Lebanese without citizenship – Restrictions, Copings strategies, and performative citizenship of non-Lebanese children in Lebanon

This paper aims to investigate the practices and acts of citizenship children of binational families in Lebanon use to cope with the restrictions they face due to the Lebanese citizenship law. This law denies Lebanese women married to non-Lebanese men the right to transmit their nationality to their spouses and children. This patriarchal legal norm dating to 1925, has an important impact on the daily practices of these binational families: Without Lebanese citizenship, the children have, unlikely to their mother, no or limited access to i.e., long-term residence permits, public education or the social security system. The existing research regarding the situation of these children in Lebanon is limited, reliable quantitative data regarding their numbers, socio-economic background, and the nationalities of the fathers is completely lacking. The limited present literature tends to homogenize the group of binational families and it focusses mainly on the legal restrictions the families face. By applying Engin Isin’s concept of “performative citizenship”, this paper sheds light on the practices children use to react to the legal restrictions they face and on the coping patterns they develop. To approach the assumed heterogeneity of the target group, an intersectional analysis of the social positionings and action scopes of these families is applied, especially concerning gender, nationality, and socio-economic status. My claim is that the “performative citizenship” of the children in these families is not only depicted in their political and social activism for a more inclusive citizenship law. Combining the concept of performative citizenship with that of emotional citizenship suggested by Anne-Marie Fortier I find that by finding coping strategies to exercise basic human rights and by feeling Lebanese and stating their right to be legally Lebanese, they are performing Lebanese citizenship. Additionally, I argue that despite the same legal frame for all investigated families, the perceived restrictions and the developed coping strategies differ based on the socio-economic situation of the family and the nationality of the children. To reach the paper’s aim, this research chooses to follow an explorative qualitative research approach using the method of problem-centred interviews. Now, ten semi-structured interviews are conducted with mature children and mothers of binational families holding different nationalities and coming from various socio-economic backgrounds. The method of Reflexive Thematic Analysis following Braun/ Clarke will be used for the analysis of the transcribed interviews. This approach allows to combine inductive and deductive coding of the material allowing the researcher to specifically include Isin’s concept of “performative citizenship” while being able to open the analysis to new themes elaborated from the data.