Local and Global Cultures -- Migrants or Citizens? -- Cities, Immigrants and Integration -- Multiculturalism -- Past, Present and Future -- The Refugees -- The Setting -- Lebanese Immigration -- Migration and the Urban Process -- Family -- Community -- Proletarianisation -- The Lebanese Heritage -- Making the Lebanese Nation State -- Making the Lebanese: Proletarianisation and Pluralism -- Religion and the Lebanese State -- Unmaking Lebanon: Civil War and Localism -- Lebanese Families -- Kinship Practices -- Unmarried Women -- Wives -- Keeping the Courts out of the Home -- Community and Identity in the City -- Islam, Multiculturalism and the Global City -- Multiculturalism and Urban Consciousness -- Islam and Multiculturalism.

Much has been written in recent years about the emergence of an international labor market, its underlying dynamic, and its economic and political impact. But the cultural dimension of migration, the patterns of identity and attachment it gives rise to have received far less attention. The migration of people is now increasingly about the inter-nationalization of citizenship rather than the cultural or class homogenization of people in nation states. The oldest and one of the largest of the contemporary diasporas whose movement across the globe is based on labor migration, the Lebanese provide a particularly rich context in which the subject can be explored. Michael Humphrey reveals how Lebanese migrants have created their households, organized reciprocity in family life, formed urban communities, become workers, defined sectarian identities, transmitted religious culture and established Islamic institutions.