Gender and Refugee Status

by Thomas Spijkerboer

This is the first comprehensive socio-legal study of the interrelation between gender and the law of refugee status. In the past decade, the issue has received increasing attention in academic writing, the media and the courtroom. This book contains an interdisciplinary analysis. The empirical data, collected for this study and not published previously, concerns Dutch asylum practice. The Netherlands is a prominent refugee-receiving country in Europe, yet hardly any English texts address Dutch refugee law. The book also covers foreign case law and academic writing. Therefore, the analysis is relevant for all refugee-receiving countries in the Western world; the empirical data on The Netherlands functions as a case study. The book combines perspectives of post-structuralist feminism and post-colonial studies. Refugee women are constructed as a double other. This intersectionality is related to the construction of the Third World as feminine (passive, in need of active outside intervention etc., etc.). The book provides a comprehensive overview of academic writing and of case law on the subject. On this basis of theoretical perspectives that were almost ignored until now, it develops an innovative critique of refugee law discourse and outlines its possible consequences for legal doctrine.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Erin Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

seminal work which paved foundations for later intersectional feminist critiques of the international, supranational (EU) and national legal frameworks for asylum.

chapter on construction of the female asylum applicant in decision-making very interesting, particularly what constitutes a political act in the minds of the decision maker (eg. the male political dissident facing persecution from their country of origin’s regime but not the woman who faces persecution for subverting gender-related social norms in her refusal to adhere to dress code). also important discussion on public-private dichotomy in relation to acts of persecution.

“If what happened to the female applicant is viewed as something that can happen to people (such as detention and torture), the case may be successful. When what happened to the female applicant is viewed as an act against a woman (with sexual violence as the main example), the acts are seen as insignificant or, more often, as private”