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19世纪末以来观察到四次“浪潮”）和他们在东道国社会向上流动的共同理解。该研究揭示了以下问题：1)移民网络的多层结构，将他们与原籍国联系起来；2)移民的活动，通过移民在东道国的公民社会生活，有可能改变黎巴嫩和叙利亚政治制度的宗派性质；3)移民祖国的强烈庇护主义，尽管如此，通过他们的多层网络，移民仍被保留在宗派框架内。

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.