Participation in the 20th IMISCOE Annual Conference 2023 TR

Team presentation of the paper entitled "Rethinking Refugee Women's Agency via Food Practices: Analyzing Everyday Agency for Syrian Home Cooks in Turkey"

in the panel entitled “Migration and inequalities. In search of answers and solutions” (Warsaw & online, 3-6 July 2023).

“Agency” and “coping” are two closely related categories through which researchers are increasingly analysing the experience of forced migrants. The ongoing debates about how to define them in psychology, anthropology and sociology demonstrate that these concepts are important for the many diverse disciplines wanting to understand lived experiences. Yet, scholars do not agree about the relationship between agency and coping, how to measure agency and how to interpret action and resistance while still accounting for patriarchal and class domination. Further, refugee women’s agency is often overlooked in mainstream migration research because it is most visible via private, everyday activities rather than public displays of activism. In this paper, we explore how refugee women’s activities of food preparation are pivotal for rebuilding safe spaces after being uprooted and are of crucial importance for the wellbeing of families and communities. Based on qualitative, in-depth interviews with
Syrian refugee women in two regions of Turkey, we argue that procuring ingredients, preparing food for one’s family and exchanging food are ways of enacting agency. Further, we contend that it is important to examine how practices of food-related agency support coping. We examine how gender and culture shape notions of healthy, tasty and proper food and how women are actively involved in making heritage and caring sensorial realities through their kitchen work. A close, ethnographic look at Syrian women’s everyday cooking reveals active efforts to cope while creating hopeful and fulfilling lives.