workforce. While there is an established and diverse body of literature that investigates female labour invisibility in agriculture (on the one hand), and the relationship between labour commodification and agriculture (on the other hand), less discussed is the relationship between forced displacement and female labour commodification. Based on ethnographic research including interviews and participant observations conducted between May 2018 and September 2019 in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, this article demonstrates how refugee-labourers are subjected to various tactics and instruments of labour coercion, which affect their decision-making power in both the work sphere and the domestic sphere, reinforcing their invisibility as cheap labour and docile refugees. A closer investigation into the labour dynamics on site yet reveals a much more complex reality where women engage in various acts of negotiations by making instrumental use of their femaleness. Notwithstanding the situation of forced displacement, the conditions facing the case of these female refugee-labourers mirrors more broadly the structural problems inherent to contracted labour regimes in corporatized sectors like agriculture.