Double marginalized lives as woman and as refugeesyrian female refugees in ankara

Abstract

This thesis lays down how Syrian female refugees are socially, economically, culturally, ethnically and sexually marginalized and what they think about the ongoing events, their status and the steps the government and NGO’s have taken so far in order to produce solutions for women’s invisibilization in the public sphere. Hereby, I have conducted this research in suburbs around Ankara with a group of Syrian female refugees who are socially excluded as ‘‘woman’’ and ‘‘refugee’’ and the local women. The focus will be on the relation between the discourses produced in the host society and the social exclusion of Syrian female refugees. It should be noted that the source of the discourses could be differentiated in terms of a large number of factors such as political opinion, cultural background, socio-economic position, gender, age, poverty, education level, religious affiliation and personal experiences. As for the gender aspects in social exclusion of Syrian female refugees, we see that even local women use patriarchal discourse to discriminate the refugees. The objectification of Syrian women and their bodies by their own culture are criticized by local women who are subordinated by the structure of the patriarchal society they live in. Another scope of the study is to analyze how powerful these discourses are in the host society and how the Syrian female refugees and local women are affected. It is aimed to establish a cause and effect relationship of the social exclusion of Syrian women regarding discourse analysis as social critique. To carry out the research, Foucauldian discourse analysis consists of the main part of the study. It is used to understand the intersectionality of discrimination and invisibilization of Syrian female refugees. The relationship between the discourses are underlined, as there are many contrasting discourses about the objects and events that benefited from the genealogical approach. Apart from the Foucauldian discourse analysis, this paper also examines the discriminatory discourses towards Syrian refugees on Facebook and in Turkish printed mainstream media by following Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis. Keywords: Social exclusion of Syrian female refugees in Ankara, Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Facebook, printed mainstream media.