Syrian-Armenian Women Migrants in Armenia: Gender, Identity and Painful Belonging

(Hardback)

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After the outbreak of the 2011 Syrian War, a number Syrian-Armenians who had lived in the territory for generations, fled to the Republic of Armenia. This book traces the experiences of Syrian-Armenian women as they navigated their changing and gendered identities from their adopted homeland to their socially constructed new ancestral home in Armenia. The rich ethnographic research conducted over 6 years by the author reveals how women adjusted to new lives in Armenia, supported themselves through gendered work such as embroidery production, yet mostly challenge simple identities such as refugee or repatriate, existing in a state of what the author terms painful belonging. The book further reveals crucial insight into how experiences and traumatic memories of war in Syria and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict reciprocally shape each other in the minds of the women interviewed.

Author Bio

Anahid Matossian is the Women, Peace and Security Subject Matter Expert at Marine Corps University, USA. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Kentuckey, USA.