Displaced selves, dislocated emotions and transforming identities: Syrian refugee women reinventing selves

This study presents the voices of four Syrian refugee women to improve the understanding of complexities of human displacement. The interviews were conducted in 2016 in Gaziantep, Turkey, a border city to Aleppo, Syria. The study offers an intersectional framework for approaching identities. While all four women have apparent commonalities, such as their gender, their displacement and the host country/city in which they live, the study examines other important identities that shape their experiences: Afran is Kurdish and transgendered, Nabila is a niqab-wearing Sunni Muslim woman who lost her upper-class status after her displacement and has political visions for the future of Syria, Farah is an atheist who removed her hijab and became financially liberated after leaving Syria, and Zeinab is a human rights-defending leftist. The concepts of 'displaced selves' and 'dislocated emotions' are introduced in connection to becoming and belonging beyond physically forced emigration from state borders.