Towards a Relational Understanding of Vulnerability: The Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon Through a Feminist Lens

Recent debates on vulnerability have considered how to best define and measure it in order to account for the various factors that shape people’s susceptibility to harm. This article reads humanitarian and development notions of vulnerability against the relational and interdependent view put forward by feminist scholars. Such a conceptual interrogation, which examines the broader assumptions underpinning aid programming, is especially relevant as vulnerability has become a key metric for eligibility for support in a range of global contexts. Examining two approaches used for assessing and alleviating vulnerability deployed in the response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon, we show that the tools utilized by aid programmes reflect particular views of how vulnerability operates. In examining those conceptualizations through the lens of recent development and feminist thinking on vulnerability, we foreground the interdependence of different groups, the generative nature of this interdependency, as well as the interlocked nature of scales involved in producing (and alleviating) vulnerability. Adopting such a relational and dynamic view of vulnerability, we argue, can open possibilities for more inclusive and transformational development approaches.