Gender and Refugee Status

by Spijkerboer,Thomas

• ISBN13: 9780754620341
• ISBN10: 0754620344
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-07-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	ix
Table of Cases	xi
Abbreviations	xxvii
Acknowledgements	xxix
Introduction	1	(14)
The Emergence of Women as an Issue in Refugee Law	1	(3)
Equality as a Variable in Refugee Law	4	(2)
Gender, Ethnicity, Discourse	6	(3)
Methodological Remarks	9	(3)
Outline of the Book	12	(3)
Female Applicants in Statistics and General Policy	15	(30)
The Share of Women in Refugee Populations	15	(2)
The Treatment of Women in Asylum Procedures	17	(2)
Representativity of the Statistical Data	19	(2)
Statistical Data on The Netherlands 1989-1995	21	(6)
Representativity of the Sample	27	(3)
An Introduction to the Sample	30	(8)
Bosnia-Herzegovina	30	(1)
China	31	(1)
Iran	32	(2)
Sri Lanka	34	(2)
Turkey	36	(1)
Zaire	37	(1)
Conclusion	38	(7)
The Construction of the Female Applicant in Decision Making	45	(62)
The Construction of Asylum Applicants	45	(10)
The case of Anne (Sri Lanka)	46	(8)
Conclusion	54	(1)
Credibility	55	(10)
The appropriate mother or wife	55	(1)
Emotionality	56	(3)
Ethnicity	59	(1)
The case of Karen (Zaire)	60	(4)
Conclusion	64	(1)
The Concept of the Political Act	65	(29)
Emotions or mere personal preferences	65	(5)
The case of Betty (China)	70	(4)
Desire to improve living circumstances or economic gain	74	(3)
(In)voluntary acts	77	(1)
Merely subordinate or minor acts	77	(2)
The case of Diane (Iran)	79	(9)
The attribution of flight motives	88	(4)
Conclusion: What is political?	92	(2)
The Concept of ``Normal'' Violence	94	(8)
Random violence	94	(1)
Rational violence	95	(1)
The case of Laurie (Bosnia-Herzegovina)	96	(1)
Private violence	97	(3)
Minor harms	100	(1)
The attribution of motives to potential persecutors	100	(1)
Conclusion: What is persecution?	101	(1)
Conclusion	102	(5)
The Construction of the Female Applicant in Jurisprudence	107	(42)
Introduction	107	(1)
Persecution	108	(3)
The Failure of State Protection	111	(4)
Persecution Grounds	115	(10)
Political activities	116	(1)
Social mores	117	(2)
Kinship	119	(2)
The one child policy	121	(2)
Sexual violence	123	(1)
Conclusion	124	(1)
The Singled Out-Criterion and the Motivation Doctrine	125	(3)
Conclusion: ``Normal'' Versus ``Women's'' Cases	128	(21)
Counter-Strategies and the Reactions of Governments	149	(40)
Resistance to Ethnicisation by Bosnian Applicants	149	(2)
Lawyers: The Dissident and the Victim	151	(12)
Portrayal as a dissident	152	(1)
Portrayal as a victim	153	(2)
The dissident versus the victim	155	(1)
The case of the Jones family (Turkey)	156	(7)
The Feminist Critique of Refugee Law	163	(9)
The early critics	163	(2)
The human rights approach	165	(4)
The anti-essentialist critique	169	(2)
Conclusion	171	(1)
The Governmental Reaction: Gender Guidelines	172	(8)
Guidelines in Canada, Australia, the United States and The Netherlands	173	(3)
An evaluation	176	(4)
Conclusion	180	(9)
Conclusions	189	(20)
Gender and Ethnicity in the Family, Sexuality and Reproduction	190	(3)
Gender in the Absence of Discrimination	193	(3)
The Uses of Women in Present Day Refugee Law	196	(6)
Guidelines and Beyond	202	(7)
ANNEXES	209	(28)
Annex 1 Data on the largest countries of origin	211	(6)
Annex 2 Representativity of the sample	217	(2)
Annex 3 Number of applications 1989-1994 from the countries in the sample	219	(2)
Annex 4 Cases from sample by category and outcome	221	(4)
Annex 5 Reduction of data for computation of correlations	225	(2)
Annex 6 Comparing data on different countries of refuge	227	(2)
Annex 7 Translation, prepared by UNHCR, of Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) Work Instruction No. 148: Women in the asylum procedure	229	(6)
Annex 8 Outline of the Dutch asylum procedure and terminology	235	(2)
Bibliography	237	(16)
Index	253