MIGPRO · Migrating Protest from Lebanon to Europe

MIGPRO – Migrating Protest from Lebanon to Europe investigates the activist trajectories of Lebanese individuals who migrated to Europe after participating in Lebanon’s 2019 Uprising. In October 2019, a nationwide protest movement erupted, uniting protestors across sectarian lines in the country’s biggest attempt at dismantling Lebanon’s sectarian political governance system since the end of the civil war in 1990. However, Lebanon’s multiple crises, including a catastrophic banking collapse and an ongoing regional conflict, have driven many activists to emigrate. Upon arriving in Europe, many activists are increasingly positioned as Arab migrants, a social and political category that shapes their activisms around issues such as racial justice, migrant rights, and the securitization of minorities. This new engagement builds on their prior knowledge and practices from Lebanon’s protest movement and incorporates the lessons they learned in new contexts. Through an ethnography of recently migrated Lebanese activists who are turning to new forms of activism in Spain and the UK, MIGPRO investigates how migration extends and transforms activist practices. Empirically, it extends work on Lebanon’s 2019 Uprising by examining how activist knowledge is adapted and reacticulated within European contexts. At a policy level, MIGPRO explores the periphery-center diffusing of knowledge by exploring how activist knowledge from the Middle East can shape localized responses to European issues.