Call for Women Researchers

“The Lived Experiences of Arab Women Immigrants: Narratives of Precariousness and Power”

Application Deadline: January 10, 2025

As part of the Critical Security Studies Working Group at the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS) led by Dr. Sami Hermez (Northwestern University in Qatar) and Dr. Omar Dahi (Hampshire College), Dr. Suhad Daher-Nashif (School of Medicine, Keele University) is leading a subgroup of researchers to explore the lived experiences of Arab women immigrants to European countries.

About the Project

Asylum seeking and forced migration is a displacing experience that exposes women to different types of gendered insecurity, prior and throughout their transformational experience. Asylum seeking in general and women’s experiences in particular, have been addressed by anthropologists and social scientists as limbo and as liminal stages characterized by biographical disruption, precariousness, and insecurity (Hartonen et al., 2022; Tastsoglou et al., 2021; Ndirangu & Evans, 2009). In their work on gender-based violence among Middle Eastern women asylum seekers in Greece, Tastsoglou et al (2021) argue that women’s precarity and insecurity are attributed not only to the social-political violence and insecurities in their home countries, but also to ‘policies and practices deriving from EU and national migration regimes aiming at securing external borders and containing asylum seekers, ordered in gendered and intersectional ways.’ (p.2). Furthermore, restrictions imposed by governments on asylum seekers, such as denied access to work, force them to survive with limited access to social security (Ihlamur-Öner, 2013). Therefore, women migrants’ vulnerability, or more accurately, their precariousness and insecurity, are consistent and existential experiences that continuously re-structure their performativity as a survival strategy.

This project aims to explore the lived experiences of women asylum seekers in Europe. To do so, seven researchers will interview seven women in different European countries.

The project will mainly highlight two themes:

1. Precarious experiences that women immigrants face throughout their journeys: In this context, precariousness refers to what Butler (2009) defines as being exposed to heightened risk of oppression, poverty, displacement, and violence without protection —through which a person develops performativity to exist and survive.

2. Structures of performativity, survival, and resistance among women: While exploring their suffering, the project will also reveal the survival and resistance strategies these women develop throughout their immigration journeys.

The study will use qualitative methods, namely the interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach through which women talk about their lived experiences.

Project researchers will have the following responsibilities:

1. Attending all mandatory meetings of the project
2. Participating in an IPA methods workshop
3. Recruiting a woman interviewee following the ethical guidelines of the study
4. Interviewing the woman in person
5. Transcribing the interview while preserving anonymity
6. Participating in a webinar that will be organized by the ACSS to present the study and its findings
7. Attending and actively participating in a short story writing workshop
8. Turning the interview into a short story to be published in a co-edited collection
9. Continuously communicating progress and any issues related to the research with the PI (Suhad)

Eligibility Criteria:

1. Applicants must originate from an Arab country, and have resided in a European country for at least 2 years.
2. Applicants must be fluent in Arabic and/or the interviewee’s spoken language.
3. Applicants must be holders of a post graduate degree in the humanities or social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology, law, gender studies, education, or any related domain).
4. Applicants must have evidenced experience in conducting qualitative research. Priority will be given to those with experience in conducting sensitive research and interpretative phenomenological/narrative research.

Through participation in this project, researchers will:

1. Receive a payment of $800 in two instalments
2. Receive training in transforming an interview into a short story
3. Author a short story to be published in a co-edited collection
4. Co-author in Arabic and English academic articles (Optional)
5. Increase the visibility of their work across different dissemination platforms such as a podcast and different ACSS social media platforms (Optional)

How to apply:

If you meet the above criteria, send your CV (3 pages max., font size 12, space=1.5) with a cover letter (one page max. font size 12, space=1.5) and a sample of published work (of any type) by January 10, 2025 to the following email address: suhadh@hotmail.com

About the Arab Council for the Social Sciences

The Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) is a regional, independent, non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening social science research and knowledge production in the Arab Region. By supporting researchers and academic/research institutions, the ACSS aims to contribute to the creation, dissemination, validation and utilization of social science research and to enrich public debate about the challenges facing Arab societies. The ACSS also aims to enhance the role of social science in Arab public life and inform public policy in the region.

About the Critical Security Studies Working Group

The Critical Security Studies (CSS) working group was established in 2016 and takes a critical approach toward the proliferation of ‘security studies’ literature on and in the region as well as ‘strategic studies’ programs that are developing across the region. Mainstream approaches tend to advance state security interests and world power interests rather than the security of individuals, communities and societies of the region. The working group engages with existing frameworks from the field of critical security studies but also strives to move beyond them to develop alternative approaches based on regional realities, in an effort to understand the materialization of new security concerns, dynamics, spaces and affects. It also aims at connecting regional and transnational networks through the Eastern Mediterranean city of Beirut. The CSS working group is currently in its second phase and is coordinated by Professors Omar S. Dahi (Hampshire College) and Sami Hermez (Northwestern University in Qatar).