Creating refugeescapes: Afghan refugee women’s strategies of surviving and thriving in Delhi

Abstract

In this article, I offer the concept of ‘refugeespace’ as a way of understanding Afghan refugee women’s homemaking practices in Delhi, India. Such practices unfold in various spaces–the domestic space/apartment, the refugee neighborhood, and the larger megacity–Delhi. I map ‘refugeescape’ through the social networks that Afghan refugee women create with one another, livelihood and leisure activities, and everyday socio-economic negotiations that knit the spaces of the domestic home, neighborhood, and city together. Tracing the spaces that constitute Afghan refugee women’s lives in Delhi in relation to each other, the constraints they impose, and the possibilities they offer point to how these spaces are a critical aspect of refugee women’s strategies of surviving and thriving as refugees in Delhi.

Keywords:

• Afghan refugees
• refugeescapes
• refugee neighborhood
• homemaking
• Afghan women
• urban refugees

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof. Richa Nagar and Prof. Sima Shakhsari for their suggestions and feedback on various drafts of this article and for encouraging me to look beyond my original research questions. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose constructive feedback was crucial in bringing this article to its final form. This article would not be possible without the generosity, friendship and hospitality of numerous Afghan refugee women who invited me into their homes and included me in their travels around the city, showing me a side of Delhi, previously unknown to me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nithya Rajan

Nithya Rajan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her research project examines the everyday life and experiences of Afghan refugee women in Delhi, in the context of anti-Muslim right-wing nationalism and lack of refugee rights in India. Broadly she is interested in understanding the experiences of women refugees and the functioning of the international refugee regime in the Global South through the intersection of transnational feminist theory and critical refugee studies. Rajan has Master’s degrees from the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University and the department of Social Work at Jamia Millia Islamia (New Delhi, India).