Space created by Lebanese and Syrian migrants: Confessionalism, clientelism, and civil society

我们对黎巴嫩和叙利亚移民的海外实地研究是基于对他们移民的历史发展（自世纪末以来观察到四次“浪潮”）及其在东道国社会中向上流动的共同理解。这项研究揭示了以下新情况：（1）移徙者网络的多层次结构，将他们与原籍国联系起来;（2）他们的活动，通过移徙者在东道国民间社会的生活，有可能改变黎巴嫩和叙利亚政治制度的宗派性质;（3）他们祖国的强烈庇护主义，然而，这些国家通过其多层网络将移徙者保留在宗派框架内。

Our over-seas field research on Lebanese and Syrian migrants was based on a common understanding of the historical development of their migration (four “waves” have been observed since the end of the nineteenth century) and their upward social mobility in their host societies. The research shed a new light on 1) the multi-layered structure of migrants’ networks, which connect them with their countries of origin, 2) their activities, which have the potential to transform the sectarian nature of the Lebanese and Syrian political systems, through the migrants’ living in the civil societies of the host countries, and 3) the strong clientelism of their homelands, which nevertheless retains the migrants within a sectarian framework through their multi-layered networks.