Normalising power and engaged narrative methodology: refugee women, the forgotten category in the public discourse

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the discourse of othering of non-Western migrants has been growing in many European societies. And since 2015, refugees have become a quite visible component in this discourse. Although, for decades, the dominant image of refugees has been constructed as people ‘at risk’, new competing images of refugee men ‘as risk’ have recently gained ground. For refugee women, however, the image of being victims and ‘at risk’ still prevails. This shows a strong underlying gendered logic of feminine vulnerability and masculine threat. In this article, I show how these images are situated within the dominant Dutch discourse of migration with taken-for-granted taxonomies of the self and the other. Specific in this normalised discourse for refugee women is that their agency is either ignored or their possible position as activists is not acknowledged to exist. Using examples from two studies in which my research team engaged with the method of narrative engaged research, I show the importance of this particular narrative method in unsettling the normalising power of othering. The theoretical argument of this article engages with ongoing discussions on power and agency. It argues that, when the power of exclusion works through repetition and is manifested in the daily normalisation of actions, agency needs to provide an alternative in the same fluid manner. Narratives in dialogue provide an illuminating angle for discussing this specific kind of agency, as I will show through some examples from research.