Social problems of Syrian refugee families living in Turkey and their coping strategies: Gaziantep sample

The escalation of violence and civil war in Syria has brought up again various debates on forced migration, refugee, internal displacement, international networks, social problems, cohesion, and integration in the social sciences and political discourse. Syrian refugee crisis, which is experienced in different ways from the rest of the world in Turkey, is continues to take shape last nine years through different stages. Around five-hundred thousand out of three and a half million registered Syrians lives in Gaziantep according to the 2020's data. Syrians, with the influence of the historical and cultural past with Syria and especially with Aleppo, are trying to be part of the social, economic and cultural life in Gaziantep. This study attempts to understand the coping strategies of the Syrian families and family members who live in the downtown of Gaziantep from the social work perspective. The field study focuses on the patterns of constructing migration, migration experiences and integration experiences of the families. Field research has conducted with 24 Syrian families from different typologies and social classes with semi-structured interviews the behavioral patterns that Syrian families put forward, developed or transformed within the framework of migration, family and coping theories are discussed under thematic titles. The findings of the field have showed us that the families and family members could use quite different coping strategies or they could instrumentalized all their features, depending on the sources, networks and the level of the interaction with social structures that they live in, when there are no adequate or effective social services. Keywords: Migration, Refugee, Coping, Social Work, Syrians, Family, Social Conflict