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The 2011 Syrian crisis displaced over 12 million people, making it one of the most significant forced migration events in recent history (UNHCR, 2023). Among the countries receiving displaced populations, Germany and Lebanon have recorded some of the highest refugee numbers worldwide. As of 2024, Germany hosts the largest refugee population in Europe, while Lebanon has the highest per capita refugee population globally (UNHCR, 2024). However, their legal frameworks and approaches to refugee sheltering and governance differ significantly. Germany serves as a resettlement country with a structured asylum process under the 1951 Refugee Convention, offering a regulated pathway for asylum seekers while providing socio-economic, legal, and housing assistance. In contrast, Lebanon is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and lacks a formal asylum system (Janmyr, 2018). It classifies Syrians as “displaced persons,” restricting their access to legal residency, employment, and social services (Fakhoury, 2021). Moreover, Lebanon’s Zero-Camp policy forces Syrians to self-settle in a country that has not always been welcoming.
This paper compares the lived experiences of refugees in Berlin and Beirut through biographical narratives (Schütze 1983; Szczepanik & Siebert 2016) based on in-depth interviews conducted between 2022 and 2024, alongside secondary data collected between 2020 and 2025. It explores: How does the lived experience of displaced Syrians in managed shelters in Berlin compare to those in self-settled or self-built housing in Beirut, and what spatial and temporal experiences do these different housing arrangements produce as refugees navigate uncertainty about their future?
In 2015, Berlin became a key destination for displaced Syrians. To manage the surge in arrivals, the city established emergency shelters to provide temporary accommodation until more permanent solutions could be secured. However, Berlin faces a severe shortage of affordable housing, affecting both local residents and refugees. Prolonged stays in emergency shelters—often subject to strict attendance rules and micro-management of daily life—along with racial profiling and discrimination in an already scarce housing market, have made it difficult for Syrians to attain tenure security.
In Beirut, the urgent need for shelter in a country with no affordable housing scheme facilitated the rise of a predatory housing market. Under these precarious conditions, in-situ sheltering remained unstable. Lebanon’s lack of a formal resettlement process has led to widespread informal settlements and overcrowded urban housing, further reinforcing socio-spatial marginalization. The hostile informal housing landscape, combined with Lebanon’s broader political environment, has placed Syrians at constant risk of arbitrary eviction (Mouawad & Bauman, 2023; Abi-Ghanem, 2024).
To compare refugees’ lived experiences in these cities, we employ a post-migrant urban approach as our theoretical framework. This study addresses a gap in the literature on the geographies that displaced people produce, inhabit, and navigate in urban contexts (Pasquetti & Sanyal, 2020). It also contributes to scholarship on forced displacement and homemaking, as well as refugees’ ongoing resistance to making homes in a state of permanent temporality (Agier, 2011) and limbo (Brun & Fabos, 2021).
Despite material differences between the analyzed contexts, this paper illustrates how exceptionality and permanent temporality affect refugees in Beirut and Berlin in similar ways. This dual process operates internally, as refugees reflect on their condition of exceptionality, and externally, as the city perceives them as “others.” Across these distinct urban contexts, refugees describe a persistent sense of spatial and temporal entrapment, compounded by precarious housing conditions. Our findings challenge conventional assumptions that improved material conditions necessarily lead to greater stability. Instead, they suggest that materiality can also function as a constraint, shaping—but not necessarily alleviating—the vulnerabilities of displacement.
References
Agier, Michel. 2011. Managing the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brun, Cathrine, and Anita Fábos. Making homes in limbo? A conceptual framework. Refuge 31 (2015): 5.
Glorius, B. (2022). Refugee Reception in Europe: Local Solutions for Global Challenges. Springer.
Janmyr, M. (2018). UNHCR and the Governance of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon: The Limits of Protection. International Journal of Refugee Law, 30(2), 192-217.
Kreichauf, R. (2018). From Forced Migration to Forced Arrival: The Campization of Refugee Housing in European Cities. Journal of Urban Affairs, 40(4), 546-566.
Mouawad, J., & Bauman, Z. (2023). Precarious Urbanity: Syrian Refugees and the Politics of Space in Lebanon. Urban Studies, 60(3), 554-573.
Pasquetti, Silvia, and Romola Sanyal. Introduction: Global conversations on refuge. In Displacement, pp. 1-26. Manchester University Press, 2020.
Schütze, Fritz. 1983. Biographieforschung und narratives Interview 13 (3): 283–93. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvdf09cn.
Szczepanik, Renata, and Sabina Siebert. 2016. The Triple Bind of Narration: Fritz Schütze’s Biographical Interview in Prison Research and Beyond. Sociology 50 (2): 285–300.
UNHCR. (2023). Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2022. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
UNHCR. (2024). Latest Data on Refugees and Asylum Seekers. Retrieved from www.unhcr.org.
| Keywords | Refugee shelter; housing; permanent temporality; Berlin; Beirut |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
