Abstract
The notion of identity has acquired particular importance in studies of organizing within an increasingly fragmented, discontinuous and crisis-ridden world (Brown 2001: p. 113; Brown & Toyoki, 2013; Brown, 2015; Tomlinson & Egan, 2002; Ybema et al., 2009). Considering this bourgeoning field of research, it is striking that perhaps the most poignant micro-level manifestation of fragmentation, discontinuity and crisis today, namely the life and living of the many refugees forced to leave behind their families, friends, jobs, lives and, consequently, their sources of identification, remains understudied by organizational scholars (Binggeli et al., 2013). Through a qualitative study of the everyday life of Syrian refugees in tented settlements in Lebanon, this article aims to shed light on the practices (Feldman & Orlikowski 2011; Nicolini, 2012) through which the refugees, despite their marginalization and exclusion, are able to (re-)construct themselves as subjects, and thus as worthy of respect and dignity.
Since the outbreak of the Syrian war, the UNHCR has registered over one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, making the country the single largest recipient of refugees per capita in the world (World Bank, 2016). The vast majority of these refugees organize their lives outside of the purview of the Lebanese state. They are (if at all) granted only short-term residency permits, and on government orders, the UNHCR has since May 2015 suspended registration of new refugees. With little support forthcoming, they have to arrange their own accommodation, often consisting of makeshift tents erected on plots of land rented from rural landlords. They have access only to menial, temporary and low-paying jobs and in many cases depend on aid from humanitarian organizations. They carry traumas from war, terror and loss, face deep uncertainty, and harbor anxiety about their children’s upbringing and prospects under these precarious conditions.
How do these refugees create a sense of meaning, self-worth and dignity? How does one live a life in which the “I” is not recognized by authorities and has no legitimate voice? A life in which means and resources to make claims to one’s rights and take actions that disrupt the field of power (Butler, 2009) are not available? This article aims to answer these questions by focusing on the everyday practices in the tented settlements through which agency and possibilities of becoming enacted as a legitimate subject are simultaneously restricted and enabled. More specifically, we draw on Judith Butler’s ideas on how performativity is linked with precarity through the question of “who can become produced as a recognizable subject, a subject who is living, whose life is worth sheltering and whose life, when lost, would be worthy of mourning” (Butler, 2009, xii).
Based on forty-five interviews with Syrian refugees and their families on site in ten tented settlements, as well as observations in these settlements over a period of several weeks, our paper reports how the refugees, reduced to the basic functions of the reproduction of life—that is, finding food, creating shelter, getting clothes, having and rearing offspring, and so on—insist on their right to be an ‘I’ through the enactment of mundane everyday socio-material practices. We thus provide an account of how, in Butler’s terms, “the unspeakable population speak and makes its claims” (Butler, 2009, xiii). In our analysis, we highlight four different socio-material practices: the practice of caring and connecting, the practice of inviting/hospitality, the practice of play, humor and learning, and the practice of remembering and (re-)inventing the past. We show how, in all these practices the refugee becomes positioned (Butler, 1993) in relation to other humans, organizations, communities and institutions in ways that enables her to speak as an ‘I’ and to claim an individual identity beyond the passive, victimized collective identity of the refugee. Moreover, we show how the agency that makes these claims on identity does not belong to the human, the refugee, alone, but is rather enacted in socio-material practices. In these practices, smartphones, and specifically the smartphone apps WhatsApp, Facebook, and Google Translate, are important as they position the refugees in particular ways in relation to other refugees, their home in Syria, family and friends, local volunteers, aid organizations, the Lebanese state and its people, and the wider international political context.
By assuming a performative practice perspective (Butler, 1993; Feldman & Orlikowski 2011; Nicolini, 2012) this study responds to recent critique of the tendency to center the human as the primary agent capable of making sense of complex organizational or institutional environments (Monteiro & Nicolini, 2015; Gawer and Phillips, 2013; Thornton, Ocasio, & Lounsbury, 2012), resisting change or oppression (Harding et al., 2017), and performing identity work (Bardon et al., 2012; Paring et al., 2017; Symon & Prichard, 2015; Hultin & Introna, 2017). The study thus contributes to the vibrant stream of organizational research that aims to move beyond an understanding of identity construction as a more or less rational human endeavor achieved through talk and narratives, and towards an understanding of the performative processes through which subjects become positioned to think and act the way they do (Butler, 1993). Specifically, studying the struggle of vulnerable groups living under precarious conditions through Butler’s conception of performativity enables us to move beyond a dualistic enactment of power and resistance, agency and structure, oppression and empowerment, and human and inhuman. Our account shows how refugees become positioned as legitimate and respectable not in spite of their precarious and vulnerable situation, but through it. In the enactment of the four practices outlined above, we show how vulnerability can be understood, not as a condition restricting identity formation practices, but as generative of new practices, repositioning subjects in relation to significant others, and reproductive of agency and alternative subject positions. We discuss what implications this understanding of vulnerability has for our view of responsibility and suggest that it is through our exposure and dependency that we not only become recognized as subjects, but can register the other as someone to whom we are responsible.