Active Women and Ideal Refugees
Dissecting Gender, Identity and Discourse in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3946737 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alice Finden (0000-0003-3234-1590, University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 120 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 37-53 |
| Publication date | 2018-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/s41305-018-0139-2 |
| OpenAlex | W2902457467 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 19 |
Since the Moroccan invasion in 1975, official reports on visits to Sahrawi refugee camps by international aid agencies and faith-based groups consistently reflect an overwhelming impression of gender equality in Sahrawi society. As a result, the space of the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria and, by external association, Sahrawi society and Western Sahara as a nation-in-exile is constructed as 'ideal' (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2010, p. 67). I suggest that the 'feminist nationalism' of the Sahrawi nation-in-exile is one that is employed strategically by internal representatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (POLISARIO), the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and the National Union of Sahrawi Women (NUSW), and by external actors from international aid agencies and also the colonial Moroccan state. The international attention paid to the active role of certain women in Sahrawi refugee camps makes 'Other' Sahrawi invisible, such as children, young women, mothers, men, people of lower socio-economic statuses, ('liberated') slave classes and refugees who are not of Sahrawi background. According to Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh ( ibid.), it also creates a discourse of 'good', 'ideal' refugees who are reluctant to complain, in contrast to 'Other refugees'. This feminisation allows the international community not to take the Sahrawi call for independence seriously and reproduces the myth of Sahrawi refugees as naturally non-violent (read feminine) and therefore 'ideal'. The myth of non-violence accompanied by claims of Sahrawi secularity is also used to distance Western Sahara from 'African', 'Arab' and 'Islamic', to reaffirm racialised and gendered discourses that associate Islam with terrorism and situate both in the Arab/Muslim East. These binaries make invisible the violence that Sahrawis experience as a result of the gendered constructions of both internal and external actors, and silence voices of dissent and frustration with the more than forty years of waiting to return home
Feminism · Islam · Political science · Refugee · Secularity · Sociology · African Studies and Geopolitics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Religion, Society, and Development
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"Ideal" Refugee Women and Gender Equality Mainstreaming in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps
The Pragmatics of Performance
Rethinking the Concept of a “Durable Solution”
Political Fiction Meets Gender Myth
Feminisms in Development
Imagined communities
In other worlds
Imagining Saharawi women
The Transmission of Islamic Knowledge in Moorish Society from the Rise of the Almoravids to the 19th Century
Cartographies of Diaspora
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
Sahrawi Women in the Liberation Struggle of the Sahrawi People
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |