How refugee women practice politics in the UK

Humanitarian assistance has historically positioned refugee women as passive, vulnerable victims – a narrative frequently weaponised by the far right. Dr Zeynep Kilicoglu draws on her new book, Deconstructing Refugee Women’s Empowerment, to explore how women’s asylum organisations support refugee women’s political agency during a time of anti-immigration politics.

This talk will show how communities use alternative humanitarian strategies to move beyond narratives of victimisation and recognise refugee women as autonomous actors who contribute actively to the host society.

Dr Zeynep Kilicoglu is a decolonial feminist scholar whose research focuses on how humanitarian and aid organisations in Western Europe, particularly in the UK and France, construct the subjectivities/personhood of women refugees and asylum seekers. Dr Kilicoglu employs ethnographic methods to co-create academic knowledge in partnership with migrant communities and is the founder of SheClaims, an AI product that aims to increase the legal literacy of asylum-seeking women in the UK.

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