Refuge, Riskscape or Both: Reflections on the Relations of Care and Gendered Experiences in Spaces of Forced Migration

While migration is inherently both spatial and social, forced migration is spatial and social with added vulnerabilities, hazards and risks. Yet, the nature of risks, hazards and vulnerabilities at a space are not given, but are constructed and experienced differently by gendered subjects depending on what the nature of space is, how temporal the space is and where the relations of care are located. As the concept of riskscape (Müller-Mahn et al., 2018) denotes, spaces of risk exist in relation to practice. Hence, the concept of riskscapes encompasses both sites of risks and their social construction, and helps understanding the links between practices and meanings formed by social relationships. The concept of riskscape, as formulated by Müller-Mahn et al. (2018), has six components: Temporalities, subjectivities and social groups, spatiality, plurality, power relations, and practice. By drawing on this concept, the proposed paper incorporates gender and relations of care as the key factors explaining the tension between perceived and politically constructed riskscapes. The proposed paper is based on a study on eight women at different stages of the life course experiencing forced migration due to the conflicts in the Middle East and temporarily staying in Turkey. The paper first introduces the historical backgrounds and types of forced migrations experienced by those women. Secondly, the paper presents spaces of risks and safety as constructed by the international and national laws, and introduces the meaning of and practices relating to the so-called/constructed risk spaces and safe spaces for them, and discusses whether a safe space is a space of safety, risk of both for forced migrant women. The paper concludes that the social construction of a space for women is through their relations of care. Hence a politically constructed risk space can be a safescape as well as riskscape,for women or vice versa.