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Background/Purpose: Nearly one in five persons resident in Lebanon today is a Syrian refugee, and no other country in recent history has had a similar concentration of refugees per capita. Unlike in Turkey and Jordan, which also host large numbers of Syrian refugees, there are no refugee camps in Lebanon, and as such, most Syrians reside in Lebanese communities or in informal settlements. With limited means, Syrian refugees are most likely to relocate to already-disadvantaged villages and neighborhoods in Lebanon, and in some instances, competition over scarce resources between Lebanese and Syrian refugees has resulted in violence, exploitation, and other forms of victimization. This study investigates community features to identify potential sources of Lebanese community resiliency in areas of the country where there is the greatest degree of refugee population pressure.
Methods: Four waves of surveying were conducted from 2015 - 2016 in approximately three-month intervals. The surveys employed a multi-stage stratified cluster design, with cluster starting locations selected with randomly generated GPS coordinates. The combined samples included 9,449 Lebanese and 1,989 Syrian adults.
The surveys collected information on four community-tension outcomes: sense of safety and security, the quality of inter-group relations, prejudice, and rates of victimization. These outcomes were modeled as a function of plausible predictors of tension, including: confidence in government institutions, the level of refugee population pressure, vulnerability, access to services, and inter-group contact, in addition to demographic variables, such as confession, income, gender, and nationality. Because the relationships between these variables may differ by geography and over time, a varying-slope varying-intercept model was used with random effects for both the survey wave and district.
Results: Despite the fact that one primary source of tension was competition over scarce resources, it was wealthier and more educated Lebanese who on average had more negative perceptions of Syrian refugees. After controlling for other socio-demographic factors, confessional identity was not a significant predictor of most Lebanese attitudes vis-a-vis Syrian refugees, despite the fact that nearly all Syrian refugees are Sunni Muslims, while only about 33% of the Lebanese population are Sunni Muslims.
While rates of exposure to armed violence were greater in communities with more Syrian refugees, the negative effects of this were mitigated in some communities by more positive perceptions of government institutions and Lebanese security forces, lower levels of prejudice, and the perception that international assistance was directed at the community of Lebanese and Syrians rather than only to Syrian households.
Conclusions and Implications: Social interventions seeking to improve the frequency and quality of inter-group contact in more-vulnerable communities in Lebanon have the potential to mitigate or alleviate tensions, thus enhancing resiliency and reducing the propensity for violence and other forms of victimization. Relief for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, e.g., through food or cash assistance, should be complemented with community-level interventions seeking to improve the quality of life for both vulnerable Syrian and Lebanese households.