Deconstructing Refugee Women's Empowerment

A Comparative Approach to British and French Aid Structures
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-61553-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)

Buch, Englisch, 210 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 476 g

Reihe: Studies in Migration and Diaspora

This book explores how self-identified feminist or women’s organizations in the asylum and charity sectors in the United Kingdom and France attach meanings to and address refugee women’s empowerment in their operations and how these perpetuate or disrupt global hierarchies.

Adopting a feminist, intersectional, and post-colonial approach, this book provides a nuanced assessment on how refugee assistance might move beyond the dominant “vulnerability versus empowerment” dichotomy. Acknowledging how some of the current practices still impose vulnerability on women, it aims to contribute to the newly established literature exploring how refugeehood and asylum-seeking are not necessarily disempowering for fleeing women, as they can provide new opportunities for negotiating gender norms, supporting women to practice agency. Building on rich empirical work conducted via semistructured interviews with refugee women and aid professionals, and participant observation in refugee communities, the book scrutinises how refugee women’s empowerment is embedded in the histories of colonialism, biopolitics, racism, and patriarchy, which legitimises the boundaries between the West and the rest, and it sheds light on the new strategies created by communities to move beyond these hierarchies, acknowledging women as autonomous actors who do not need to rely on aid structures.

Students and scholars of migration and refugee studies, feminist international relations, gender studies, postcolonial studies, alongside humanitarian practitioners, policy-makers, and advocates that operate at various levels, will find this interdisciplinary book useful for understanding the realities of refugee women and professional workers in aid structures.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kilicoglu, Zeynep

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1: Introduction: Which women refugees deserve to be empowered? Chapter 2: Vulnerability versus empowerment: Theoretical framework and methodology Chapter 3: “Just pass us the mic”: Deconstructing perceptions of refugee women’s empowerment by aid organizations in the United Kingdom Chapter 4: “We are professionals”: Deconstructing perceptions of refugee women’s empowerment by aid organizations in France Chapter 5: Politics matter: Comparison between British and French aid structures Chapter 6: Conclusion: Calling for a two-way empowerment. Index

Über Autor(innen)

Zeynep Kilicoglu is an LSE Fellow in Gender and International Politics in the Gender Studies Department at London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. She does feminist research on migration and forced displacement.