{"title":"Sisters-in-Waiting: A Case Study of Displaced Syrian Women Fostering New Senses and Memories of Home in Lebanon","authors":"Ibtissam Ouaali, E. Miedema","doi":"10.25071/1920-7336.41087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.41087","url":null,"abstract":"Building on variously located Syrian women’s accounts of their day-to-day lives in Lebanon, this article illuminates meaning-making processes in protracted displacement, defined by the UNHCR (2004, p. 1) as a “long-lasting and intractable state of limbo.” We draw on the metaphor of a “constellation of homes” (Brun & Fábos, 2015) to explore various homemaking practices and the interconnected temporal and multi-sensorial dimensions thereof. In so doing, we counter narratives of displaced women as a homogenous collective and problematic assumptions of stasis and passivity associated with protracted displacement. Particular attention is paid to women’s narratives regarding “purposeful work” and, crucially, female friendship, which we argue can be understood as additional nodes in the constellation of homes. We argue that further and different forms of research are required to do justice to the multi-sensorial dimensions of homemaking and the novel concept of “sisters-in-waiting” in the lives of women in protracted displacement.","PeriodicalId":506340,"journal":{"name":"Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees","volume":"35 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139171707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jennifer Komos Hartmann, Trena I. Mukherjee, M. Khadra, Neeraj Kaushal, N. El-Bassel, Anindita Dasgupta
{"title":"Perceived Discrimination and Poverty among Syrian Refugee Women in Jordan","authors":"Jennifer Komos Hartmann, Trena I. Mukherjee, M. Khadra, Neeraj Kaushal, N. El-Bassel, Anindita Dasgupta","doi":"10.25071/1920-7336.41107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.41107","url":null,"abstract":"The Syrian Civil War displaced millions of Syrian women and children, many of whom face economic challenges and discrimination. This paper examines self-reported poverty and its relationship with perceived discrimination among women, as framed by social exclusion theory. The cross-sectional study included 507 Syrian refugee women visiting health clinics outside camps in Jordan. Consistent with our hypothesis, 79.09% of women reported poverty as a serious problem, and women reporting discrimination were found to have higher odds of reporting poverty as a serious problem post-migration (AOR: 3.489; 95% CI: 1.534, 7.937). Gender-responsive interventions, policy implications, and recommendations are addressed.","PeriodicalId":506340,"journal":{"name":"Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees","volume":"84 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139172275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fragmentation of Hope through Tiny Acts of Bureaucratic Cruelty - Another Kind of War on Afghan People Seeking Asylum in Sweden","authors":"Torun Elsrud","doi":"10.25071/1920-7336.41064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.41064","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the micro-powers of Swedish “cruel” and “non-cruel” bureaucrats using various logics of control, “tiny acts” enacted with pens, computers, and imposed assignments to condition asylum-seeking peoples’ lives and fragment their hope. Based on interviews with asylum-seeking Afghans and observations of their meetings with authorities, I argue that the bureaucratic treatment of Afghans in Sweden is a form of state-sanctioned racist violence and “departheid” executed to exclude discredited people from the welfare state. The article draws attention to a rapid downhill slide regarding asylum rights in Sweden since 2015 and the harm caused to asylum-seeking people.","PeriodicalId":506340,"journal":{"name":"Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees","volume":"18 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139172708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“The Best Risky Point”: Agency and Decision-Making in Young Unaccompanied Asylum Seekers' Stories of Leaving Home and Travelling to Australia","authors":"Tori Stratford, Amy Nethery, Fethi Mansouri","doi":"10.25071/1920-7336.41065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.41065","url":null,"abstract":"Seeking asylum is a perilous endeavour with unpredictable border crossings, protection prospects, and settlement outcomes. Young unaccompanied asylum seekers face even greater risks. Yet exclusively characterizing them as vulnerable or passive ignores their agency in making choices in a range of unique, dynamic, and challenging circumstances. In this article, we use deep ethnographic methodology to amplify young asylum seekers’ voices, examining their capacity to enact agency along the asylum journey. We employ Bourdieu’s non-doxic contexts and Jackson’s “border situations” to describe the unstable environments young people navigate at home and during their journey to Australia. Our findings reveal a nuanced picture of young people both as objects of other people’s decisions (with reduced agency) and as highly engaged in dynamic decision-making during their journey to Australia (with more salient agency). These findings indicate the importance of research methods that steer away from fixed assumptions around vulnerability and victimhood to recognize the agentic capacity of young people to make life-defining decisions even as they find themselves in transnational border situations that seek to control and constrain them.","PeriodicalId":506340,"journal":{"name":"Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees","volume":"37 18","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139239963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}