Sisters-in-Waiting: A Case Study of Displaced Syrian Women Fostering New Senses and Memories of Home in Lebanon

Ibtissam Ouaali; Esther Miedema

doi:10.25071/1920-7336.41087

Authors

Ibtissam Ouaali University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2751-7519
Esther Miedema University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5654-0987

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.41087

Keywords:

protracted displacement, agency-in-waiting, multi-sensorial, homemaking, female friendship, Syrian women

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.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biographies

Ibtissam Ouaali, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Ibtissam Ouaali was a Researcher at the University of Amsterdam during the research period of this article. She can be reached at ibtissamouaali@gmail.com.

Esther Miedema, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Esther Miedema is a Lecturer in International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She can be reached at e.a.j.miedema@uva.nl.

References

Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing against culture. In R. G. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present (pp. 137–162). School of American Research Press.

Ahmed, S. (1999). Home and away. Narratives of migration and estrangement, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(3), 329–347. https://doi.org/10.1177/136787799900200303

Ayoub, M. (2017). Gender, social class and exile: The case of Syrian women in Cairo. In J. Freeman, Z. Kivilcim, & N. Ö. Baklacoglu (Eds.), A gendered approach to the Syrian refugee crisis (pp. 77–104). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315529653-6

Bardelli, N. (2022). A hierarchy of refugees: Fixing vulnerability among refugees from Mali in Burkina Faso. Public Anthropologist, 4(2), 135–159. https://doi.org/10.1163/25891715-bja10038

Blunt, A., & Dowling, R. (2022). Home (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429327360

Boccagni, P., & Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (2023). Integration and the struggle to turn space into “our” place: Homemaking as a way beyond the stalemate of assimilationism vs transnationalism. International Migration, 61, 154–167. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12846

Brah, A., & Clini, C. (2017). Open space: Contemporary feminist discourses and practices within and across boundaries: An interview with Avtar Brah. Feminist Review, 117(1), 163–170. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41305-017-0079-2

Bremmer, M., Hermans, C., & Lamers, V. (2021). The charmed dyad: Multimodal music lessons for pupils with severe or multiple disabilities. Research Studies in Music Education, 43(2), 259–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X20974802

Brun, C. (2015). Active waiting and changing hopes: Toward a time perspective on protracted displacement. Social Analysis, 59(1), 19–37. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2015.590102

Brun, C., & Fábos, A. (2015). Making homes In limbo? A conceptual framework. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 31(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40138

Čapo, J. (2015). “Durable solutions,” transnationalism, and homemaking among Croatian and Bosnian former refugees. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 31(1), 19–30. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40139

Dijstelbloem, H. (2023, June 28). Moving the immovable. Climate migration and the multiple tensions between mobility and immobility [Keynote lecture]. STS Italia Conference 2023, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.

Dudley, S. (2011). Feeling at home: Producing and consuming things In Karenni refugee camps on the Thai–Burma border. Population, Space And Place, 17(6), 742–755. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.639

Ebaugh, H. R., & Curry, M. (2000). Fictive kin as social capital in new immigrant communities. Sociological Perspectives, 43(2), 189–209. https://doi.org/10.2307/1389793

Etzold, B., & Fechter, A.-M. (2022). Unsettling protracted displacement: connectivity and mobility beyond “limbo.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(18), 4295–4312. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2090153

Fábos, A. (2015). Microbuses and mobile homemaking in exile: Sudanese visiting strategies in Cairo. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 31(1), 55–66. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40149

Fawaz, M., Gharbieh, A., Harb, M., & Salamé, D. (Eds.). (2018, September). Refugees as city-makers. Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut. https://www.aub.edu.lb/ifi/Documents/publications/research_reports/2018-2019/20180910_refugees_as_city_makers.pdf

Grawert, E., & Mielke, K. (2018). Coping with protracted displacement: How Afghans secure their livelihood in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan [Working paper]. Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC). https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-61301-9

Hart, J., Paszkiewicz, N., & Albadra, D. (2018). Shelter as home? Syrian homemaking in Jordanian refugee camps. Human Organization, 77(4), 371–380. https://doi.org/10.17730/0018-7259.77.4.371

Howes, D. (2019). Multisensory anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 48(1), 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011324

Hyndman, J., & Giles, W. (2011) Waiting for what? The feminization of asylum in protracted situations. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 18(3), 361–337. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2011.566347

Lindqvist, M. (2011). The flower girl: A case study in sense memory. In J. Creet & A. Kitzmann (Eds.), Memory and migration (pp. 183–193). University of Toronto Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt2ttzkd.14

Loescher, G., & Milner, J. (2008). Understanding the problem of protracted refugee situations. In G. Loescher, J. Milner, E. Newman, & G. Troeller (Eds.), Protracted refugee situations: Political, human rights and security implications (pp. 20–42). United Nations University Press. https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/sample-chapters/protracted_refugee_situation_web.pdf

Lokot, M. (2020). “Blood doesn’t become water”? Syrian social relations during displacement. Journal of Refugee Studies, 33(3), 555–576. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey059

Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Polity Press

Massey, D. (2004). Geographies of responsibility. Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 86(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2004.00150.x

Meijering, L., & Bailey, A. (2023). Homemaking and cohousing by postcolonial migrants in later life. In P. Boccagni (Ed.), Handbook on home and migration (pp. 426–437). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800882775.00047

Mendola, D., & Pera, A. (2021). Vulnerability of refugees: Some reflections on definitions and measurement practices. International Migration, 60(5), 108–121. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12942

Miedema, E. (2016). “Let’s move, let’s not remain stagnant”: Nationalism, masculinism, and school-based education in Mozambique. In Z. Millei & R. Imre (Eds.), Childhood and nation: Interdisciplinary engagements (pp.183–206). Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137477835

Miedema, E., & Millei, Z. (2015). “We reaffirm our Mozambican identity in the fight against HIV & AIDS”: Examining educational perspectives on women’s “proper” place in the nation of Mozambique. Global Studies of Childhood, 5(1), 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043610615573375

Mountz, A., & Hyndman, J. (2006). Feminist approaches to the global intimate. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 34(1/2), 446–463. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40004773

Obeid, M. (2010). Friendship, kinship and sociality in a Lebanese town. In A. Desai & E. Killick (Eds.), The ways of friendship: Anthropological perspectives (pp. 93–113). Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781845458508-006

Stevens, M. R. (2016). The collapse of social networks among Syrian refugees in urban Jordan, Contemporary Levant, 1(1), 51–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/20581831.2016.1153358

Tobin, S. A., Momani, F., & Al Yakoub, T. (2022). “The war has divided us more than ever”: Syrian refugee family networks and social capital for mobility through protracted displacement in Jordan. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(18), 4365–4382. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2090157

UNHCR. (2004, June 10). Protracted refugee situations (EC/54/SC/CRP.14). https://www.refworld.org/docid/4a54bc00d.html

UNHCR. (2021). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2020. https://www.unrefugees.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Global-Trends-2020.pdf

van Raemdonck, A. (2023). Syrian refugee men in “double waithood”: Ethnographic perspectives on labour and marriage in Jordan’s border towns. Gender, Place & Culture, 30(5), 692–713. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2023.2178390

Wyatt, J., & Wyatt, T. (2015). (Be)coming home. In D. Chawla, & S. Holman Jones (Eds.), Stories of home: Place, identity, exile (pp. 31–46). Lexington Books.