Agency as silence and muted voice: the problem-solving networks of unaccompanied young Somali refugee women in Eastleigh, Nairobi

Abstract

This article analyses the problem-solving networks of young refugee women from Somalia between the ages of 13 and 19 through the concepts of ‘muted voice’ and ‘silence’. Based on life history interviews and participant observation with young refugee women living in the Eastleigh neighbourhood of Nairobi in 2011 and 2012, it investigates the ways in which young Somali women exercise their individual agency through carefully selected strategies of silence and muted voice as conscious forms of agency. The research finds that they rarely use their voice in naming and speaking out about their daily hardships, meaning they do not practice the obvious forms of agency that ‘voice’ implies. Instead, these young women gained strength and personal power through their network-type relationships with other young refugee women in the form of ‘muted voice’, meaning they exhibited a strategic capacity to determine when to speak and when to remain silent in the face of the daily oppression they experience, usually at the hands of more powerful male actors. In their daily interactions to make life bearable, young Somali refugee women teach us that the concept of agency must be situated in the violent and patriarchal context in which individuals are able to act.