ABSTRACT
Since 2011, 6.6 million people have been forced outside Syria’s borders due to conflict. The vast majority sought refuge in neighbouring Turkey and Jordan. In Turkey alone, there are 3.6 million Syrians registered with the government. In Jordan, there are more than 663,000 Syrian refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Although women make up around half of those crossing the borders with both Turkey (46.2%) and Jordan (50%) in search of refuge, literature on the Syrian displacement focusing on women remains limited. This chapter investigates the experiences of women while crossing these borders in the face of different structures and actors, which are modulated by particular relations of race, class and gender. Through exploring on the one hand how women’s experiences are affected by border migration policies and by the different agents navigating this borderscape, and on the other how women respond and/or resist these migration regimes and actors both in Turkey and Jordan, this chapter aims to offer a reflection on the imbrication of social relations in a context of the materialisation of borders. This study is based on a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with Syrians in Turkey and Jordan and is complemented with a more ethnological approach.
