SR 15.12 was fully packed when Maximilian Lakitsch opened the discussion with Stephanie de la Barra, co-organizer of the exhibition and human rights advocate, and Jasmin Diab, Assistant Professor and Director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the American University Beirut, Lebanon.
Stephanie de la Barra presented several personal stories of the people she interviewed in Lebanon, each representing a more structural issue of the Lebanese state or society. The audience could watch a diashow of the photos of the exhibition on a screen behind the discussants, which allowed to relate well to the recounted stories. This presentation sparked a fruitful discussion with Jasmin Diab, in which she gave insights from the viewpoint of a migration scholar as well as a Lebanese citizen. The discussion revolved around issues such as the sectarian and political fragmentation of the country, the explosion in the harbour of Beirut destroying large parts of the city, the economic breakdown or the poor handling of the refugee issue, with an estimated number of 1.5 million Syrian refugees in a country with an estimated population of 4 million. The discussion painted a picture of a run-down country with a humiliated society that, despite all the hardship, struggles its way through daily life, enjoying its little pleasures like going out as much as as possible and as much as an unprecedented inflation allows for.