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ABSTRACT
Scholars have only recently started to take an interest in the return of highly qualified migrants to their country of origin, especially when it comes to Arab countries. This research, conducted between 2014 and 2016, provides evidence on the Lebanese case, a country where most social scientists have been trained abroad. This article uses a multi-level approach and compares careers paths of social scientists trained in Lebanon and abroad, working in Lebanese public and private universities. If a foreign diploma appears as a significant factor of career differentiation, the analysis undertaken in this article nuances this finding. It reveals to what extent the characteristics of the academic field in origin countries such as Lebanon shape the career paths of academics. Public and, to a lesser extent private universities have become ideological state apparels which are used by the ruling elites to ensure their reproduction, through the revaluation of social capital. However, this reproduction is not made without social actors and their involvement. Lebanese academics develop strategies to accumulate the relevant symbolic capital in order to be recruited or promoted. The activation of the relevant political and sectarian networks is, therefore, one of the key strategies which social scientists mobilise as a first or last resort to acquire university positions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Lama Kabbanji is a researcher at the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) and a fellow at the Institut Convergences Migrations (Paris, France). She coordinates the MobElites research network on academic mobility (https://mobelites.hypotheses.org/).
Hala Awada is assistant professor at the Institute for social sciences, Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon.
Mariam Hasbani is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon.
Elsa El Hachem is associate professor at the Institute for social sciences, Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon.
Paul Tabar is professor of sociology and anthropology at the Lebanese American University (LAU), Beirut, Lebanon and the director of LAU’s Institute for Migration Studies.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
* Authors would like to thank Eric Opigez, cartographer at CEPED, for helping us illustrating career paths of academics (see ) and Jacques Kabbanji and Sorana Toma for their valuable comments.
1 According to the latest available data, the number of Lebanese skilled migrants in 2000 in OECD countries amounted to 138 237 persons (Docquier & Marfouk, Citation2006).
2 France is by far the primary destination for Lebanese students enrolled in a tertiary education programme followed by the United States (UNESCO).
3 CRDP webiste: http://www.crdp.org/.
4 The Lebanese political system, inherited from the French mandate, is based on sectarian representation that allows for power sharing between the religious communities of the country.
5 The total of teaching staff in higher education institutions in Lebanon was 20 082.
6 For private universities, social sciences are not defined precisely in the CRDP data for 2014–2015 and cannot be directly compared to the data available for the Lebanese University. We can assume, if we take into account the data available for 2012–2013, that social sciences are here defined in a broad sense, including for instance journalism and media studies.
7 According to Bourdieu, the field of power could be defined as ‘the space of relations of force between agents or between institutions having in common the possession of the capital necessary to occupy dominant positions in the different fields’.
8 This data was collected in the framework of a research project on ‘Academic international mobility and knowledge production: the case of Lebanon’, coordinated by Lama Kabbanji and funded by the Arab Council for social sciences (ACSS).
9 We intended at the beginning of this research project to conduct the survey at the Université Saint-Joseph (USJ), the main private french-speaking university providing graduate studies in social sciences. However, due to the impossibility to get administrative data and difficulties encountered during the fieldwork we were able to conduct only few interviews with faculty members at USJ. We don’t use these interviews in this article.
11 It was particularly difficult to collect data at LU since social sciences are dispatched among five branches across the country, and the available information on faculty members are not digitised.
12 Most of the AUB faculty members who obtained their degree in Lebanon, studied at the AUB (70%, 16 among 23), and only 1 had a diploma from the LU. At LAU, it is more diversified with most graduates from AUB, only one graduate from the LAU and one from the LU.
13 It is important to mention here that important variations exist between the three faculties of the LU. At the faculty of Economics and Business administration, most faculty members are graduates from universities based in France. Whereas there has been a major trend towards inbreeding at the faculty of Law and Political science and at the Institute of Social sciences, since the implementation of a doctoral programme.
14 LAU operates under a charter from the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York and AUB under a charter granted by the Education Department of the State of New York in 1863.
15 LAU gained accreditation in 2010 by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and AUB in 2004 by the Commission of Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools in the United State.
16 Shiites are members of the second largest branch of Islam. In Lebanon, two main political parties are shiites parties: Hezbollah and Amal.
17 Wasta is an arab word and refers in this statement to getting something through favouritism rather than merit.