Refugee women’s volunteering as resistance practices to micro-aggressions and social exclusion in the UK

Low, Carolynn and Shah, Bindi (2023) Refugee women’s volunteering as resistance practices to micro-aggressions and social exclusion in the UK. BSA Annual Conference 2023: Sociological Voices in Public Discourse, Manchester, United Kingdom. 12 - 14 Apr 2023.

Abstract

In an increasingly hostile environment for refugees in the UK and ‘everyday bordering’ (Yuval-Davis et al. 2018) that create exclusionary effects for refugees and migrants, this article examines how refugee women of diverse backgrounds enact resistance practices through volunteering to challenge everyday microaggressions and perceptions of refugees as a threat. We draw on in-depth qualitative research in 2019 (a focus group and nine semi-structured interviews) with 10 members of a support group for refugee women established by a local charity in England, as well as two staff members supporting them, and on the concept of ‘differential embedding’ (Mulholland & Ryan 2022; Ryan and Mulholland 2015). We find that the support group not only allows the refugee women to foster a strong sense of solidarity in the face of everyday microaggressions; it also facilitates the women’s volunteering activities in the local community (pop-up cafes to feed other marginal groups in Britain such as the homeless, elderly and young people with dementia; volunteering in schools, museums and charity shops; and establishing support groups for other minority women). We argue that such activities enable the women to build wider social networks and skills for future employment, but crucially, provide them with emotional and linguistic resources to critique dominant exclusionary discourses and policies towards refugees through the idea of ‘contribution’ and ‘giving back’. In so doing, we contribute to renewed interest in the concept of integration (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Phillimore, 2018) to highlight refugee women’s agency in creating differential embedding in a hostile environment.

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Contributors

Author: Carolynn Low

Author: Bindi Shah

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