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Allwood 06 24/2/10 6 10:31 Page 152 Refugee women and NGOs This chapter begins from the hypothesis that refugee women, politically active in their countries of origin, will be motivated to participate in their country of destination, but that their opportunities to participate may be constrained by institutional/organisational, social and cultural barriers. It highlights refugee women’s agency, countering the perception that they are passive victims, and describes their individual motivation and resources, and their experiences of NGO participation. As
Allwood 03 24/2/10 3 10:28 Page 73 Refugee women in Britain Research that focuses on the lives of refugee women in Britain is recent: one of the first studies of their specific needs and experiences was published in 1996 (Ahmed 1996). Such research is important in identifying and raising awareness of experiences of asylum which may differ from the assumed male norm. Whilst they share the difficulties all asylum seekers face in Britain, women asylum seekers experience additional problems often overlooked by policy-makers (Dumper 2002a: 20). Research on the
Allwood 04 24/2/10 4 10:29 Page 96 Refugee women in France In France, as in other EU states, the spotlight on asylum issues and the country’s diverse refugee communities has increased over the past 15 years. This focus on refugee migration and asylum rights is due to several factors; for example, the expansion in numbers of those seeking asylum in France and the fact that many of them arrive from zones of conflict and disaster (Kosovo, Chechnya, Rwanda, DRC, Iraq and others) where traumatic events and acts of extreme violence impact severely on their basic
This book is about the lives of refugee women in Britain and France. Who are they? Where do they come from? What happens to them when they arrive, while they wait for a decision on their claim for asylum, and after the decision, whether positive or negative? The book shows how laws and processes designed to meet the needs of men fleeing political persecution often fail to protect women from persecution in their home countries and fail to meet their needs during and after the decision-making process. It portrays refugee women as resilient, resourceful and potentially active participants in British and French social, political and cultural life. The book exposes the obstacles that make active participation difficult.
, suggests that the promotion of self-reliance through vocational training and entrepreneurship programmes has become the new neoliberal mantra also among refugee-supporting agencies, policymakers and different humanitarian actors ( Easton-Calabria and Omata, 2018 ; Turner, 2019 ; Richey and Brockington, 2020 ). Yet, little attention has been devoted to exploring how the discourse of entrepreneurship is mobilised for the presumed benefit of refugee women in the realm of humanitarian governance, here
and judgement over the long hours or other commitments involved in undertaking a job. These logistical and social pressures render pursuing work opportunities particularly challenging for women refugees.Unsurprisingly, therefore, research in Jordan prior to the pandemic revealed that Syrian refugee women had a clear preference to home-based work, especially through the digital economy, which they believed may enable them to overcome existing barriers to work ( Hunt et al. , 2017 ). This
study presents data from fieldwork observations of a digital work project developed for Venezuelan refugee women in Brazil, which will help to address these research gaps. Spatial Imaginaries, Refugee Connectivity and the Digital Economy In the wake of the so-called ‘spatial turn’ in media studies, frameworks from human and cultural geography have been widely adopted to explain how mediated spaces are produced at different scales ( Graham, 2015 ). In
experiences that inform a proposition put forward by Mansour-Ille and Starks (in this issue), based on experiences among refugee women in Jordan: that there is an urgent need to adapt existing mechanisms and regulations to be more inclusive for refugees, and refugee women in particular, and do more to clarify the regulations affecting them and the gender-related and other risks that digital livelihoods involve. Digital Labour
attend NGO classes. In 2016, she joined Queens of Syria , a much acclaimed theatre production performed by refugee women in Amman, for a three-week tour to the UK. On stage, the women recited dialogues that drew parallels between the enslavement of Trojan women in Euripides’ famous tragedy and their personal experiences of loss and displacement in Syria. While Marwa’s husband was initially reluctant to let her act, she managed to convince him by pointing out that her
working-class women adopt in exile in Jordan, the article carefully interrogates shifting gender and power dynamics. In doing so it questions the fashionable humanitarian focus on self-reliance and entrepreneurship, as well as youth, but demonstrates how individual and family well-being often relies on rather different parameters. A better understanding among humanitarian actors of what refugee women themselves perceive as valuable lives would be a welcome step in advancing gendered aspirations