CARVING OUT A PLACE TO BELONG: LIVED EXPERIENCES OF SYRIAN MALE MIGRANTS IN THE NETHERLANDS

Forcibly displaced men and masculinities are increasingly marginalized due to anti-migration and anti-refugee sentiments within polarized societal and institutional contexts across the globe. In the Netherlands, Syrian men and masculinities in particular tend to be socially constructed as ‘undesired’ and ‘dangerous’ in public and political debates in the Netherlands due their presumed incompatibility with imagined ‘Dutch’ gender roles and relations. Hence, Syrian male migrants are often framed as a security threat which reproduces gender-essentialist understandings of vulnerability, refugeeness and asylum deservingness. This is harmful to all gender and intersecting identities that seek refuge as these societal perceptions have a deep impact in the everyday lives of those involved.

In this talk, I disentangle the intersections of societal perceptions and everyday life by discussing the lived experiences of young Syrian male refugees in the northern part of the Netherlands. It is based on a qualitative study with young Syrian men in the Netherlands as part of the doctoral thesis I defended in 2022. I focus on how these men re-live, re-imagine and re-produce home and belonging by using and claiming space in an unfamiliar host society. Based on a life course analysis, I examine how  they enact various forms of masculinities as ‘strategic performances’, that is, a gender identity socially constructed and performed in relation to identities, ideologies, institutions and (transnational) geographies.

The analysis demonstrates that for most participants everyday life in the Netherlands is perceived as an oppressive space of shame, violence and (im)possibilities. They construct masculinities predominantly in relation to labor market access, social status and discrimination. These experiences however are differentiated by age, class, race and religion as well as the social and physical characteristics of the everyday spaces they traverse. At the same time, the finding show how Syrian men actively shape meaningful places to find home and belonging which contributes to spaces of care, community and conviviality in both local and transnational spaces. They are emotionally connected to and inhabit multiple spaces and temporalities at once, illustrated by the transnational circulation of emotions, care and remittances. These insights highlight the messy realities of everyday life in forced displacement, differentiated experiences of oppression and privilege, and the way spatiality and intersectionality are articulated in these experiences. I argue that investigating these ideas helps to understand forcibly displaced men and masculinities in more nuanced ways, ultimately contributing to addressing societal challenges and realizing the progressive potential of migrant masculinity theory. To promote equal gender roles and relations for all, it is essential to reconceptualize masculinities in the context of migration to understand how migration as a gendered and gendering process influences and perpetuates inequalities.

Conference will be held in the meeting room of the Woman Studies Research and Application Centre

on 16th, October, 2025, between 15:30-17:00