‘What Does the Term Refugee Mean to You?’: Perspectives from Syrian Refugee Women in Lebanon

Gissi, Angela

doi:10.1093/jrs/fey046

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Like Guha (2019), we avoided questions which singled out a specific traumatic moment, putting family life in exile in the context of women's wider life course. With this study, we add to recent scholarship that highlights the complex nature of Syrian women's narratives, their creative engagement with refugee labels (Gissi, 2018) and different audiences (Shalaby, 2018). Talking to Syrian women at their workplaces allowed us to ask questions about their skills and expertise, and how these helped them generate an extra income, but also became an important part of their identities as mothers, farmers and entrepreneurs.…”

Section: Methodology and Study Participantsmentioning

confidence: 95%

‘In Exile, the Woman Became Everything’

Sidhva

Zuntz

Akash

et al. 2021

Journal of Humanitarian Affairs

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This article explores the intersections of generational and gender dynamics with humanitarian governance in Jordan that cause shifts in the division of labour within displaced families. Drawing on life history interviews and focus group discussions with seventeen Syrian women in Jordan in spring 2019, we explore the monetary and non-monetary contributions of middle-aged females to the livelihoods of refugee households. Older women’s paid and unpaid labour holds together dispersed families whose fathers have been killed or incapacitated, or remain in Syria or in the Gulf. In doing so, many women draw on their pre-war experience of living with – or rather apart from – migrant husbands. Increased economic and social responsibilities coincide with a phase in our interviewees’ lifecycle in which they traditionally acquire greater authority as elders, especially as mothers-in-law. While power inequalities between older and younger Syrian women are not new, they have been exacerbated by the loss of resources in displacement. Our insights offer a counterpoint to humanitarian attempts at increasing refugees’ ‘self-reliance’ through small-scale entrepreneurship. For now, culturally appropriate and practically feasible jobs for middle-aged women are found in their living rooms. Supportive humanitarian action should allow them to upscale their businesses and address power dynamics within families.

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Section: Methodology and Study Participantsmentioning

confidence: 95%

‘In Exile, the Woman Became Everything’

Sidhva

Zuntz

Akash

et al. 2021

Journal of Humanitarian Affairs

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“…Through the propaganda and institutions of the Syrian state, females were exposed to ideals of 'modern' working women, although real women often found it hard to reconcile the demands of their jobs and family lives (Lei Sparre 2008, Rabo 1996. Studies of displaced Syrian women have investigated how they adopt or refuse the 'refugee' label (Gissi 2018), tailor their stories to different audiences (Shalaby 2018) and how women from different social strata and ethnic groups experience displacement (Alhayek 2015, Ozkaleli 2018. This article also adds to research on refugees' social obligations and survival strategies within extended kinship networks (Easton-Calabria & Herson 2020).…”

Section: A Feminist Approach To Research: Conversations Among Womenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early marriage and displacement�a conversation: how Syrian daughters, mothers and mothers-in-law in Jordan understand marital decision-making

Zuntz¹,

Palattiyil²,

Amawi³

et al. 2021

JBA

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Conflict and forced migration threaten to reverse the decline of early marriage in the Middle East. In some Syrian refugee communities, protracted displacement and precarious livelihoods, together with pre-war traditions of early marriage, push families to arrange matches for their adolescent daughters, and sometimes sons. Drawing on thirteen ethnographic interviews with young Syrian women, mothers, mothers-in-law and grandmothers in Jordan, we develop a multi-perspective approach to the study of early marriage. A feminist outlook has informed our fieldwork and the way its results are presented: around a conversation with Syrian women of different ages and from different generational groups. While humanitarian reports often use women�s voices in a tokenistic way, we stay attentive to the complex nature of their stories and ambitions, contrasting them with insights from interviews with Jordanian academics, aid workers and policymakers. Our study adds nuance to existing humanitarian narratives by drawing attention to the interplay of multigenerational household dynamics, legal and economic constraints in host countries, but also younger and older women�s aspirations, that shape marital decision-making within displaced families.

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“…4 They rarely consider how arrival policies are implemented on the ground or the perspectives of the refugees themselves. Similarly, the impact of collective representations on refugees' own experiences and positionings has remained underrated (for exceptions, see Eghdamian, 2017;Gissi, 2019;Marlowe, 2010). Here, we take the case of France as a starting point for exploring how seemingly contrasting arrival conditions shape refugees' biographies in the medium and long term.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of political and social contexts on refugees’ experiences: A comparison between Southeast Asian refugees arriving in France in the 70s and recent refugee migration

Wilhelm

Bartel

2021

European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology

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The influx of refugees into France since 2015 has been framed as a crisis and marked by a restrictive turn in arrival and asylum policies. By comparison, in the 1970s Southeast Asian refugees fleeing from communist regimes were welcomed warmly in the country. This article compares two in-depth case studies of refugees, analysed using the biographical policy evaluation method, to retrace how the policies and collective representations of these two different historical moments affect the experiences of refugees over time. It shows that policies play a significant role in shaping refugees' experiences in respect of their access to papers, housing, language courses and work, thus impacting, but not determining, their possibilities of reconstructing life in exile. The comparison also raises the question of how personal experiences of arrival, viewed as a rejection or a welcome, influence refugees' life courses.

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‘What Does the Term Refugee Mean to You?’: Perspectives from Syrian Refugee Women in Lebanon

Cited by 6 publications

References 25 publications

‘In Exile, the Woman Became Everything’

‘In Exile, the Woman Became Everything’

Early marriage and displacement�a conversation: how Syrian daughters, mothers and mothers-in-law in Jordan understand marital decision-making

Impacts of political and social contexts on refugees’ experiences: A comparison between Southeast Asian refugees arriving in France in the 70s and recent refugee migration

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