Abstract

The literature concerning refugee women presently seems to neglect the decision-making power and agency practiced by these women. Additionally, the mass media and the academic literature alike seem to couple refugee women with notions of docility and victimhood. We will demonstrate this tendency through a literature review in which we engage with and challenge this trend. In this paper, we set out to pay attention to the agency of refugee women using the theoretical approach of autonomy of migration. In order to engage with refugee women in a manner that recognises the wide range of real and concrete experiences that they encounter, we take an intersectional perspective. Here, we examine how the oppression faced at the intersections of a variety of social categories constitute specific obstacles on refugee women’s journeys. We combine these two theories in order to answer the research question: Which obstacles do refugee women face on their journeys, and how do they relate to them? In our investigation of this question, we pay particular attention to gender-blind laws, the resistive practices of refugees, and the sexual and gender-based violence that refugee women may face on their journeys. Furthermore, we discuss the obstacles that refugee women face qua the two social categories ‘refugee’ and ‘woman’, as well as the obstacles they face at the intersections of these.

In this paper, we utilise already collected data concerning refugee women. We rely on interviews, surveys, and peer-reviewed academic literature from a variety of fields to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the obstacles that refugee women face on their journeys. We reframe refugee women as the protagonists of their own migratory journeys by using already collected data in a new way. Additionally, we use an interdisciplinary approach, as this allows for refugee women’s journeys to be investigated from several different vantage points, thereby prompting a more nuanced exploration.

Overall, we argue that refugee women should be decoupled with notions of vulnerability and need, and that narratives concerning refugee women should not engage with these women purely as victims. Instead, we propose that refuge women should be reframed as an inherently resilient group, since they navigate extremely precarious situations, relate to a multitude of diverse obstacles, and fight for a better future for themselves and their families.

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