Construction of new masculinities transformed by migration: Married Syrian men living in Ankara

Migration studies due to one of the characteristics of our world i.e. 'the era of crises and migrations', has gradually been extended and developed. Accordingly, over the recent years the focus of migration studies in terms of gender relations has dealt with the effects of forced migration on the process of transformative changes in masculinities. In spite of this development in migration studies there is still a need to do researches about the transformative dynamics and crisis-ridden forms of refugees' masculinities. Based on this, this study by focusing on urban poor Syrian refugee men living in Ankara seeks to understand the effects of war, forced migration and poverty on the experiences of Syrian men. In this way, we interviewed with 17 Syrian men living in such neighborhoods as Önder, Ulubey, Hüseyingazi ve Battalgazi in Altındağ district. We conducted face to face in-depth interviews with married Syrian men in their homes. In addition, in order to further our understanding of research problematic we also conducted some interviews with 5 more interviewees including young men and women. In addition, field observations and notes, both in the neighborhoods and in the participants' homes, have been an important source of data for this study. Our data firstly show that the war conditions cause a deep sense of 'fear' and 'desperation' in Syrian men, resulting in the experience of 'helpless masculinity' that cannot reproduce itself. It has been observed that this experience of masculinity has been consolidated and severed by forced migration and especially the life conditions of refugees consisting of new economic, social, cultural and legal encounters. Accordingly, the crisis of masculinity which contradicts with the traditional masculinity differs with regard to the factors such as generation and the degree of religiousness. In this sense, we observed that the middle-aged and older participants have tried to reproduce their masculinity by referring to traditional gender relations based on religious values. On the other hand, another observation shows that middle-aged and younger participants indicated a more egalitarian 'alternative' representation of masculinity as they distanced from the traditional gender roles as a result of the loss of masculinity they experienced during the forced migration.