Abstract

In October 2019, Lebanon's banking system collapsed, freezing and devaluing deposits held by millions, including a significant proportion of the Lebanese diaspora. While prior scholarship has documented the macroeconomic dimensions of the crisis, the subjective experience of diaspora members has remained largely unexplored. This study employed interpretive phenomenological analysis to explore how 25 members of the Lebanese diaspora, residing across six countries, lived through and made sense of the freezing and devaluation of their bank deposits. Four superordinate themes emerged: the destruction of institutional trust, the perception of systemic injustice and an accountability gap, forced financial and behavioural adaptation, and the deepening of involuntary diaspora alongside sustained psychological harm. The findings reveal that the crisis was not a single financial event but a compounding rupture that destroyed trust, confirmed injustice, restructured daily life, and permanently severed participants' connection to Lebanon as a place in which a future could be built.

References

1. Arega, M., Linggonegoro, D. W., Dee, E. C., & Torous, J. (2022). Financial worry and psychological distress among immigrants in the United States: Evidence from a national longitudinal survey. Journal of Psychiatric Practice, 28(2), 117–129.
2. Ali, A. K. (2024). Displacement in place and the financial crisis in Lebanon. Journal of Refugee Studies, 37(1), 201–220.
3. Birt, L., Scott, S., Cavers, D., Campbell, C., & Walter, F. (2016). Member checking: A tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation? Qualitative Health Research, 26(13), 1802–1811.
4. Daher, E., Azar, R., Naipaul, T. and Kyriakou, S. (2025): Challenges and Opportunities for Islamic Banking and Finance in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In Ahmed, A. (Ed.): United Nations: What Next After 2030 Agenda and SDGs. World Sustainable Development Outlook 2025, Vol. 21, pp.229-245. WASD: London, United Kingdom.
5. Dodgson, J. E. (2019). Reflexivity in qualitative research. Journal of Human Lactation, 35(2), 220–222.
6. Feige, I., & Yen, I. C. (2021). Financial crises and individual investors' behavior: Evidence from the stock exchange. Finance Research Letters, 41, 101790.
7. Frechette, J., Bitzas, V., Aubry, M., Kilpatrick, K., & Lavoie-Tremblay, M. (2020). Capturing lived experience: Methodological considerations for interpretive phenomenological inquiry. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 19.
8. Fungáčová, Z., Kerola, E., & Weill, L. (2022). Does experience of banking crises affect trust in banks? Journal of Financial Services Research, 62(1), 61–90. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10693-021-00365-w
9. Holmes, E. A., O'Connor, R. C., Perry, V. H., Tracey, I., Wessely, S., Arseneault, L., Ballard, C., Christensen, H., Silver, R. C., Everall, I., Ford, T., John, A., Kabir, T., King, K., Madan, I., Michie, S., Przybylski, A. K., Shafran, R., Sweeney, A., ... Bullmore, E. (2020). Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: A call for action for mental health science. The Lancet Psychiatry, 7(6), 547–560.
10. Kyriakou, S., Tun, M. M., Kyriakou, Z., Naipaul, T., & Naipaul, J. (2025). Exploring the role of e-learning in career readiness: experiences of business students in Myanmar. Asia Pacific Business Review, 1–36.
11. Liamputtong, P. (2020). Qualitative research methods (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.
12. Salas-Wright, C. P., Maldonado-Molina, M. M., Pérez-Gómez, A., Mejía-Trujillo, J., & Schwartz, S. J. (2022). The Venezuelan diaspora: Migration-related experiences and mental health. Current Opinion in Psychology, 47, Article 101430.
13. Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2022). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research (2nd ed.). Sage.
14. Smith, J. A., & Nobre, P. J. (2021). Doing interpretative phenomenological analysis. In M. Lyons & F. Coyle (Eds.), Analysing qualitative data in psychology (3rd ed., pp. 203–221). Sage.
15. Snaije, O. (2022). Lebanon's financial meltdown: The collapse of a model. Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB).
16. United Nations Development Programme. (2023). The increasing role and importance of remittances in Lebanon. UNDP Lebanon. https://www.undp.org/arab-states/publications/increasing-role-and-importance-remittances-lebanon
17. Van der Cruijsen, C., de Haan, J., & Jonker, N. (2022). Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected public trust? Evidence for the US and the Netherlands. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 200, 1010–1024.
18. Vasileiou, K., Barnett, J., Thorpe, S., & Young, T. (2018). Characterising and justifying sample size sufficiency in interview-based studies: Systematic analysis of qualitative health research over a 15-year period. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 18(1), 148.
19. World Bank. (2020). Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2020: The deliberate depression. World Bank Group. https://doi.org/10.1596/34842