After many Syrian refugee families lost their traditional breadwinner under the weight of the ongoing war, the task of supporting these families has fallen on the shoulders of women, who resorted to different types of economic coping/adaptation mechanisms to meet the needs of their families. The key question of the study of this book is how they did this in Istanbul, while the two sub-questions look at what their coping patterns are, and what relevant factors affect it.

The book seeks to eliminate the blurring of refugees' life in urban areas, particularly vulnerable groups, in order to benefit from lessons learned in the design of humanitarian interventions.

The book provides an initial view of the phenomenon through three analytical axes; the first is about urban female-refugee breadwinners; the second addresses the livelihoods and coping mechanisms of urban refugees; and the third analyses the context of their asylum in Istanbul, through a theoretical lance based on the coping theory and specific theories of gender, besides the sustainable livelihoods framework. The book then moves on to the field study, as it uses a qualitative methodology based on 15 semi-structured personal interviews, and a single focus group.

The book concludes that the economic coping mechanisms of Syrian women breadwinners in Istanbul can be classified under three main headings: productive coping pattern, aid-based coping pattern, and passive coping pattern. Their choice of mechanisms and their capacity for coping is affected either positively or negatively by three categories of factors: the first type relates to gender, the second type connects to the individual refugee woman, and the third type associates to the context of their livelihoods in Istanbul.

This book is available from Arabic Bookshop, published by Jusur for Translating and Publishing.

To cite this book: Hedaya, Mona. 2019. Refugee Women: Adaptation of Syrian Refugee Breadwinners’ Women in Istanbul (2011-2018). Jusur for Translating and Publishing.