The Capacity to Aspire Among Rwandan Urban Refugee Women in Yaoundé, Cameroon DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment Of
The capacity to aspire among Rwandan urban refugee women in Yaoundé, Cameroon DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kelly Ann Yotebieng Graduate Program in Anthropology The Ohio State University 2019 Dissertation Committee: Anna Willow, Adviser Jennifer L. Syvertsen, co-chair Barbara Piperata Mark Moritz Kendra McSweeney Copyrighted by Kelly Ann Yotebieng 2019 Abstract The overall goal of this dissertation is to shed light on how a growing population of urban refugee women recursively rebuild their lives and communities after conflict and displacement. This includes the aspirations, situated within their socio-cultural contexts that drive their decisions and subsequent actions. To do this, using the capacity to aspire theoretical framework (Appadurai, 2004; Bok, 2010), I build a conceptual model (see Figure 1) to analyze the links between hope, aspirations, context, strategies, and constraints among Rwandan refugees, with a focus on women. Within the substantial literature on the political economy of hope (Bourdieu et al., 1999; Hage, 2003, 2016) and the capacity to aspire (Appadurai, 2004; Bok, 2010), household-level dynamics are notably absent. Linked with socio-cultural norms, for mothers in particular aspirations often hinge on shared visions of children’s futures, and these mothers are often the first to forego their needs to allow these desired futures to come to fruition. My dissertation research emphasizes the need to study the links between women’s aspirations and strategies through a lens that includes both agency, and their socio- cultural constraints. Several themes emerged over the course of my research.
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