Rethinking “Family” in Forced Migration Contexts: Gendered Power Relations and Implications for Child and Family Social Work in Türkiye

This chapter examines how the concept of family should be rethought within social work literature in the context of forced migration, drawing on the case of Türkiye. Social work practices have traditionally defined the family through the framework of the formal, monogamous nuclear unit, and interventions have largely been shaped in accordance with this normative model. However, following forced migration from Syria to Türkiye, the emergence of early, forced, and/or polygynous marriage arrangements has rendered the limits of this definition visible. Particularly, unions that are not legally recognized or are only partially acknowledged generate unequal and precarious positions for women and children. Rather than treating the family as a pregiven unit of protection, this chapter conceptualizes it as a relational and politically regulated field in which legal status, gender relations, and survival strategies intersect. The case of forced migration to Türkiye demonstrates how regimes of legal recognition concerning family can produce new forms of inequality in migration contexts. In this regard, the chapter calls for a critical reevaluation of the theoretical and ethical foundations of social work practice.