Abstract
The Trump administration in the USA took on an anti-immigration and anti-refugee stance. Refugees were seen as a potential threat to this country; the very country that is at war in the Middle East and the cause for the largest ever refugee crisis in history. In this chapter, I will deconstruct the concept of the ‘refugee woman’ through ethnographic research on Middle Eastern women in San Diego, California. I will also address issues related to refugee women’s challenges in raising their children, looking for employment, coping with men in the family, and their cultural adjustment crisis. Muslim women are easily recognizable because they are head-scarved and victimized through harassment, and marginalization in the USA. These refugee women, poised at the intersection of Islamophobia, gender discrimination and poverty are triply oppressed in the USA and negotiate their spaces with skill, adaption and sometimes hopelessness. Would a policy shift with the new administration improve the situation for refugees?
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore (Statue of Liberty New York, USA).
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter I will use the term refugee as a technical term to distinguish between migrant and asylum seekers. I do want to point out though that this word is value loaded with negativity for this demographic in the USA as they experience backlash from the majority community who see them as unskilled, illiterate and burden on the US economy.
- 2.
https://www.unhcr.org/4ca34be29.pdf (accessed on 10.11.2020).
- 3.
https://www.justice.gov/crt/combating-post-911-discriminatory-backlash-6 (accessed on 24.07.2020).
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Ahmed-Ghosh, H. (2022). Triple Oppression and Exclusion: Muslim Refugee Women in the USA. In: Panda, S.M., Pandey, A.D., Pattanayak, S. (eds) Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_3
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