Paper short abstract:

This paper portrays female refugees from Syria who became stand-up Comedians in their new homes not only because they are funny but also to stand up against multiple forms of discrimination and patriarchal norms.

Paper long abstract:

Telling my story through comedy is my way of achieving visibility for myself and millions of other women who lived similar lives as me always thinking the belong below everyone in the chain of being seen. I was never praised or celebrated for my achievements simply because I was just a girl! So now I take space, I’m visible and I’m me (FLONA 2023).

Refugee women from Syria are mostly depicted as women without a voice, following a man, as someone invisible. They are portrayed as sad victims and that leads to an understanding of the migration process and its (female) protagonists as humourless with the broader implications for the types of knowledge that we (re)produce around migrants’ experiences, subjectivities, and struggles (Franck 2022).

In a joint project from the Austrian Red Cross (crosstalk: talking with, not about refugees) and the Political Correct Comedy Club (a queer, feminist Comedy Club in Vienna) we observed, listened to, and spoke with five female comedians from Syria who fled the war and took the stage in order to lough about their stories, their past, present and future and by doing so found home and relieve in humour. Their taking of space is to lough in the face of power. Their laughter and their comedy are to say patriarchy and discrimination(s) have no power over them. It is to refuse that power authorizing force (Bhungalia 2020). Humour in their refugee experience helps to process tragedies and traumata, loss, and hopelessness (Van Ramshorst 2019).