N. Stel

Radboud University | RU · Center for International Conflict - Analysis and Management (CICAM)

Over the last decade, critical migration scholarship has been increasingly concerned with how state actors in both the Global South and Global North deploy forms of inaction and ambivalent action to govern migrants. Scholars have mobilized and developed concepts to capture such strategic non-regulation, ranging from notions of standoffishness, igno...

While much literature has concentrated on the EU’s policy to return people from within its borders, this article seeks to understand how the EU cooperates with refugee-hosting states beyond its borders, in its ‘Southern Neighbourhood’, to uphold conditions for voluntary, safe and dignified returns. We build on the case of Lebanon, which hosts the h...

How must we understand and conceptualize the rationales and repercussions of remote warfare? This article contributes to scholarship on the ontology of remote war by analysing how Dutch officials engage with responsibility for the bombardment of an Islamic State weapons factory in Hawija, Iraq in 2015 under Operation Inherent Resolve. It observes t...

Forced migration studies struggles to counterbalance policy assumptions that the governance of displaced people is of a fundamentally different nature in the Global South and North. This paper contributes to a growing body of critical scholarship that questions the epistemic segregation and theoretical demarcation that reproduce such exceptionalism...

This article provides an overview of future directions for research related to refugee entrepreneurship. It puts forward key concepts, explores the relations within the current broader literature on migration and entrepreneurship, and identifies several promising clusters of questions. We also introduce five papers in a special section of this issu...

https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2020/09/governing

Drawing on the relevant literatures in the field of refugee studies and hybrid governance, this introductory chapter develops a conceptual framework to help describe and explain the pervasive uncertainty that refugees in Lebanon face. In particular, the chapter seeks to theorize the strategic dimensions of such uncertainty. It puts forward the heur...

As humans and as researchers, there is more that we do not know than we do know. Analysis and the decisions eventually based on them are significantly shaped by this fact. Yet, while there is an abundant literature on the epistemology of knowledge, there has been much less attention for ontologies and epistemologies of ignorance. This entry provide...

In comparison with other regional host countries Lebanon's response to the Syrian refugee crisis is characterized by a remarkable degree of institutional ambiguity. Government policy has centered on the prohibition of formal refugee camps and adopted regulations with regard to registration, residence, and work which drive refugees into illegality....

http://www.lcps-lebanon.org/featuredArticle.php?id=188

Lebanon is one of the main host countries in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, now sheltering the highest per capita number of refugees in the world. Its response to the arrival of some 1.5 million Syrian refugees was initially characterized by a ‘no-policy-policy’ that revolved around the prohibition of formal refugee camps and the discour...

Since the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has implemented an extensive governance project in Lebanon that is often regarded as contributing to the weakness of the Lebanese state. Challenging such zero-sum logic, this article explores the institutional interdependencies between the PLO and the Lebanese state and their different ye...

This paper analyses how minority populations govern and are governed in South Lebanon’s informal Palestinian settlements and the Serbian enclave in North Kosovo. Drawing on literature about hybrid political orders, it is argued that in both settings political parties play a linchpin role in local governance. Based on this finding, three key functio...

FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST Informal institutions are increasingly recognized as a core concept in our understanding of the organization of socio-political life in refugee communities. This article contributes to this understanding by exploring the ways in which urban refugees in the Palestinian informal community, known as gathering, of Ma...

FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST A significant part of Lebanon's Palestinian refugees live in unofficial camps, so-called “gatherings”, where they reside on Lebanese land. Many of these gatherings are now threatened with eviction. By means of two qualitative case studies this article explores responses to such eviction threats. Residents, it tur...

The 20th of June marks ‘World Refugee Day’. For European policymakers it is another opportunity to promote ‘shelter in the region’ as the single most important instrument for addressing the refugee crisis. Yet, unfortunately, European policymakers have very little idea of what shelter in the region actually looks like. By drawing on our research in...

Public authority beyond the state has often been seen as isolated from the state and/or constituting a threat to the state. Recent scholarship, however, has started to conceptualize ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ forms of public authority as closely connected and interdependent. This article contributes to this theoretical shift by means of a qualitative...

http://gld.gu.se/content/documents/GLD%20WP5.pdf

http://www.kpsrl.org/browse/browse-item/t/plural-security-provision-in-beirut

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/18/this-isnt-lebanons-first-garbage-crisis-and-what-that-should-teach-us/

This chapter is continuation of the joint working paper written by: Overbeek, F. van; Hollander, T.; Van der Molen, I.; Willems, R.; Frerks, G. and L. Anten. 2009. Peace Security and Development Network, Working Paper 1. Several sections from this working paper are included in this chapter with permission from the authors.

In 2012, South Lebanon faced a solid waste management crisis that particularly affected Palestinian refugee communities, which were excluded from municipal service mandates. By means of a case study of the Palestinian community living in Shabriha, this article demonstrates that the vulnerability to the environmental effects of this waste crisis ult...

In Lebanon, the fear of tawṭīn makes nationalization of Palestinian refugees an anathema. Yet several groups of Palestinians have received Lebanese citizenship since 1948, most (in)famously those from the ‘seven villages’, a chain of Shi‘i villages on Lebanon's southern border that was incorporated into Palestine in 1923. The trajectory of their na...

This article offers a qualitative case study of the interaction between Lebanese state institutions and Palestinian authorities concerning the unofficial Palestinian camp of Shabriha. It particularly highlights the indirect nature of these interactions and the brokering role of Lebanese political parties. Governance in Shabriha is conceptualized as...

http://www.groene.nl/artikel/palestijnse-vluchtelingen-in-libanon-voelen-zich-steeds-meer-buitenspel-gezet

Lebanon’s history has been scarred by repeated episodes of armed conflict: the Civil War, the Israel-Lebanon war, the Nahr-el Bared clashes, the recurrent clashes in Tripoli between Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jebel Mohsen, and, more recently, the spill-over from the war in Syria. This has resulted in tragic human loss, trauma, disruption of communities an...

In debates on governance in weak or fragile states, non-state actors are often overlooked. A particularly under-recognized governance actor is the rebel group. Rebel groups have substantive involvement in several governance domains, and as such acquire authority and legitimacy among their constituents. While previous research shows that non-state g...

State legitimacy particularly its alleged potential to counter state fragility has received increasing attention in academic and policy literature concerned with African development. Service provision can substantially influence such state legitimacy. Services, however, are mostly provided by a multiplicity of (state and non-state) providers. This...

https://www.academia.edu/7423812/Governance_between_Isolation_and_Integration._A_study_on_the_interaction_between_Lebanese_state_institutions_and_Palestinian_authorities_in_Shabriha_gathering_South_Lebanon

This article contributes to nascent scholarship on the relations between multi-stakeholder service delivery and state legitimacy in development settings. On the basis of qualitative analysis of two multi-stakeholder projects (MSPs) for water provision in Ethiopia, we find that the specific process of interaction between state institutions and non-s...

Unrepresentative and ineffective governance has been a key instigator of the 'Arab Spring.' However, analyses of the Arab Spring tend to limit 'governance' to 'government.' The Spring is exclusively framed as the bankruptcy of authoritarian government and the significance of the revolutions as an indication of resilient (non-state) governance is ov...

While the literature is clear that political influence and clientelism characterises the investment decisions of entrepreneurs and the performance of their firms when governance is weak, it is less understood how governance systems and entrepreneurs interact, particularly when governance is of a hybrid nature. We address this issue in this paper by...

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/15370/eviction-and-migration-in-an-institutional-vacuum_

This article studies the relationship between governance and entrepreneurship, with a specific focus on Lebanon. In Lebanon, fragility and hybridity — manifested in violent conflict and sectarian oligopolies — undermine entrepreneurial activities, among others through its impact on electricity supply. It is found here that hybrid governance results...

https://www.academia.edu/4085839/Diaspora_versus_Refugee._The_Political_Economy_of_Lebanese_Entrepreneurship_Regimes

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415625975/

http://www.mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/review-essay-lebanon-challenge-moving-analysis-beyond-state

The thesis investigates the the causes, triggers and contexts of the violent clashes between government and opposition supporters in Beirut in May 2008. It specifically focuses on the role Hezbollah played in this event, concluding that Hezbollah did not stage a coup d'etat (i.e. taking over the state by bypassing the political system), as often su...