Exploring the Experiences of Migration, Violence, and Homelessness of Conditional Refugee Women in a Non-Governmental Shelter

Abstract

At the intersection of structural factors such as patriarchy, globalization, racism, and categories like age, ethnicity, language, religion, social capital, and immigration status, women experience various phenomena of discrimination and inequality. Although the effects of violence against women have universal characteristics, social categories such as education, marital status, ethnicity, and social capital differentiate women’s experiences. This study aims to analyze the migration, violence, and homelessness experiences of women staying in a shelter as conditional refugees in Istanbul. Shelters are places where women who are exposed to violence and deprived of social support stay. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 women staying in this shelter and 4 themes were discovered: “women’s experiences of violence”, “divorce processes and social violence”, “the process of coming to the association, identity and employment problems in the struggle to set up a new life”, and “future expectations”. It was found that women experience all sorts of partner violence as well as violence of immigration, their families apply social violence during divorce periods, shelters which provide rights-based social services help women in post-divorce processes, and women’s experiences differ at the intersection of their future expectations and social categories such as health, age, education, occupation, and immigration status. The main suggestions of this study include increasing rights-based social services for women, and gender, ethnicity, and culture-sensitive practices.

Keywords

• refugee women
• violence
• shelter
• social work
• non-governmental organizations