Leisure as burden: Sudanese refugee women

A central question for leisure research in general and research on women and leisure in particular is the concern for the meanings of leisure. Scholars maintain that leisure's meaning is specific to individuals, culture, and time and that research should be grounded accordingly. As a means to broaden the context for thinking about the meaning of leisure, we report on the results of fieldwork conducted in December 1994 among Sudanese women in a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya and thereby open an area of leisure research that has been invisible previously. From our case data, leisure related themes emerged surrounding time, changing roles, and the impact of assistance on the quality of everyday life for refugee women.