‘The dog that barks doesn’t bite’? Non-performativity in migration diplomacy: EUropean-Lebanese engagement on refugee return to Syria
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Before the unexpected fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Lebanese and EUropean political actors found refugee return to Syria either unfeasible or undesirable. Nevertheless, their diplomatic engagement on Syrian displacement was dominated by return narratives. This paper unpacks this central paradox in return migration diplomacy and theorises it through the lens of non-performativity. Building on over hundred in-depth interviews and extensive document analysis, it argues that exactly because other durable solutions were taboo – Lebanon categorically refuses integration and EUrope de facto impedes resettlement – return narratives were leveraged to maintain a status quo of containment and rentierism through two seemingly contradictory mechanisms: simultaneously flaunting policy engagement on the one hand and limited implementation on the other. Beyond conveying novel empirical insights, analysing Lebanese-EUropean return migration diplomacy as a form of non-performativity makes crucial contributions to two extant literatures. Regarding refugee return, it sheds new light on the protraction of displacement and the elusiveness of durable solutions and complements the usual focus on interactions between host and origin states by foregrounding the impact of donors. Regarding migration diplomacy, it extends the field beyond its realist outlook by conceptualising the ritualistic dimensions of transnational politics to critically interrogate ‘gaps’ or ‘failures’.
Author: Nora Stel
Institution: Radboud University Nijmegen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4413356628