Marriage for Refuge? Syrian Refugee Womens Resettlement Experiences in Egypt

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dc.contributor.advisorKyriakides, Christopher
dc.contributor.authorTaha, Dina
dc.date.accessioned2022-03-03T14:01:18Z
dc.date.available2022-03-03T14:01:18Z
dc.date.copyright2021-10
dc.date.issued2022-03-03
dc.date.updated2022-03-03T14:01:18Z
dc.degree.disciplineSociology
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractWomen navigating forced displacement are often confronted by gendered norms and expectations. The practices that they initiate in response remain under-explored. For Syrian women who settled in Egypt during the 'Syrian refugee crisis,' one such practice is marriage to Egyptian men. Many such marriages have been unregistered or polygamous and have been criticized by some feminist advocacy groups and media platforms as exploitative. By focusing on this case study, I aim to transcend interpretations that situate such marriages within the domains of sexual and gender-based violence and child and forced marriage. I instead ask: How might marriage be a strategy for resettlement? And how might it further our understanding of refugee womens decisions, experiences, and subjectivities? In the summer of 2017, I conducted forty in-depth interviews in two major Egyptian cities, Cairo and Alexandria, with Muslim Syrian refugee women, their husbands and family members who took part in these marriage arrangements, a practice which I refer to as 'marriage for refuge.' Using a decolonizing intersectional theoretical framework, I argue that by seeking marriage, these women are not simply complying with socially ascribed gender roles. Instead, they are making a calculated decision to forge their own resettlement trajectories. I found that, despite elements of victimization stemming from displacement and patriarchy, intersectional factors including gender, ethnicity, and displacement were resources that some respondents leveraged to enhance their autonomy and to challenge norms. The narratives underscore how displacement and marriage are connected, in that exile has led to the reconstruction of the meaning and purpose of marriage. In turn, marriage has come to be perceived as a means to overcome the precarity of displacement. To explain this, I attend to social conceptions such as sanad (social capital or support) and sutra (protection or sheltering) and social practices such as polygamy and customary marriage. I position marriage for refuge as a phenomenon that expands understandings of intersectional, gendered and Othered refugee experiences. In so doing, I highlight two decolonizing analytical strategies: rejecting binaries (e.g., agent/victim) and decoupling associations (e.g., agency=resistance), and draw attention to concepts such as moral agency, creative leveraging, and social capital.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/39084
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectGender studies
dc.subject.keywordsForced migration
dc.subject.keywordsGender
dc.subject.keywordsCritical feminist theory
dc.subject.keywordsMiddle East
dc.subject.keywordsDecolonizing
dc.subject.keywordsMuslim societies
dc.subject.keywordsMarriage
dc.subject.keywordsQualitative methods
dc.subject.keywordsIslam
dc.subject.keywordsRefugees
dc.subject.keywordsSyria
dc.subject.keywordsEgypt
dc.subject.keywordsArab
dc.subject.keywordsSociology of family
dc.subject.keywordsCritical reflexivity
dc.subject.keywordsOrientalism
dc.subject.keywordsResettlement
dc.subject.keywordsWomen studies
dc.subject.keywordsDisplacement
dc.subject.keywordsPatriarchy
dc.subject.keywordsPolygamy
dc.subject.keywordsUrfi
dc.subject.keywordsAgency
dc.subject.keywordsMoral agency
dc.subject.keywordsEmpowerment
dc.subject.keywordsHumanitarianism
dc.titleMarriage for Refuge? Syrian Refugee Womens Resettlement Experiences in Egypt
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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