Toil consigned to obscurity

This is a painful but necessary book, for it addresses a taboo topic — that of Syrian migrant workers in Lebanon, whose contributions to the Lebanese economy after 1950 are undeniable but whose presence in that hapless country presented much more than a dilemma for both societies. The situation worsened during the three-decades-long occupation. But what never wavered was the reality that Lebanese entrepreneurs benefited from readily available cheap labour. Few calculated the impact of such a presence then and fewer seem to be aware of its costs now.

John Chalcraft, who is a lecturer in the History and Politics of Empire and Imperialism at the London School of Economics in Britain, has now written two fascinating books. An earlier study, The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories: Crafts and Guilds in Egypt, 1863-1914, elucidated an even more obscure topic, namely the economic value that small producers and service providers add to a society as they rekindle nationalism.

In The Invisible Cage, Chalcraft provides a new interpretation of the academic debate on unevenness under capitalism by looking at transnational migration. His main thesis hovers around a strong case for labour markets that interact with political structures. Naturally, such a theory cannot begin to uncover the complexity of Leban-ese-Syrian relations but it certainly helps clarify many obscure points. The author starts with a highly theoretical introduction, which will annoy the general reader but delight the specialist.

He then moves to a first-rate discussion of labour issues in Lebanon throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, illustrating with cases of communal arrangements that depended on peasant workers and how the acquisition of property changed the country's socio-economic makeup before and after independence in the 20th century. There are fascinating discussions of the silk industry in the 1930s (pages 33-37), gradual industrialisation after 1946 (pages 40-45) and significant changes in both agriculture and construction starting in the 1960s (pages 58-63).

Given Syria's demographic changes and the country's proximity along with relatively open borders between the two neighbouring states, Lebanese entrepreneurs welcomed Syrian migrant workers in significant numbers, many of whom earned above and beyond what they could possibly achieve at home.

A time for change

Conditions worsened for many after the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975 and it is truly remarkable to read about the ways most Syrians lived at the time. Under duress, many either left voluntarily or were expelled from the Christian areas (pages 103-107), replaced by Asian labourers who "took over a quarter of foreign work permits", in 1982 (page 95). Sadly, countless "Syrian workers had more to fear from accidents, negligent employers, criminals and, to a lesser extent, Palestinian commandos than they did from Christian militias" (page 109). Still, after the 1975 Syrian military intervention, migrant workers continued to flood into the Lebanese market because of the sheer economic pull that the country presented.

Under "Pax Syriana" (chapter 4), the prolonged unsettlement and exile of Syrian migrants through the reconstruction of the 1990s, reversed. Truly controversial, the total number of such workers hovered between 150,000 and 1.5 million (page 145) by 2000, which illustrated the acuteness of the dispute on their presence, though it is critical to acknowledge that former prime minister Rafik Hariri's reconstruction programmes could not have succeeded without them. In the event, as the Lebanese economy rebounded, relatively inexpensive Syrian labourers fit the bill, as Beirut experienced a genuine boom. Many preferred to actually work in Lebanon "to maximise returns and develop entrepreneurial skills" (page 173) in what was, from an indigenous Syrian perspective, a "free market" where even low-skilled labourers could "establish themselves and their families on an independent footing, to access independent means of subsistence and to raise their wealth and status" (page 174).

The book closes with the "instability and exile" (chapter 5) that came after 2005, when Damascus pulled its 30,000 troops out of Lebanon. A large number of migrant workers returned to Syria as well, replaced by indigenous Lebanese labourers who increasingly entered the market.

Alarmingly, many returned to Syria not "for the sake of nostalgia or simple choice but in pressured, economic, social, political and geopolitical contexts, wherein they were exposed to exploitation, hostility and violence" (page 220). Most were dislocated, dismembered and in internal exile.

The Invisible Cage contains numerous quotations from individual migrant workers, which illustrate and explain how hegemony operates in a labour market that relies heavily on migrant labour and which is based on both coercion and consent. Chalcraft courageously assesses the unintended consequences of Lebanese hegemony on Syrian workers, which severely distorted the latter's contributions, while the controversy continues to enlarge the existing gulf between the two neighbouring countries.

Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is an author, most recently of Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons, Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2008.