Using an ethnographic approach, this essay examines the integration of Syrian refugees into local communities in USA. Based on in-depth interviews with Syrian refugee families, this project analyzes the complex ways in which women assumed the role of agents in adapting to the new life. We specifically ask: How has the need to adapt to the new environment and step outside their comfort zone shape Syrian women’s gender performances and restructure their ideas about rights within the family? Focusing on how they challenged gender norms through engaging in economic activities, our findings suggest that women demonstrated a growing awareness of the economic challenges in the United States and normalized this awareness based on their situation. Their responses varied between exerting agency as active participants in shaping their new lives, exercising ambivalent agency by mechanically embracing work and English learning for their families’ sake, or as passive—and sometimes helpless— subjects of yet another form of social control.