Iranian Refugees in the Context of Liquid Fragilities: Labour and Gender

The global age we live in generates multi-layered migration processes and asylum seeking takes its place in the world’s agenda. Various disadvantages created by late capitalism, which is woven with risks and has fluid characteristics, affect refugees, especially women and LGBTI individuals, more deeply. New communities formed by the global context of migration transform their subjectivity by penetrating into individuals’ personal experiences in working and daily life. Based on the aforementioned realities, this research analyzes the working and daily life practices of Iranian women and LGBTI refugees living in Denizli, in relation to Sara Ahmed’s fragility and Zygmunt Bauman’s liquidity concepts. The main argument of this research is that the combination of fragility and liquidity imputes new subjectivities to refugees by shaping their migration, daily life, and refugee worker experiences. Within the scope of the study, semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 Iranian refugees using qualitative research method. The main finding of the research is that both the migration processes and the suspended lives of women and LGBTI refugees
in Denizli are incomplete, fragile, and have a structure that includes ruptures.