Agency and Intersectional Identities of Syrian Refugee Women: Refugee, Women, Widow and Religious

By using interviews of twelve Syrian female refugees who became widows during the civil war in Syria, this paper examines how the intersectionality of widowed Syrian women refugees’ gender and class identities along with their religio-politic standing shape their expectations for their current life in Turkey. The paper scrutinizes the complexity of refugee identities, their multiple experiences and perceptions about the conflict and ordeals of being a refugee. The analysis suggests that being situated as widows in a foreign country along with their religious, gender and class identities affect their everyday agency while it reshapes their understanding of Syrian politics in the future. Findings also help to understand transborder re-making of the social interactions; that is, how, physically displaced yet emotionally embedded Syrian refugees in Turkey, who are at the intersections of gender and religion, are now facing the challenges of reproducing the social structure, caused by the tensions between the home and the host.