Syrian Families throughout Forced Migration and Transformation of Gender Relations

This research aims at exploring how Syrian families, facing the challenges of forced migration, deal with social repercussions of displacement. In particular, it will focus on how forced migration affects gender roles and gender relations among Syrian families displaced in Lebanon and Germany.

Bourdieu’s theorisation of habitus, capital and field will be at the base of this research. The concept of cultural capital refers to symbolic elements acquired through being part of a particular community or social class. Forced migration obliges people to share those forms of cultural capital with others but also pushes them to create a common sense of identity and a collective position within the society of resettlement. Cultural capital is physically embodied by Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which deeply ingrains habits, skills, and dispositions that people collect due to life experiences. Forced migration brings about the transfer of people’s habitus into different fields – or distinct arenas of practice. In this sense, it is important to understand which habitus and which capital refugees bring to the receiving society, as well as the way they experience a hysteresis when their habitus is not in line with the field in which they exists (Bourdieu 1986).

This study is part of a wider on-going PhD research designed on a qualitatively driven approach and empirical data. My hypothesis is that forced migration has an important role in empowering people, transforming household dynamics, as well as in shaping the idea of home and family (Salih 2013). In this sense, Lebanon and Germany, as countries of destination, have an important role in challenging existing forms of gender relations and family dynamics. Focusing on the country of destination is important to differentiate the nature of agency that refugees are able to assume.