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Contribution short abstract

I compare fatigue and coping among displaced Syrian mothers in Lebanon and Finland, showing how exhaustion is entangled with care across contrasting socio-material conditions. When endurance is valued as strength, caring for others emerges not only as strain but also as a source of relief.

Contribution long abstract

In this contribution, I compare sources of fatigue and everyday coping strategies among displaced Syrian mothers, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the capital cities of Finland and Lebanon. In both contexts, exhaustion was often entangled with domestic and self-sacrificing forms of care, which I approach not as mere burdens but as practices meaningful to the women themselves and analytically central to feminist care ethics.

In Beirut, Syrian mothers strove to sustain everyday life and care for their families amid severe economic collapse and infrastructural breakdown. On top of having experienced the trauma of war, they now lived under extreme scarcity in a country where, amid growing anti-Syrian sentiment, they felt increasingly unwelcome. Many described suppressing their own needs and shielding close family members from their worries, finding moments of relief instead in bringing joy to others and in female sociability—cooking, laughing, and dancing together.

In Helsinki, within the context of the Nordic welfare state, Syrian mothers aspired to learn Finnish and enter paid work in order to feel a sense of participation in local society. Combined with high standards of domestic labour and childrearing as expressions of care, and unwilling to compromise on either domain, many internalised these demands and pushed themselves harder, resulting in exhaustion. Most also reported physical symptoms and chronic illnesses, intensified by the long Finnish winters of cold and darkness. Some felt this coldness extended beyond the climate to the introverted social life of locals, which they experienced as contagious.