Coming back to life from “social death”: creating and regulating women-only/feminist spaces with/for women refugees in the UK

Refugeehood may epitomize what Achille Mbembe (2003, “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40) refers to as “death worlds,” where individuals are dehumanized and excluded from everyday spaces and relationships, imposing “social death” upon them. Social death is a gendered process that might be reinforced by the public–private division, limiting women’s social connectedness, agency, and autonomy to integrate and interact with society as full persons in the UK. Building on ethnographic research, this article explores the potential of women-only/feminist spaces, offered by self-identified feminist and women’s organizations in the UK, to support women’s individual self-worth and full personhood while fostering community-building, ownership, and collective resilience and resistance. According to the organizations, creating and regulating space for/with women refugees counter social death via (1) effectively addressing the everyday needs of women, (2) fostering community ownership, (3) promoting and maintaining (gender) equality within communities, and (4) cultivating belonging and friendship.