A Touch of Syria on the Table: Gendered Politics of Food and Reproduction in Displacement

This study explores the displaced Syrian population’s changing relationship with food in urban Turkey, focusing on the gendered politics of food and reproduction and relying on an urban ethnography in Istanbul. The study aims to examine the transformation of Syrian women’s reproductive foodwork with a particular focus on their coping mechanisms toward bridging resources and needs to secure access to healthy, nutritious, and sufficient food for their households, on the one hand, and maintaining Syrian ethnic identity, on the other. The study also investigates whether reproductive foodwork signifies only gendered oppression or acquires new meanings such as empowerment in a displacement context. This article argues that although Syrian women’s increasing responsibility in reproductive foodwork in displacement imposes on them a more significant pressure to ensure their households access to both sufficient and ethnic food, it hints at increasing autonomy and power of the women within the family with a particular focus on food acquisition and food budget. The dynamics of food acquisition in the displacement transforms the patriarchal gender norms that restrain Syrian women’s engagement with public space. Thus, the change in gender relations within Syrian households suggests that patriarchal oppression and gendered empowerment are simultaneously entangled in Syrian women’s reproductive foodwork in displacement.