2026 Theses Doctoral

Citizenship Otherwise: Decolonial Reclamations of Life, Belonging, Dignity, and Futurity Amidst Displacement in Lebanon

Mansour, Samaya

Globally, escalating crises are forcing individuals to seek safety elsewhere, disrupting lives, well-being, education, economic stability, and cultural identities. In this context, I argue that displacement and the question of citizenship emerge as central conditions of contemporary socio-political life. This raises urgent questions about identity (who citizens are), membership and belonging (where the boundaries are), and agency (how citizenship is enacted), which take on a critical and pressing urgency, especially when confronted with the scale of forced displacement.

This dissertation examines how displaced Syrians living in protracted displacement in Lebanon navigate and enact citizenship. Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that brings together citizenship studies, decolonial theory, refugee and education‑in‑emergencies scholarship, and citizenship education, I explore how Syrians in Lebanon enact political presence, claim rights, and constitute themselves as social and historical subjects. I use a decolonial perspective to challenge the normative and legal understandings of citizenship and their reproduction in education, and to dismantle the norm of the citizen as the white, heterosexual, and generally Christian male that excludes subaltern figures, such as women, Blacks, queers, Indigenous people, refugees, and non-Westerners (Isin, 2015).

I ask and answer: (1) How do Syrians practice citizenship amidst displacement? (2) What acts of citizenship do they engage in? (3) How, if at all, do these acts shape their roles, relationships, and identities? Methodologically, the dissertation employs a multimodal, arts‑informed qualitative design, combining photovoice, storytelling, and mapping (Wang & Burris, 1997; Paulson, 1996; Tuhiwai Smith, 2021) to center the lived experiences of displaced Syrians in Lebanon.

Participants refuse the temporality of waiting imposed by humanitarian governance and instead reconstruct meaningful lives through persistent practices of education, teaching, volunteering, work, leisure, and community participation. These practices function as acts of citizenship (Isin, 2008) through which Syrians (re)claim the right to have rights (Arendt, 1986).

Belonging is experienced as a relational and lived practice that precedes colonial borders (Chatty, 2010), and it is sustained through transnational family ties, friendships and professional networks, and everyday presence in place. Participants also (re)claim dignity and selfhood through refusal of aid practices and the humanitarian subject position of the “refugee.” Lastly, memory functions as a counter‑discourse (Said, 2000) through which participants reconstitute Syrianness as historical, cultural, and moral, while future‑making enables them to orient their lives toward responsibility, contribution, and continuity despite the temporal rupture of displacement.

I conceptualize these practices as citizenship otherwise: a decolonial mode of political being through which life, belonging, dignity, and futurity are actively (re)claimed in the absence of legal citizenship and state recognition and within a humanitarian framework that reduces them to passive victims of crisis. The dissertation advances decolonial rethinking of citizenship and citizenship education, with implications for refugee education policy, humanitarian practice, and broader debates about belonging, participation, and agency in contexts of protracted displacement and migration.