Project summary
The project examines how Muslim marriage practices assist Syrian and Iraqi refugee women in negotiating their ‘politics of belonging’ (Yuval-Davis) through shaping social relations, challenging religious boundaries and facilitating community belonging and integration within their new diaspora in Jordan.
Project details
Location: Jordan
Year(s): 2019
Project director(s): Yafa Shanneik (University of Birmingham)
Lead institutions and funding:
- CBRL
Project description
The project examines how Muslim marriage practices assist Syrian and Iraqi refugee women in negotiating their ‘politics of belonging’ (Yuval-Davis) through shaping social relations, challenging religious boundaries and facilitating community belonging and integration within their new diaspora in Jordan.
In summer 2018 I conducted 42 interviews with various Syrian and Iraqi refugee women living in both urban and rural areas in Jordan. In addition to this ethnographic fieldwork I collaborated with visual artist Rachel Gadsden to run workshops that used a ‘body mapping’ technique to provide women with other ways of communicating their experiences, views and feelings through art. My research in Jordan has shown that refugee women are provided with easier access to work, in contrast to men: international NGOs, in particular, have prioritised the employment of women with the aim of empowering women within their family structures which these NGOs perceive as inherently patriarchal. These work opportunities facilitate women’s access to and active engagement within the public sphere. It also facilitates their economic empowerment, impacting therefore on the nature of their patriarchal family structures and understanding of gender roles.
Following on from the CBRL Pilot Award I was successful in securing a British Academy Global Challenges Research Fund to continue this project.
Project bibliography
Shanneik, Yafa. 2020. Muslim marriages, multiple identities: Syrian and Iraqi refugee women in Jordan Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant 2018-2019, p 19.
Published:26 November 2021
