The EU and Colonial Continuities: The Externalisation of Migration to Lebanon and Its Impact on Syrian Refugees
Lea Pacher, Visiting Fellow, Institute for Migration Studies; Graduate Student, University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE)
Introduction
The ongoing Syrian refugee crisis remains one of the most complex challenges facing the international community—politically, socially, and economically. While some claim that the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015 has passed, such views are distinctly Eurocentric. They ignore that migration cannot be reduced to the visible struggles of those attempting to reach European territory.
In recent years, the European Union (EU) has intensified its externalisation of migration and border control, forging partnerships and financial deals with several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Lebanon. In migration studies, externalisation refers to the shifting of border control responsibilities from the Global North to the Global South. EU policies aim to prevent arrivals by outsourcing migration management to third countries—policies that paradoxically reproduce the very conditions they claim to address, while justifying tighter border control and blaming smugglers.
Although the EU presents itself as a champion of human rights and international law, its offshoring practices effectively deny refugees access to asylum and strip them of their humanity. The 1-billion-euro EU–Lebanon deal exemplifies this logic: framed as support for border control and migration management in exchange for financial assistance to Lebanon’s refugee-hosting capacities. Yet this agreement is only one step in a broader pattern of the EU’s externalised migration governance across the region.
By 2024, Lebanon hosted the highest number of refugees per capita and per square kilometre in the world—around 1.5 million displaced Syrians, over 200,000 Palestinian refugees, and more than 11,000 refugees of other nationalities. Lebanon’s limited capacity to host and protect refugees is compounded by the economic crisis since 2019, the ongoing war in Gaza since 2023, Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, and intensified internal displacement. Added to this are increasingly hostile political discourses, mass security raids, deportation threats, and restricted access to institutional protection.
The UNHCR’s work in Lebanon is further constrained by the country’s non-ratification of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its protocols, as well as the suspension of formal registration of Syrian refugees since 2015. Lebanon’s institutional ambiguity and inconsistent migration governance create legal uncertainty and de facto illegality for Syrian refugees.
Decolonising Migration Studies
Discussions of refugee protection in Lebanon often frame the country as solely responsible for the precarious conditions of Syrian refugees. This narrative, however, obscures the role of the EU and its racialised, colonialist externalisation policies that profoundly shape refugees’ social realities. A decolonial feminist framework offers tools to analyse these dynamics, situating them within broader systems of oppression while centring the voices of those most affected.
Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s (1999) concept of critical intimacy, familiarity with Europe can be used to deconstruct colonialist practices and narratives, enabling a reflexive critique of European migration governance. As Nassr-Eddin and Abu-Assab (2020) argue, white researchers should not dissociate from systemic privilege but instead interrogate how they are complicit—and how they might contribute to decolonising knowledge without recentering Europe.
Understanding the EU’s externalisation strategy requires confronting the continuities of colonialism embedded within its legal frameworks and racialised, gendered discourses. European migration governance reproduces hierarchies rooted in imperial history, cloaked in the language of progress and human rights. Without colonialism, Europe’s current migration regime—marked by structural racism, imperialism, and orientalist narratives—would not exist. Orientalist tropes are revived to justify border securitisation, depicting refugees as threats, terrorists, or invaders, while portraying Europe as a victim under siege.
Fieldwork and Findings
This research is based on fieldwork conducted in Beirut from March to June 2025. It includes semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugees living in Lebanon and experts in the field of migration. Employing a decolonial, trauma-informed, participatory methodology, the study seeks to create a collaborative space for the co-creation of knowledge between researcher and participants. This approach foregrounds storytelling, dignity, and agency, generating knowledge with participants rather than about them.
The interviews reveal pervasive discriminatory structures across social, legal, cultural, and economic spheres. These forms of marginalisation intersect and reinforce one another, producing a tightly woven system of injustice. Syrian refugees in Lebanon experience exclusion on multiple fronts: precarious and exploitative housing and employment conditions, severely limited access to education and healthcare, and a constant fear of raids, detention, and deportation. These lived realities exemplify how the EU’s racialised and colonialist migration policies manifest beyond its borders.
Conclusion
While the EU’s border practices are visible along the Mediterranean, what unfolds in external partner states like Lebanon remains largely invisible. This opacity conceals profound legal, political, and humanitarian failures, masking the colonial logic of externalisation that continues to shape refugees’ lives. A decolonial feminist intersectional perspective helps uncover these less visible dimensions of EU migration governance and the racialised hierarchies it sustains.
Ultimately, refugee protection must be recognised as an international and European responsibility. Demanding that Lebanon alone uphold refugee rights while ignoring the EU’s complicity in producing racialised and exclusionary migration policies evades accountability. True commitment to human rights and the Refugee Convention requires the EU to confront its own colonial continuities—and to take responsibility for the systems of inequality it reproduces beyond its borders.