RESEARCH PROJECT
Surplus humanity and the challenges of de-development
Connecting the case of the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake
to larger global economic and political tendencies today
Nadia Bou Ali & Ramy Shukr
The project Surplus Humanity and De-development combines empirical and theoretical research, localised activities and international forums, in order to propose a new understanding of the socio-economic dynamics that underpin the plight of Syrian refugees in the aftermath of the earthquake, setting up complex challenges for humanitarian responses.
RESEARCH APPROACH
One of the project’s key aspects is to frame this analysis through a broader consideration of the current global tendency for “crisis capitalism” to paradoxically produce, manage and economically exploit displaced and underemployed populations affected by both natural, social and economic catastrophes – what researchers call a process of “de-development”.
Framing the analysis of the earthquake’s aftermath through the lenses of a global dynamic or tendency also requires the project to adopt a comparative approach that brings to the fore common and structural traits shared by different catastrophes and contexts where displaced populations are economically integrated into the same societies that socially exclude them – connecting refugees, masses of underemployed people and other forms of “surplus-humanity”.
Project components
Phase 1: building a framework
- Nadia Bou Ali’s theoretical analysis of the economic dynamic of surplus-population production: Surplus and Displacement, Refugees and Migrants
- Ramy Shukr’s critical analysis of the rise in xenophobia against Syrian refugees in Lebanon: The political economy of Anti-Syrian Hate in post-crisis Lebanon: a critical review
Phase 2: localised and international activities
- International Working Group The political economy of disaster and displacement, bringing together 8 scholars to discuss the social and humanitarian challenges posed by the aftermath of the Turkey/Syria earthquake and produce essays exploring the theme from different perspectives.
- Symposium Catastrophe and Displacement, organised in partnership with Beirut Institute of Critical Analysis and Research, focused on a comparative analysis of the challenges faced by Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Turkey as well as the obstacles faced by other displacement populations in the region.Fieldwork with relevant sectors of the labour market in Lebanon whose dynamics have been proved suited for economically absorbing the Syrian workforce while benefiting from their invisibilized social situation.
- Fieldwork seeking to understand how the historical response of the humanitarian sector to the plight of Syrian refugees in the last decade contributed to both the sedimentation of Syrian workforce as an informal source of labour-power and to the invisibilization of others who experience a similar condition of social exclusion, such as Palestinian refugees.
- Workshops, organised in partnership with the Anti-Racism Movement, bringing together different NGOs already engaged with the humanitarian response to displaced populations in Lebanon for strategic discussions informed by the material produced by the Surplus-Humanity project.
- Dossier Catastrophe and Displacement, combining texts produced throughout the project with new commissions.
researchers
NADIA BOU ALI
Nadia Bou Ali is Associate Professor and Director of the Civilization Studies Program at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. She is the author of Hall of Mirrors: Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). She is co-editor (with Rohit Goel) of Lacan contra Foucault: Subjectivity, Sex, Politics (Bloomsbury 2018) and of Extimacies: Encounters Between Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (co-edited with Surti Singh), forthcoming from Northwestern University Press. She is also editing the first English translation of Mehdi Amel's Theoretical Prolegomenon on the Impact of Socialist Thought in the National Liberation Movement: On Contradiction and The Colonial Mode of Production for Brill's Historical Materialism Book Series. Nadia is a practicing analyst and member of The Lacan School, Bay Area, San Francisco.
RAMY SHUKR
Ramy is a researcher, community organizer, and aspiring psychoanalyst based in Beirut. Currently working at Anti-Racism Movment and Queer Mutual Aid, while finishing an MA in Anthropology at AUB. Ramy is a fellow researcher at Alameda Institute.
LATEST UPDATES
REPORT
The Political Economy of Anti-Syrian Hostility in Post-Crisis Lebanon
Lebanon is going through one of the worst economic crises in modern history. At the same time, Lebanon hosts the largest refugee population per capita in the world; around 2 million Syrian refugees are estimated to be living in the country after fleeing war in Syria. In recent years, Syrian refugees have been facing alarming levels of hostility and violence from the Lebanese state, the security sector, media, and parts of the public. This critical review identifies the current role Syrian workers play in the Lebanese economy after the crisis and explore any potential connections between that and the rise of xenophobic hate speech.
symposium
Catastrophe and Displacement
- TBC
The Symposium explores how social exclusion plays a crucial role in integrating surplus populations, especially refugees and those affected by natural disasters, into the economy. Alongside the event, the project includes an online Working Group focused on the earthquake’s aftermath, fieldwork with Syrian workers in Beirut and humanitarian workers in Syria, workshops, and a dossier. The event brings together scholars, journalists, and humanitarian workers to discuss the broader effects of capitalism’s changes in post-catastrophic scenarios. These discussions center on how dispossession, displacement, and the emergence of a “surplus humanity” are not temporary or exceptional crises but structural conditions increasingly woven into societies’ economic and social systems.
LATEST ESSAY
Surplus and Displacement, Refugees and Migrants
In this essay, researcher Nadia Bou Ali explores the concept of “surplus-humanity” as articulated by various theorists, which delineates the marginalized masses facing inequality, dispossession, and displacement, devoid of social and human rights. Bou Ali intertwines this notion with the critical discourse on “surplus populations” from political economy, elucidating how economic systems both exclude and potentially absorb those they marginalize. She contends that understanding this economic underpinning is vital for comprehending the unique challenges faced by refugees, particularly in contexts like the aftermath of the Türkiye/Syria earthquake, where social insecurity and unemployment serve as gateways to economic integration for displaced populations.
Working Group
The political economy of disaster and displacement
- 19th June
- 5:30pm (GMT)
- Online Event
The working group on disaster and displacement will convene researchers from different regions to share ideas and debate on this theme concerning their previous work and through the lens of disaster-related displacement and the creation of surplus populations. With a focus on Syria and Turkey and the post-earthquake scenario, the group will meet three times over three months, and each researcher will produce an individual article, up to 3,000 words, based on the debates.