“We are women and men now”: Intimate spaces and coping labour for Syrian women refugees in Jordan

War affects women from the bedroom to the battlefield, but for most women war is experienced within intimate spaces. Intimate spaces are rarely the focus of mainstream academic research or media reporting; thus women\u27s experiences with war and displacement are often concealed. Building from literature in feminist geopolitics that helps focus our attention toward everyday and intimate geopolitics, I conducted in‐depth interviews with Syrian women refugees in Jordan in order to examine how they are coping. Of the many ways that they\u27ve learned to cope, these women asserted that earning an income and adjusting to altered gender performances and relations have been both dire and formative. Many Syrian women refugees have become income providers for the first time in their lives. Some women have become their families’ sole providers, and other women are now heads of households as well. Bringing literature from feminist geography, transnational and migration studies, and critical home studies together with feminist geopolitics, I offer the ideas of coping and coping labour as a framework to examine the intimate spaces of displacement. I highlight that paid work is understudied within feminist geopolitics, but such a focus renders important insights into how gender shapes experiences of displacement and how displacement is reshaping gendered relations. In this paper, I show that in the intimate spaces of displacement women have taken on traditionally masculine practices, but while their gendered performances shift, they are simultaneously entrenched as the ideals of appropriate feminine and masculine performances are recreated. Though these multiple gendered performances are creating numerous demands and challenges for Syrian women refugees, these women are also experiencing an increased sense of strength, confidence and respect as a result of their shifting performances

Creative learning conversations: producing living dialogic spaces

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleBackground ‘Creative learning conversations’, are methodological devices developed in two co-participative qualitative research projects exploring creativity and educational futures at the University of Exeter in England. Sources of evidence Framed by Critical Theory, the projects, one on dance education partnership, the other on student voice and transformation, sought to open space between creativity and performativity to initiate emancipatory educational change. This was undertaken over the course of five years in English primary and secondary schools, prioritising humanising, wise creativity (Chappell, 2008; Craft, 2008). Purpose This paper re-analyses data and methodological processes to characterise and theorise creative learning conversations in terms of social spatiality and dialogue. The characteristics are: partiality, emancipation, working from the ‘bottom up’, participation, debate and difference, openness to action, and embodied and verbalised idea exchange. Main argument This re-analysis theoretically adapts Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model to situate layered engagement. Utilising Lefebvre’s (1991) conceptualisation of Lived space and Bakhtin’s (1984) work on open-ended dialogue, the paper theorises creative learning conversations as producing living dialogic spaces. Conclusions Creative learning conversations are a way of contributing to change which moves us towards an education future fit for the twenty-first century. From a living dialogic space perspective a creative learning conversation is the ongoing process without forced closure of those in the roles of University academic, teachers, artists, students co-participatively researching and developing knowledge of their ‘lived space’ together. Given traditional lethargy in the educational system as a whole commitment to changing education for better futures demands active involvement in living dialogic space, where our humanity both emerges from and guides our shared learning

Producing Victim Identities: Female Genital Cutting and the Politics of Asylum Claims in the United Kingdom

Drawing on research with Gambian female asylum seekers in London, who are claiming asylum on the basis of the threat of forced female genital mutilation, this article examines their narratives of self-production in the asylum claims process. Refuting representations of asylum seekers as victims of such a process we argue that they must be seen as partly complicit in the production of a victim identity, as they assume the identity of victim to verify and strengthen their narratives. By focusing on the production of victim identities, we seek to problematise Western liberal notions of agency. We argue that recognition of a claim entails the representation of the claimant as victim of a 'backward' practice and patriarchal society, thereby feeding into Western feminist accounts of oppressed 'third world' women. It is within these 'historically specific relations of subordination' that female asylum seekers exercise their agency. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Women, asylum and resistance: A feminist narrative approach to making sense of stories

In this chapter, I draw on an ESRC funded research that I conducted with women seeking asylum in the UK. Taking a narrative approach and drawing on feminist perspectives I examine the dominant narratives that influence particular stories told about people seeking asylum and I look at some of the ways women draw on broader narratives to construct their own stories. Inspired by the stories of the women in this study and drawing on nuanced concepts of ‘resistance’, this chapter offers a narrative framework of resistance for better making sense of the different stories of women seeking asylum. I suggest that adopting a feminist narrative approach can allow us to make sense of how and why women might tell their stories in relation to particular dominant narratives. Central to this chapter is the assertion that that feminist narrative approaches to research should not merely listen to women’s stories but rather explore the opportunities and constraints of narratives that might liberate or limit the stories told