Canadian Consortium on Human Security
Fellow Profile: Elinor Bray-Collins
Elinor Bray-Collins is a PhD student in the department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research explores youth politics in the Middle East. Using Lebanon as her case study, she examines how and why young people are galvanized into communal politics. Her main research questions include: who competes for the political loyalties and energy of youth and how do they do it? Under what conditions are ethnic and religious movements effective at mobilizing youth for their political purposes and why are certain groups more successful than others at doing so? What are the implications of youth mobilization for the politics of divided and developing societies?
Elinor received her BA (Hons) in International Development Studies at Scarborough College of the University of Toronto, and her MA in International Comparative Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Before embarking on her PhD in 2004, she worked with rural development initiatives in Tanzania and Kenya, coordinated youth and agricultural programmes in Thailand and Canada, and partnered with Arab NGOs in Lebanon and Syria to conduct research on civil society politics, women’s advocacy, and human rights. Elinor has been the recipient of numerous academic awards and distinctions including the Innovative Research award from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Doctoral fellowship for research in Ethnicity and Democratic Governance, and the Beattie Doctoral Fellowship of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Elinor’s Publications include “The Politics of Peace Building in Nepal” with Rita Thapa in Canadian Women’s Studies and “Women’s Organizing in Beirut: Dialectics of Unity and Diversity” in The Lebanon Report.
Description of CCHS research:
Ethnic and religious conflicts are on the rise and pose serious threats to human security in societies of the global south. Crucially, these are societies that are also largely comprised of youth. In the Middle East region alone, estimates put 60% of the population under 25 years of age (World Bank 2006). Moreover, a connection has been made between the so-called “youth bulges” in population pyramids and heightened internal conflict (Beehner 2007). Despite these dramatic statistics, the politics of youth remain “a sorely under researched area” of political science (Hegasay 2006). Youth are described in the literature on ethnic and religious conflicts as “omnipresent” at communal protests (Villalon 1999) and as “supplying religious elites with their most radical recruits” (Robinson 2004) and yet are rarely the focus of scholarly inquiry. If for no other reason than their sheer numbers, under¬stand¬ing the mobilization of youth is critical for the development of theories, policies and practices that promote human security in tandem with efforts to minimize political conflict. Indeed, when we consider our foreign policies towards developing nations – and the Middle East in particular – the question we are in fact asking ourselves is ‘what are our policies towards young people?’ Elinor’s research fills this gap in scholarship, and in doing so, strives to contribute to effective policy towards human security and the well-being of young people.
Lebanon provides a strong case for this study. Not only is it a country that has suffered from persistent internal communally-based conflict, it is also one where youth have recently been catapulted onto the political stage. In the “Independence Intifada” of 2005 (also known as the “Cedar Revolution”, and “Lebanon’s Spring”), hundreds of thousands of Lebanese youth took to the streets to express their desire for an end to sectarian divisions, external interference, and for a peaceful and reconstructed nation. Indeed, the events of this period galvanized an entire generation into politics. These events, however, present a puzzle: the hundreds of thousands of young people who demanded unity and an end to ethno-religious divisions, were, paradoxically, being organized by the same political forces that perpetuate them. Even at the heart of the Lebanon’s youth-led ‘revolution’ - Beirut’s tent city - the confessional lines were clearly in place. Each group had their own tents, territory, music, food, flags, and of course, youth. As one observer noted, youth desperately wanted to overcome the old political divisions, and yet still “blindly” followed the old political elites (Bayat, 2005).
Three years on, it is an oft-made observation that Lebanon’s Spring has turned to fall. In fact, all evidence points to the deepening of sectarian divisions in the population (Leeders 2007) and youth are no exception. Young people, who called for unity only a short time ago, are being increasingly drawn into confessional parties and activism. How and why have the old communal elites been so successful at galvanizing these young people into political action – even in spite of youth expressing feelings of betrayal by them? What does this young generation of confessional activists – ironically calling for unity - tell us?
To address the research questions outlined above, Elinor is analyzing formal structures and informal sites of youth mobilization in order to understand how they function under various political conditions and within selected political events. She is comparing four selected cases of ethno-religious movements – the Shi’a, Sunni, Christian, and Druze - that represent the major sectarian groups and span the spectrum of Lebanon’s religious communities. For each movement, formal structures (i.e., youth wings of political parties, summer camps, university student groups) as well as informal structures (i.e., peer groups, family and clan networks) are examined to capture a range of activities and types of participation. Interviews are being conducted with a range of youth activists, including youth leaders, formal youth movement members, and non-member youth participants as well as elite adult leaders of the selected movements. Content analysis is also being performed on concrete materials (including, but not limited to, web-available materials, party documents, posters). Finally, these sites and structures of mobilization are being analyzed for how they have historically functioned from the post-war period onward, with an emphasis on the events leading up to and since Lebanon’s “Independence Uprising” or the “Cedar Revolution”.
Selected Publications:
Bray-Collins, Elinor and Rita Thapa. (2002). "Women and Peace Building in Nepal: The Politics of Development Aid." In Canadian Women’s Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2.
Bray-Collins, Elinor. (1997). "Women’s Organizing in Beirut” in “Civil Society in Beirut: Dialects of Unity and Diversity" In The Lebanon Report. No. 3, Fall. 1997. Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies: Beirut. Lebanon.
Bray-Collins, Elinor (2003). "Pushing the Boundaries: The Women’s Film Festival in Beirut." The Daily Star, Lebanon Edition, June 12, 2003.
Bray-Collins, Elinor. (2003). "Creating or Co-opting Space for Gender Advocacy? National Women’s Machineries in the Arab World." Research Report of the Centre for Research Training and Development, Gender Unit, Lebanon.
