Who gets to see the sea? Stratified displacement, privilege, and the optics of escape in Lebanon

Abstract In the aftermath of the 2023 escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon witnessed another wave of internal displacement, echoing past conflicts but revealing starkly unequal experiences among its citizens. This article explores how SES profoundly shapes internal displacement outcomes, using the question “Who gets to see the sea?” as a lens into Lebanon’s stratified geography of refuge. Drawing on forty in-depth interviews with Lebanese families displaced from South Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs to the affluent coastal towns of Byblos and Batroun, this article uncovers significant disparities in how displacement is navigated and perceived. While wealthier families accessed private housing and preserved social status, poorer households faced overcrowded shelters, minimal state support, and deepened precarity. Employing a multidisciplinary theoretical framework—mobility hierarchies, privatization of refuge, and classed geographies—this article argues that displacement in fragile states like Lebanon is not a uniform experience, but one profoundly shaped by class. In highlighting how economic privilege affords not only material comfort but also symbolic distancing from displacement stigma, this study urges a reconceptualization of internal displacement as an uneven, class-contingent phenomenon. The findings have critical implications for humanitarian response and social policy in contexts of institutional neglect and recurring conflict.