Since 2015, the Republic of Cyprus (ROC) has seen a steady rise in migrant arrivals and asylum applications, primarily from people from Middle Eastern and African countries like Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon.
But many asylum-seekers face significant challenges. Refugees formally in the asylum system are often denied residency permits, which means they face persistent insecurity, poverty and isolation
These conditions are compounded by restrictive and limited services for asylum-seekers. This deepens the precarity and exclusion refugees face within a political and economic system that treats them more like economic burdens than as human beings with rights who need help.
In response to these institutional failures, citizens, volunteers and refugees themselves have begun to build grassroots networks of care and solidarity in the ROC and beyond to support refugee communities.
In 2022 and 2023, we conducted interviews with women volunteers and refugees affiliated with The Learning Refuge, a civil society organization in the city of Paphos in southwest Cyprus that cultivates dialogue and collaboration among these two diverse groups.
Women-led initiatives
Many displaced people first arrive on the island of Cyprus through the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). However, the absence of a functioning asylum system or international legal protections leaves them in limbo.
With no viable path to status in the TRNC, most cross the Green Line that bifurcates Cyprus into the ROC, where European Union asylum frameworks exist but remain limited in practice.
Women-led community-building is often a response to the negative effects of inadequate state support and humanitarian aid for refugees. In Cyprus, this situation leaves many refugees without access to sufficient food, satisfactory health care, accommodation, employment, clothing and language training. In this current environment, refugees are increasingly experiencing insecure and fragile situations, especially women.
In Cyprus, as in many other countries, a variety of community-building efforts are important responses to limited or restricted state support and humanitarian aid for refugees.
Women-led efforts offer opportunities to deliver educational activities and establish networks, and to help improve the welfare and social protection of refugee women, however imperfectly.
These and other similar efforts highlight how women refugees and volunteers can mobilize to foster dialogue and collaboration.
The Learning Refuge
Founded in 2015, The Learning Refuge began as community meetings in a city park. The organization then used space from a nearby music venue to conduct support activities, and later, established itself in a dedicated building.
Organizations like The Learning Refuge emerged to address the limited state support and humanitarian assistance services available to refugees.
As Syrian families began arriving in Paphos in 2015, local mothers started working with Syrian children, assisting them with homework, providing skills-training opportunities and language classes.
The Learning Refuge cultivates dialogue and collaboration among a diverse group of community volunteers, including schoolteachers, artists, musicians, local residents, refugees and other migrants.
With the aid of 20 volunteers, the loosely organized groups provide women refugees with material support and resources to enhance collective activities, including art and music projects, while also engaging in educational and friendship activities.
While modest in scale, the organization has formed partnerships with local and international organizations, including Caritas Cyprus, UNHCR-Cyprus and the Cyprus Refugee Council to extend its outreach to various refugee groups.
The organization has also launched creative initiatives aimed at cultivating additional inclusive civic spaces. One such effort, “Moms and Babies Day,” was developed in response to the rising number of single mothers from Africa arriving on the island. These women often face poverty and isolation, and struggle with language barriers.
These efforts highlight how grassroots responses — especially those led by women — can offer partial but vital educational and emotional support to refugees struggling to find their footing in a new country.
Negotiated belonging
Through participation in The Learning Refuge, refugee women in Paphos engage in a dynamic process of negotiated belonging, navigating challenges like language barriers, gendered isolation, domestic violence and poverty while contributing to broader community-building efforts.
For example, Maryam, a Syrian woman and mother of three, told us how The Learning Refuge helped her children establish friendships and learn Greek. She also highlighted that it helped her form close ties with volunteers and other Syrian women living in Cyprus, and find paid work in the city.
The volunteers and women refugees participating in The Learning Refuge’s activities emphasized not only their capacity to develop new forms of belonging and solidarity; they also help reshape communal knowledge and generate supportive spaces for women from various backgrounds.
Our research shows that women-led community-building is an effective, though short-term, response to insufficient state support and humanitarian aid systems that leave many refugees in precarious situations.
In varying degrees, these efforts offer women and their families spaces to learn and cultivate new relationships, and foster collective projects and better visions of resettlement and refuge.
Suzan Ilcan receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.
Seçil Daǧtaș receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
