This section explores ideas of belonging, spatiality and social ties, by emphasising gendered networks and relationships in refugees’ host communities, highlighting the relationship between seclusion and mobility with respect to social relationships and a sense of belonging. Whilst urban refugees are coping with social, legal and economic exclusion, they can unintentionally further exclude themselves from their host society through their coping techniques, such as relying on refugee organisations or family and kinship networks (Grabska 2006). This can lead to strained host relationships and thus a compromised sense of security. Intra-social links amongst refugee communities enhancing refugees’ sense of protection and social capital (Calhoun, 2010) and wider social capital with both host and refugee communities, can lead to employment opportunities, housing and advice and a wider sense of integration (Palmgren, 2014). However, these relationships are often difficult to foster. Steven’s (2016) has explored the languishing network of social ties amongst Syrians in exile. He especially highlighted the financial and emotional strains of being a refugee, alongside a failure of NGOs to foster pre-existing networks. This section builds on his contributions with an emphasis on gendered networks, mobilities and space in urban areas.
Social visits form an integral part of the social life of women in the Middle East. Women are typically engaged in daily visits to friends, relatives and neighbours and build strong inter and intra family social networks through these visits (Singerman, 1996). Participants shared varied experiences in their reflections on family, neighbours and general sociability and connected-ness in their host communities. For some participants, relationships and social calls to neighbours were an important part of feeling that they belonged or had support in the wider community, whilst others expressed difficulty in building networks and experienced a sense of isolation from both Syrian refugee communities and their host society.
In both Beirut and Amman, refugee women’s forming of new relationships was determined by gender and proximity. This appeared to have greater weight than shared ethnicity or heritage. Participants described friendships and social bonds with Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, Kurdish or Armenian women, most of whom were their direct neighbours. This lessened the time that women spent on the street travelling, and this proximity allowed for friendships and connections to build
180 slowly and naturally over time:
‘[Building relationships] is just a matter of distance…because of the distance I have gotten more close to my neighbours, so I go to them more then I go to visit my Syrian
neighbours’ (Mouna, Hashmi Shamali).
Thus, some participants had successfully managed to build relationships within their host communities which had enhanced their social lives, their mobility within and outside of the apartment buildings and sense of security and belonging. Basmaa, an expressive participant who lived in Ashrafyeh, went further. Rather than merely discussing a handful of friendships with women in proximity she countered:
‘I don't only feel that I belong to the community, I feel like I have become the community.
When I first got here, I was afraid of everything…. but I quickly managed to mingle and be a part of the society’ (Basmaa, Ashrafyeh).
However, her account was unique. Others felt disconnected and alienated from the host community and didn’t consider themselves to be deeply entrenched within it. For example, reflecting on her life in Aleppo, Zulima said she felt a ‘marked difference’ in how her daily life had transformed especially since the family had just celebrated Eid. In Aleppo, she had: ‘a very different social life’, where she would spend time with friends and family. Since living in Beirut, she rarely left the house, as she had no family living in Lebanon and therefore no one to visit, although she had slowly started to build connections with her two neighbours. She had been living in Na’ba, for over a year and was taken aback when I asked about where she spent her leisure time and if she was building relationships in her host neighbourhood, saying in response:
‘This is a strange country. I can’t spend time at a stranger’s house’.
Many participants acknowledged the high proportion of Syrians living in their neighbourhoods but insisted that this had no influence in creating a greater sense of feeling connected, safe or belonging to the community. Rather, it was only family connections that appeared to count in feeling secure and to aid a wider sense of comfort and belonging. In Beirut, only one participant and her husband expressed feeling as though they belonged to a ‘Syrian community’. Zada and her husband recounted experiences of conflict and difficulties in the neighbourhood and concluded that they were reticent to socialise and build relationships with local Lebanese.
181 neighbourhood but didn’t know them and wouldn’t approach them unless they had known them previously. He explained that ‘Syria is a big place’ and intimated that, just because they lived amongst other Syrian refugees wouldn’t necessarily mean they would approach them to ask advice about the neighbourhood or work. Alyas echoed these sentiments, stating that she thought her neighbourhood consisted of ‘75% Syrians’, but that this made no difference to how she felt or to the connections she had built.
Even if women were restricted in their outdoor activities, visiting family was considered an important and essential aspect of daily life. Maintaining these networks was imperative, and reliance on them was strong. However, these also served to further isolate refugees from their host communities (Grabska, 2006). Strong family networks lessened incentives to connect with neighbours or to accustom themselves to their neighbourhoods and the wider city. The sense of family ties and community provided an aspect of belonging and safety, and to a certain extent addressed issues of isolation. Some participants explained that they ‘didn’t need’ to get to know neighbours because they had family, and that they wouldn’t reach out to them if they needed help or assistance but would rather rely on their family network:
‘I try to keep limited relationships with other people…I struggle to find common points with
them…and also, I don’t have to go to them for help…my husband’s entire family live next to us. So, we have family support. I don’t really need to [make contact with neighbours]’ (Rania, Hashmi Shamali).
‘I’ve got lots of relatives here, so I don’t need to talk to the neighbours’ (Keila, Mahata).
These excerpts intimate a conscious decision to remain apart from the wider community in which refugee families are living and to avoid building stronger social networks. This decision to remain inward-looking and disengaged from wider community is reflective of research that has shown the tendency for refugees to maintain anonymity in their host community, out of fear of arrest and deportation (Jacobsen & Nichols, 2011; Stevens, 2016). For some participants, it was clear that decisions to remain apart from others were in order to minimise potential points of friction, which could create conflict within host communities. In situations of conflict, as examined in further detail in Chapter Eight, refugees frequently expressed that they felt that there was a consistent, underlying power imbalance weighted towards the host community. Therefore, decisions to remain distant from others were clearly a mechanism of protection. Furthermore, women explained how gossip and
182 backstabbing in the community affected their ability to integrate with their neighbours. Ishtar discussed how she would avoid engaging in gossip and conversation within the wider community and would be pressed on this by other women:
‘I say to them: “I didn’t come here for trouble. I’m here to live.” I don’t take sides with anyone…Whenever you have been in war, nothing else will really matter. [Petty neighbourly issues] are not real problems [they are not] worth it’ (Ishtar, Ashrafyeh).
Her experience of a ‘gossipy’ community that attempted to drum up drama and conflict in order to pass the time was echoed in Wajida’s experiences in Beirut. She talked of her conscious decision to avoid close relationships as she felt that other women in the community criticised each other:
‘I know people [in the community] …but I don’t deal with them…there is a lot of gossip amongst the neighbours. I try to avoid it by not talking with anyone…I pulled myself away [from relationships]’ (Wajida, Na’ba).
Wajida, like others in the community, found that her marital status could result in gossip and isolation. She was a divorcee but explained that she frequently described herself as a ‘widow’ because of the stigma surrounding her divorced status and the repercussions she experienced (for example, public ridicule directed towards her sons). Shayma, a single mother living in Amman whose husband had abandoned her when she was in Syria, found it impossible to create a support network:
‘[Other women] worry abouttheir husbands…they alienate me because I am single and I don’t have a husband…Arabs are like that’ (Shayma, Ashrafyeh).
She found that she frequently had ‘no one to talk to’, whilst shouldering the significant care burden of both her children and elderly parents. These comments provide some insight into a reticence, and on occasion, an inability to engage with both host communities and the wider Syrian community in exile. These accounts echo findings from Cornwall’s (2007) research with Yoruba women in Nigeria. She found that in contrast to feminist academic expectations of networked and supportive women in socio-economically deprived conditions, women were often wary about engaging with each other.
183 Additionally, urban refugees can exclude themselves from their host populations in order to gain specific rights – notably those of citizenship, return to their home country or resettlement in a third country (Sanyal, 2012, p. 638). Whilst refugee women did not express a desire to gain citizenship in their host countries, many referenced a desire to be resettled or to return home. As such, these matters may also be at play when refugee women keep themselves apart from their host communities, particularly as Syrian refugees will be deeply aware of Palestinian political history, which is heavily imbued with a ‘right to return’. Furthermore, the governments of Lebanon and Jordan17 are also preoccupied with ensuring that Syrian refugees are not integrated into their states in the long term, so this sense of not belonging, of temporariness, in the everyday, is also shaped by wider structural mechanisms (as explored in Chapter Six) to ensure refugees don’t gain a sense of being settled.
17In the case of Jordan, since 2016 there has been a slight shift to a greater acceptance of the potentiality of a longer-term Syrian population living in Jordan. However, women would still have been shaped by their experiences within the country.
184 Despite some women expressing satisfaction, safety and a preference to be in the seclusion of home, spatial confinement also appeared to have a highly detrimental effect on women’s mental health. Participants had already been subject to traumatic experiences both within and during their flight from Syria. Several participants had come close to death themselves, been threatened with or experienced sexual violence, lost close family members, were injured or had lost children in utero. The civil war resulted in many participants being forced to remain indoors for fear of sniper attacks or bombings. Some participants had lived in Homs or Aleppo under severe bombardment, in Daesh
controlled areas under the organization’s declared caliphate. Others lived in more rural areas where they had not necessarily had direct confrontation with the conflict but had witnessed bombing from afar and encountered numerous blockades and security checks. Some participants had been internally displaced within Syria, camped in the desert on the border with Jordan, or had being smuggled into Lebanon. Additionally, women were often separated from family and kinship links that had played a strong role in their sense of community, identity and safety. These experiences had a clear mental toll. Women frequently discussed their heightened preoccupation with fears and concerns related to family members living back in Syria, or those that had attempted to make the journey to Europe, and the recollection of traumatic memories from the war.
Confinement to home, or to their immediate neighbourhood, for a prolonged period during the war had a strong effect on women’s perspectives of life outside the home. The urban outdoors was heavily associated with fear and death. Participants, particularly those living in Amman, spoke of how this fear had permeated their day to day reality to such an extent that they found it difficult to unsettle even when they were conscious that they had found safety in their host communities. Women compared their sense of stability and aman (security) within their host communities to the ‘insecurity’ of Syria. Thus, even though many were uncomfortable in their host settings and described a range of insecurities, in comparison to their experiences in Syria, their new settings were an improvement. Nailah, whose family escaped Homs in 2012, during the Homs Offensive, reflected on her personally- imposed restrictions in Amman:
‘When I first got here, I was terrified. Because of the situation in Syria we couldn't leave the
house. It was absolutely terrifying… you would actually die. So, I kind of took that fear with me when I came here. I stayed an entire year in the house. I didn't feel safe to go out’ (Nailah,
Hashmi Shamali).
Mahira and her family were living in the region of Deir ez-Zour, a site of numerous clashes between the Syrian regime, the Free Syrian Army and Daesh.Brown’s (2018) analysis of women’s status under
185
Daeshrule shows an intensely patriarchal fixation on controlling women’s presence and appearance in public space and ensuring that women’s existence is predominantly cloistered. Experiences of
Daeshhad notably shaped Mahira’s perceptions of space and safety and left her reticent to leave the perceived protection of her home:
‘[In Beirut ] I don’t go out…even with my husband I don’t go…. Because [our area in Syria] was controlled by Daesh, as women we wouldn’t go out’ (Mahira, Mazra’a).
Keila also commented on how her public mobility changed during the conflict and continued to influence her mobility in her host city:
‘In Syria, before the war, I would visit [my family] by myself [in rural Homs]...But during the
war, I wouldn’t. So now it’s a changed habit’ (Keila, Hashmi Shamali).
This wider sense of fear and seclusion related to their experiences during the civil war was supplemented with negative encounters within their host communities, confinement to their homes because of fear and discomfort, lack of financial opportunities or by their extended family’s wishes (see more below). For many women, this resulted in isolated and disconnected lives. Participants talked of how they were gharib (strangers or outsiders) to the community, but also to themselves:
‘I don't go anywhere; I don't deal with anyone…I have a really strange life. I am a stranger
everywhere. In my house, in my community, because I don’t go out. I don’t do anything; I just stay in the house. I don’t meet people...I am just surviving, livingday by day’ (Badra, Hashmi
Shamali).
‘[Day to day life] does feel weird…it’s like being in a prison. A big prison’(Takiya, Na’ba).
Diary entries from participants in Jordan were particularly articulate in expressing some of this isolation and depression:
Days passing by, every day like the one before it, nothing new. Loneliness, living in this place
as strangers, we’re still strangers, we try to cope with this new society, hard living conditions, how are we to provide for our families, the rent to our house, how do we live in dignity without being hurt by anyone else? Or without being disrespected? (Hanan, Diary excerpt, Amman).
Even for those participants that had made efforts to connect themselves to the social fabric of their host community, there was a sense that they were outsiders. Despite living in the country for years, women felt that they didn’t belong and were not fully accepted. Thus, they were cautious in how they
186 behaved or expressed themselves:
‘My neighbourhood is very nice, and my neighbours are very nice. But I still feel that I can’t express my opinion…because I feel like a gharib[stranger] and I don’t have a right to say
anything. They view us as strangers’ (FGD 4, Ashrafyeh).
This perspective of being gharib, an outsider, foreigner or stranger, was often used by participants to describe their emotions within their host communities and their difficulties in feeling that they belonged or had rights and highlighted their societal isolation, boredom and depression. This last comment from the focus group in Amman demonstrate that these feelings are expressed not only amongst women who lived highly secluded lives, but also amongst those that had made efforts to build relationships. These expressions of living in a prison and being a stranger even in one’s home show the ways in which private dwelling spaces are not necessary a space of comfort, or security for women. Indeed, many women talked of how compromised living spaces had enhanced feelings of suffocation and isolation. Thus, for many women these spaces are not considered to be bayt (i.e. home), with its associations of comfort and belonging.
Additionally, it was also clear that regardless of the length of time they had been living in their host communities, there was still a strong yearning amongst participants to return to Syria, not unlike the sentiments shared by many displaced refugee communities (Brun & Fabos, 2015). Some discussed returning regardless of whether peace had been achieved and many talked at length about their concerns about family and their desire to be reunited with them despite concerns of safety. This desire to be home, with extended family, in places of familiarity, couples with refugee status that deems refugee’s ‘guests’ and makes little attempt to integrate or support them with a longer-term view:
‘I’m adapting…. kind of. I do feel comfortable here, but at the same time not fully comfortable, because comfort is in bayti[my home], in Syria. So, let’s say I am [managing] until I can move back’ (Shahar, Na’ba).
Women’s social relationships and networks in their host cities (and their wider mobility concerning this) are determined by a network of interconnected structural issues and personal experiences which interact with participants identities. Networks of family relationships predominantly lead to a stronger sense of belonging and stability within host cities. However, these networks also shaped decisions