The Struggles of Labour Mobilisation in Lebanon and Iraq

This event is the launch of Dr Anne Kirstine Rønn's latest paper as part of the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series on 'The Struggles of Labour Mobilisation in Lebanon and Iraq'. 

Despite facing significant challenges, including elite control and repression, labour movements in both Lebanon and Iraq have sought to assert their independence and challenge the status quo. This paper explores the main types of labour organisations in both countries – trade unions and professional syndicates – and the distinct structural and strategic obstacles they face.

In both countries, elites have undermined labour organisations by taking control of key coordinating bodies, leaving workers without effective, formal nationwide organisations. The paper highlights how activists have responded by organising self-directed strikes and creating alternative union-like organisations at the sectoral and workplace levels. It also examines the role of professional syndicates, where elections for leadership positions have become central battlegrounds between elites and opposition forces seeking to empower independent candidates.

Additionally, the paper discusses the internal debates within these organisations, where the tension between idealism and pragmatic goals often influences their strategies. By drawing on interviews with labour activists and secondary sources, the paper reflects on the potential for strengthening these movements and explores the trade-offs between formal and informal labour organising. It concludes by calling for further research to identify the conditions under which labour mobilisation can be effective in similar political contexts.

The paper is available to read online here.

Meet our speakers and chair

Anne Kirstine Rønn is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Her research explores opposition movements in ethno-religiously divided societies with a particular focus on Lebanon and Iraq. In her PhD, she investigated the challenges protesters in Lebanon’s 2019 October Uprising faced when seeking to build solidarity between citizens across sects, class and geographical divides. Her postdoctoral research focuses on the Lebanese and Iraqi labor movements and examines their potential as oppositional forces against the ruling elites of the two countries. Specifically, she investigates the dynamics of trade unions and other alternative forms of labour mobilisation in the aftermath of the 2019 uprisings.

Fuad Musallam is an Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. He focuses on activism, labour, the imagination, and how people come together to form community. He has done much of his research in Lebanon's capital city, Beirut, where he works with Lebanese political activists challenging the political system and with migrant workers building solidarity in the face of racialised inequality. He has a forthcoming monograph with University of Pennsylvania Press, entitled A Break in the Future: Feeling Like an Activist after the Arab Uprisings.

Razaw Salihy is the Iraq Researcher at Amnesty International. Since 2014, she has investigated and reported human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. She extensively documented the killing, maiming, and abduction of protesters and activists across Iraq during the 2019-2021 Tishreen protests and its aftermath. 

Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. This research addresses both global environmental politics and regional environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East.