Kanal Maria, Rottmann Susan B
Institute of Religious Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Özyeğin Üniversitesi, Istanbul, Turkey.
Front Psychol. 2021 Nov 17;12:726729. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.726729. eCollection 2021.
This article proposes an interdisciplinary approach to refugee agency - the capacity to act within structural conditions - using the example of Syrian women rebuilding family and home in Turkey. Our broader objective is to prompt a re-thinking of refugee women's everyday agency for scholars researching migration. The dominant manner of studying agency tends to be centered on refugees' efforts to change their particular situations. Drawing on the latest theoretical propositions of cultural psychology (collective coping and the cultural coping model), we argue that agency can also be observed through examining how refugees rebuild their lives in the face of the many changes and challenges they have experienced. Guided by the cultural coping model, we describe stressors and coping strategies in context. With this approach, we can escape the trap of viewing refugee women in dichotomous ways, either as traumatized victims or as liberated from "traditional patriarchy." A total of 33 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Turkey with Syrian, Arabic-speaking adult women. Interviews aimed to obtain comprehensive narratives on acculturation, daily stressors, coping strategies and everyday experiences of uprootedness. We used constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) to identify significant themes (initial coding) and then code for more conceptual units of meaning (focused coding). The findings are structured around context specific themes: stressors and coping strategies. The study revealed three important types of stressors: family-related, role-related and place-related stressors. Each stressor can only be understood within the cultural context of inter-dependent agency, motherhood and neighborhood belonging, which are highly valued lived experiences of the refugee women. The study also identified three coping strategies: faith-based, home-making and identity building strategies. Our research shows that relying on Islamic understandings, creating the routines of a happy home and forging neighborly ties are important gender and culture specific manifestations of agency. The value of this research is that it provides migration scholars a useful model for designing research with female refugees. By identifying and writing about these specific and contextual forms of agency, researchers can provide better support to refugee women in their daily lives, while also challenging the image of passive "womenandchildren."
本文以在土耳其重建家庭和家园的叙利亚妇女为例，提出了一种跨学科的难民能动性研究方法——即在结构性条件下采取行动的能力。我们更广泛的目标是促使研究移民问题的学者重新思考难民妇女的日常能动性。研究能动性的主流方式往往集中在难民改变自身特定处境的努力上。借鉴文化心理学的最新理论观点（集体应对和文化应对模型），我们认为，通过考察难民如何在经历诸多变化和挑战的情况下重建生活，也能够观察到能动性。在文化应对模型的指导下，我们结合具体情境描述了压力源和应对策略。通过这种方法，我们能够避免以二元对立的方式看待难民妇女，即要么将她们视为受创伤的受害者，要么视为从“传统父权制”中解放出来的人。我们在土耳其对33名讲阿拉伯语的成年叙利亚女性进行了半结构化访谈。访谈旨在获取有关文化适应、日常压力源、应对策略以及背井离乡的日常经历的全面叙述。我们运用建构主义扎根理论（查马兹，2006）来确定重要主题（初始编码），然后对更多概念性意义单元进行编码（聚焦编码）。研究结果围绕特定情境主题展开：压力源和应对策略。该研究揭示了三种重要的压力源类型：与家庭相关的、与角色相关的和与地点相关的压力源。每种压力源只有在相互依存的能动性、母性和邻里归属感的文化背景中才能得到理解，而这些是难民妇女高度珍视的生活体验。该研究还确定了三种应对策略：基于信仰型、营造家庭型和身份构建型策略。我们的研究表明，依靠伊斯兰教义理解方式、营造幸福家庭的日常惯例以及建立邻里关系是能动性在性别和文化方面的重要具体表现。这项研究的价值在于，它为移民学者提供了一个研究女性难民的有用模型。通过识别并阐述这些特定的、与情境相关的能动性形式，研究人员能够在日常生活中更好地为难民妇女提供支持，同时也对被动的“妇女和儿童”形象提出挑战。
