At the Beirut airport, an expat family’s suitcases. (Credit: Lyana Alameddine)
Three-quarters of young Lebanese and perhaps even more are considering leaving the country one day or already actively trying to leave, a study from the American University of Beirut has found.
To leave the country and find a job abroad — this is the desire of many as Lebanon’s crisis shifts into full gear. However, while it is true that many people have traveled lately, it is difficult to gauge the scale of the emigration phenomenon, given the lack of official figures for it.
The study, from the Crisis Observatory at AUB, estimated that “hundreds of thousands” of people could leave the country in the next few years in pursuit of “work, studies or retirement” abroad.
“We know that many people would like to leave, but how many managed to do so in the past few months? Unfortunately, we don’t have any information in this regard,” Nasser Yassin, an AUB professor and the Observatory’s director, said. He said existing preliminary data suggests that as many as 77 percent of young Lebanese are considering emigrating or actively seeking to leave the country.
“It is the highest rate in the Arab world,” he told L’Orient-Le Jour.
Physicians, nurses and teachers
Yassin believes that faced with this situation, we can speak of a “third emigration wave from Lebanon.” He recalls that the first mass exodus occurred from 1865 to 1916, when about 330,000 people emigrated. The second wave took place during the Civil War (1975–90), when nearly 990,000 people left.
“Today, we especially notice departures among some professionals, such as doctors and nurses, in addition to school and university teachers. The banking sector’s employees could be next soon,” Yassin warns.
The AUB study points out that hundreds of teachers left for North America and Gulf countries last year. At AUB alone, 190 professors emigrated, or 15 percent of the university’s teaching staff. The study further notes that, according to the nurses syndicate, 1,600 nurses have emigrated since 2019.
According to the same study, one out of five people has lost their job and almost two-thirds of companies have dismissed an average of 43 percent of their employees since the fall of 2019, which could also help explain many departures from the country.
Marwan, a 30-year-old music composer and producer, settled in France in 2019, when the crisis had already begun to have an impact. “Back then, I could not find a stable job in [Lebanon],” he told L’Orient-Le Jour.
“Moreover, I wanted to tie the knot, which was hard to do due to the high cost of living and the exorbitant rents. We could see the crisis coming, not only at the financial level. Freedom of expression was totally suppressed, and repression was mounting.”
A phenomenon is underway
Choghig Kasparian, a professor and researcher at Saint Joseph University in Beirut and an author of several publications on emigration from Lebanon, indicated that “this phenomenon is currently underway, and in a severe way.
“A large emigration wave is taking place presently. The young people, be they graduates or not, are especially leaving, as well as couples in their 40s and 50s who have children in school. Although some of them have a job here, despair is driving them out of the country,” she told L’Orient-Le Jour.
“Remarkably, those who are traveling to pursue their studies or careers, or to enroll their children in schools abroad, are part of a more affluent social class,” she said, adding that she expects Lebanon’s “ population to age with time” due to these departures.
“Still, we’ll have to see if these departures are permanent. Could we anticipate any returns to the country after a while, similar to what happened after the end of the Civil War?” she asks.
Mohammad, 42, is one of the many potential emigrants. The unemployed father of a 10-year-old boy was a construction site manager in Gulf countries for several years before returning to Beirut. He has no job right now and seeks to leave the country again by any means possible.
“There is no security, no infrastructure, let alone jobs, which I am being told repeatedly that I am overqualified for,” he says. “Furthermore, in light of the disastrous situation in hospitals, severe power cuts and fuel shortages, I believe that it is no longer possible to lead a dignified life here. I would like to find a job abroad to be able to provide for my family.”
This article was originally published in French in L’Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Joelle El Khoury.
