Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IMEX (Images in Exile:Gender and representations among Syrian Kurdish women in Norway)

Teaser

The project Images in Exile (IMEX) addresses current political and religious representations of Kurdish women, and how these are negotiated in exile. It highlights the relationship between media representation and reality, and between host country, refugee, and country of...

Summary

The project Images in Exile (IMEX) addresses current political and religious representations of Kurdish women, and how these are negotiated in exile. It highlights the relationship between media representation and reality, and between host country, refugee, and country of origin. IMEX’s main objective is to understand how women play an active role in (re)shaping and (re)negotiating their subject position while building up a new life elsewhere. From this perspective, the project will give 1.) a more balanced view on political and religious networks and participation of women who live through a difficult period of turmoil and transition. It will thus also shed light on the ways in which people redefine their subject positions and build up a new life elsewhere after having lived through conflict and disaster1. 2.) the project offers new insights into how these experiences are gendered. What are the opportunities and limitations that women experience because of being women? How are women ‘doing gender’2 when they build up life in a new society? By studying integration and participation of marginalized women, IMEX directly responds to an important policy priority of the H2020 work programme, and targets a better gender and equality balance in academic research topics.
The understanding of Middle Eastern women’s escape, arrival and integration in European societies can contribute to policies that are better connecting to women’s needs, skills and qualifications. The women under study have much potential in contributing to European societies, but often lack access to work and higher education. Stereotyping and discrimination of Middle Eastern and Muslim women has led to decreased opportunities for this group. It is highly important for European societies to break such stereotypes and focus on the potentials these women have. Their and their families better inclusion in European societies will increase equality and mutual understanding.

Work performed

The researcher has conducted in-depth interviews with 20 Syrian Kurdish women, and one focus-group interview with fifteen women, who currently live in Norway and Sweden. She visited the women several or many times in their homes and, next to the interviews, also had many casual conversations with each of them. Additionally, she did participant observation by spending time with individual and groups of women, and by attending celebrations, home gatherings, concerts, political meetings, and demonstrations. The research was carried out between June 2017 and January 2019.
For the visual aspects of this study, the researcher collaborated with photojournalist Iffit Qureshi to examine women’s self-presentations. Qureshi portrayed Kurdish women’s lives in and around Oslo by attending gatherings and demonstrations, and by talking with the women about the ways they wanted to be photographed. This resulted in a unique image about Syrian Kurdish women’s life in exile.

The research was very successful and sheds light on many different aspects of the life experiences of the women under study:
1. The women gave much information about their personal and family histories. This makes it possible to understand their current narratives and life situations as part of that larger history. This led to an understanding of women’s lives, their experiences with war and persecution, and their migration to Europe, in the context of a longer history of marginalization of Kurds and women in Syria. One of IMEX’s main contributions is this long-term perspective in which the current situation of new migrants is not studied in isolation, but in connection to their life, family and community histories.
2. IMEX gives a new understanding of how women in conflict situations relate to the conflict, also if they are not actively involved themselves. Their perspective sheds light on how ‘ordinary’ people in a conflict region relate to that conflict on a day-to-day basis.
3. Since the beginning of the Syrian war, and especially after the emergence of the conflict with ISIS, Kurdish women came in the media spotlights because of their involvement in the conflict as guerrilla fighters. One of the objectives of this project was to better understand how Kurdish women feel about the depiction of Kurdish women in the media. It turned out that the majority of the women were on the one hand showing support for (female) guerrilla fighters, but were also highly critical about their recruitment and involvement in armed struggle.
4. IMEX contributes to a better understanding of the reasons for women to leave the country in situations of violence and conflict. An important conclusion is that women have gendered reasons to leave, which means that their motivations are often related to the fact that they are women. Women’s decisions for escape are complex and multiple, and women often had a certain level of agency and decision power about leaving the country.
5. IMEX also sheds light on the refugee journey women undertook before they arrived in Scandinavia. Although women did often leave together with men, there were also women who made the journey by themselves. Traveling as a woman, and traveling alone, has special challenges that women face. Women showed a variety of strategies to deal with these challenges.
6. The project looks into women’s relationship to place and mobility. It shows that women’s migration should be understood within a longer history of mobility before and during the war.
As a whole, IMEX contributes to new understanding about Syrian Kurdish life experiences, a topic that has been highly understudied.

Final results

The output of this project is academic articles on the mentioned topics, a book about this research which is under preparation in collaboration with photojournalist Iffit Qureshi whose photographs will form part of the publication and with Besime Sen, professor of Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul who contributes with unique research about Syrian Kurdish women’s lives in Istanbul. The photographs will also be shown in an exhibition about this project, planned to organize in 2020.
IMEX offers an innovative and unique perspective on Kurdish women’s lives in times of conflict and violence, but also on their longer personal and family histories. IMEX is of considerable potential benefit to society because of its focus on long-term effects of structural marginalization, violence and displacement. It can lead to more informed decision making in the area of integration and education of newcomers. It also brings to light social and historical realities of a highly understudied and marginalized group, Syrian Kurds and therewith contributes to reduced global inequalities in knowledge production. The community under study will benefit from a general increase in knowledge production in and about their society.
IMEX has used both narrative and visual methods in order to better understand the experiences of women who come from a marginalized community in Syria and whose voices have usually been neglected. By placing special emphasis on the importance of women’s own representation, IMEX has moved beyond the stereotypical framing of Middle Eastern women as victims of violence. IMEX also moves beyond the simplistic media depiction of the Kurdish female fighter, which does not show any awareness of, or interest in, these women’s longer histories of marginalization and resistance.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.stk.uio.no/english/research/projects/images-in-exile/index.html.