Refugee’s resistance: analysing survival strategies through the prism of intersectionality

Since 2011, over 5 million people have fled Syria due to ongoing conflict. The vast majority sought refuge in neighbouring Turkey and Jordan. This chapter analyses the different experiences and survival strategies of Syrians who are modulated by particular relations of race, class and gender. By focusing on Syrians’ strategies developed towards the ‘humanitarian government’, which includes international organisations, UN agencies and NGOs, as well as local associations and charitable institutions, it aims to explain how refugees manage to create their own visibility in this new space full of limitations, and further explores how their agency can deconstruct dominant representations of refugees, who are otherwise seen as threats or as voiceless victims. In all, this research, that focuses on the agency of Syrians, aims to go beyond the vulnerability of refugees, without neglecting the violence they endure. In order to analyse this process, this study is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with Syrians, local communities and members of the humanitarian institutions in Turkey and Jordan in 2016 and 2017. This methodology is complemented with a more ethnological approach.