Normative, agitated, and rebellious femininities among East and Central African refugee women

Abstract

This article discusses femininities among East and Central African refugee women self-settled in Nairobi, Kenya. It argues that while normative approaches to refugee studies depict a homogeneous refugee femininity inherently synonymous with vulnerability and 'victimhood,' femininity among refugee women in Nairobi is heterogeneous, fluid, and complex. It is premised on individual refugee women's marital statuses in relation to economic situation. The article argues that femininity is a constraint in some instances and a resource in others, such that what exists among the refugee women is not a single femininity but a continuum of femininities. Specifically, the article conceptualizes femininity under three categories, namely: normative, agitated, and rebellious femininities.

Neoliberal Turns in Global Humanitarian Governance

“…Women and girls make up 49 per cent of the total asylum seekers and refugee population in Kenya (UNHCR Kenya, 2020), having fled conflict, war, poverty and violence. A good number of scholarly studies, across disciplines, have centred on the lives and experiences of women refugees in Kenya (Tippens, 2017;Ritchie, 2018;Jaji, 2015;Gee et al, 2019). According to Jaji (2015: 494) there is a tendency within refugee studies to equate Nairobi-living refugee women's femininity with 'vulnerability' and 'victimhood', when in fact it is 'heterogeneous, fluid and complex'.…”

The contested concept of vulnerability – a literature review

“…Various groups of women were defined as vulnerable, such as female war survivors in Kosovo (Kellezi & Reicher, 2014) or, as in the context of the US abortion policy, adolescents, women of colour, women living in rural areas or suffering from economic disadvantage (Ely & Dulmus, 2010). Articles also covered topics such as refugee women in Africa (Jaji, 2015) and incarcerated mothers (Few-Demo & Arditti, 2014).…”

“…) Vulnerability was studied not only in relation to actual, tangible social and economic situations or as individual experiences, but also as cultural discourses connected to women and femininity. Such discourses were seen to produce differences and disparity (Schrover, 2009), marginalization of women's experiences (Carlson, 2014) and belittlement of women's agency (Jaji, 2015). Victimhood, vulnerability and womanhood were often linked together.…”

“…200. ) Also, Jaji (2015), who had studied femininities among East and Central African refugee women, argued that refugee women's femininity was not just about vulnerability and 'victimhood'. She stated that while refugee women were vulnerable to sexual and genderbased violence due to their gender, some of them might use their femininity as a resource to gain financial benefits through 'strategic dating'.…”

Krause, Ulrike. 2021. Difficult life in a refugee camp: Gender, violence and coping in Uganda. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. pp. 250

“…Over the last decade or so, some seminal works on gender aspects of refugees have emerged in refugee studies: see for example, Turner (2019), Fiddian‐Qasmiyeh (2014), Grabska (2011), Jaji (2015) and Hyndman (2019). Krause's book certainly joins this cohort with important contributions to the discipline.…”