Graduate student, Elizabeth Wirtz, under the supervision of Dr. Sharon Williams, will explore how experiences of violence, insecurity, inequality, and poverty shape women's reproductive preferences, decisions, and actions. The researcher will use systematic qualitative ethnographic methods to investigate the ways in which physical and structural violence affects Somali refugee women's reproductive lives. This project will seek to understand the interaction between physical and structural violence and the ways in which they influence women's reproductive choices as well as the constraints they place on women's ability to successfully realize these choices.
This study contributes to a theoretical understanding of individual and cultural resiliance and adaptation in the context of both prolonged and acute crisis, violence, poverty, and suffering. The project also has strong potential to inform policies and programs that address reproductive health, gender equality, and various forms of violence, particularly sexual and gender based violence in refugee communities. Specifically, this project aims to produce insights that will be used by agencies working with refugees in East Africa and elsewhere to improve the women's health, safety, and well-being. Part of the research design includes training and employing research assistants from the local community to foster local participation in social science research and increase refugee participation in potential interventions and program implementation. Information from this project will be disseminated through academic and non-academic channels including academic conferences and publications as well as reports and collaborations with international and local humanitarian organizations working with refugees in East Africa. The project also contributes to the education of a graduate student in anthropology.
This project examines the impacts of violence and the politics of humanitarian space on the health and well-being of Somali refugee women in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Northern Kenya. The primary finding demonstrates that the politics of humanitarian space, that is, the various organizations, governments, policies, and programs that constitute the ‘refugee regime’ often end up, both advertently and inadvertently, causing harm and inflicting multiple levels of abuse and violence against the very population they are meant to help. I examine the ways in which humanitarian organizations enact abuse against refugee women who have experienced sexual and gender based violence, essentially adding an aditional layer of abuse, rather than assistance, against refugee women. I argue for a new definition of vulnerability within refugee populations; vulnerability rooted in the inability to seek aid from humanitarian agencies, and based in differential status and inequality among refugees. This project is contributes to our understanding of individual and cultural resilience and adaptation in the context of forced migration, violence, poverty, and suffering, by looking at specific tactics used by marginalized people for coping with and enduring hardships. The primary theoretical contribution of this study explores and adds the factor of violence and fear into the socio-politics of gender and women's health, as well as the interplay between violence, structural inequality and women's agency. This research project is therefore significant because its will provide necessary data and in-depth analyses on the links between violence and health in refugee camps. This research is uniquely designed to compare and contrast strategic responses to privation and violence as women respond to larger narratives and experiences of forced migration and abuse. The compilation of data collected over five years will deliver empirically-grounded, scalable, and transferable theories on the anthropologies of violence and health that are spatially and temporally sensitive. The findings from this project are integral to informing programs and policies addressing these issues in order to improve the quality of aid and assistance given to refugee populations.
