Description
This study addresses a significant gap in our understanding of the daily experiences of refugee women, focusing on their subjective assessments of personal security in the pre-migration, transit and post-migration stages, as well as their agency and coping mechanisms in response to the (in)securities that shape their lives. The prevailing literature on forced migration and security has primarily embraced a state-centric and male-oriented perspective, which neglects the experiences of refugee women or incorporating them into more general depictions of refugee situations. To shed light on these issues, an ethnographic examination of the daily lives of Nigerian refugee women residing in Newcastle, United Kingdom was conducted from April 2021-December 2021. Findings uncovered a continuum of gendered (in)securities that persist throughout the various stages of their migration journeys. Five interrelated themes that contribute to this continuum include religion, social relations, finance, education, and the political and legal context. The narratives shared by these Nigerian refugee women reveal most importantly that these thematic elements are dual-pronged in nature, simultaneously conveying feelings of both security and insecurity that evolve across different spatial and temporal dimensions.
