Ulteriori informazioni
Sommario
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Studying masculinities, middle-classness, and relations to the state during forced displacement
1.Being a man vis-à-vis militarisation, war, and the uprising
2.Becoming and ‘un-becoming’ refugees
3.Claiming successful middle-class masculinity through work
4.Loss of status and ‘groom-ability’: Making sense of changes in marriage negotiations
5.Establishing a living among several ‘others’ in Egypt
6.Masculinities, interaction with the state and the migration of fear
Conclusion: On Masculinities, forced displacement, middle-classness and relations with the nation state
Bibliography
Info autore
Magdalena Suerbaum is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religion and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany. She has worked as a lecturer both at Humboldt University in Berlin and SOAS, University of London. She completed her PhD in Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London, UK.
Riassunto
Following the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011, many Syrians fled to Egypt. This ethnographic study traces Syrian men's struggles in Cairo: their experiences in the Egyptian labour market and efforts to avoid unemployment; their ambitions to prove their 'groomability' in front of potential in-laws in order to get married; and their discontent with being assigned the label 'refugee'. The book reveals the strategies these men use to maintain their identity as the 'respectable Syrian middle-class man' - including engaging in processes of 'Othering' and the creation of hierarchies – and Magdalena Suerbaum explains why this proved so much more difficult for them after Morsi was toppled in 2013.
Based on in-depth interviews, conversations and long-term participant observations, Suerbaum identifies Syrian men's emotional struggles as they undergo the experience of forced displacement and she highlights the adaptability and ultimate elasticity of constructed masculinities. The Syrians interviewed share their memories and their understandings of sectarianism and growing up in Syria, their interactions with the Egyptian and Syrian states, and their experiences during the Syrian uprising. The book takes an intersectional approach with close attention to the 'refugee' as a classed and gendered person.
Prefazione
Examines the social and emotional impact of forced migration and the label of “refugee” on middle-class Syrian men living in Egypt
Testo aggiuntivo
Suerbaum offers a revealing account of male experiences of displacement
and new forms of masculinity after the Syrian uprising. Insightful and timely in its analysis, the
book shows how the efforts of young men to “reclaim middle-classness”
play out on fragile ground in Egypt, and how these are bound up with new ideas and practices of manhood. The first-hand narratives Suerbaum presents have an unforgettable immediacy. Through them, she deftly
explores the contradictions men face as they renegotiate their status in
Egypt in the labour market and the marriage market, all the while
suspended between two authoritarian states.
