Asked for Campus Internationalization, Got Women Empowerment: A Case Study from a Border City in Turkey

International students are important actors in the global competition in higher education. Governments adopt a range of strategies to attract students as “desirable migrants”. As Turkey has the largest refugee population in the world, Syrian and Afghan students, play a crucial role in bridging the gap between their communities and the majority society. In this context, the experience of international students is particularly noteworthy in Şanlıurfa, a city located on the Syrian border and currently hosting the third highest number of refugees in Turkey.

This presentation focuses on the role of the International Students' Association of Şanlıurfa Harran University, which has been aligned with the new internationalization strategies of higher education in Turkey. The study thus aims to elucidate the unintended consequences of the student community and to demonstrate the relationship between intercultural spatial interactions and women's empowerment. In order to gain insight into the common but intersectional differentiated experiences of women students from different ethnic and social backgrounds, a micro-level phenomenological research was conducted. This involved five in-depth interviews with community members (local, Syrian, Afghan) and participant observation at events, projects, etc. The study demonstrates how students, particularly those from local communities, gain unexpected benefits from the campus internationalization and also illustrates how they tactically utilize community activities and networks to advance self-realization and empowerment in the face of patriarchal structures and norms in everyday life. The findings show the solidarity between local and migrant students through the shared lived experiences and the spatial and emotional reconstruction of the campus, which creates a relational space to overcome disadvantages and strengthens their critical lens towards fewer opportunities intertwined with gender, class and ethnicity.