Waiting for resettlement: experiences of Iranian refugee women in Turkey

Every year, many Iranian women flee violence in their home country and seek asylum in Turkey. While refugee women must deal with the complex, ambiguous, and discretionary processes of the Turkish asylum regime, they simultaneously face an insecure and uncertain future because of the restrictive border and refugee resettlement policies of third countries. Based on ethnographic research conducted with a feminist methodology, this study focuses on the experiences of Iranian refugee women in Turkey awaiting resettlement. Exploring the ways in which the institution of resettlement affects refugee women’s lives, this study argues that refugee women continue to experience some of the same forms of violence from which they fled (such as sexual harassment) and sometimes different forms (such as legal violence and waiting) in their efforts to become resettled refugees.