Building Bridges for Refugee Empowerment

Ozlem Erden ()
Additional contact information
Ozlem Erden: Indiana University School of Education

Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2017, vol. 18, issue 1, No 13, 249-265

Abstract: Abstract After the Syrian Humanitarian Crisis, the people of Turkey have long-established informal organizations to accommodate refugees. These local agencies often take responsibility as a cultural bridge between the refugee and the host community to establish peaceful relationships between two communities. In this paper, I examined the activities of one such local women’s organization in the Central Anatolia region. The organizational structure of this network of women was critically examined based on the principles of critical feminist theory. The findings showed that this organization challenged the dominant narratives of refugees as victims and helpers as liberators. In contrasts to much of the literature on refugee and migration studies, which avoided questioning the position of helpers, it unveiled some of the unacknowledged benefits accrued by the local women and presents an alternative humanitarian endeavor for improving refugees’ life standards.

Keywords: Syrian refugee crisis; Critical feminist theory; Community organization; Refugee empowerment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12134-016-0476-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joimai:v:18:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s12134-016-0476-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... tudies/journal/12134

DOI: 10.1007/s12134-016-0476-y

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Migration and Integration is currently edited by Lori Wilkinson

More articles in Journal of International Migration and Integration from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().