Women Seeking Asylum
2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14616740801957521
ISSN1468-4470
Autores Tópico(s)Migration, Health and Trauma
ResumoAbstract Abstract The issue of asylum seekers and refugees has been a major source of debate in European countries in recent years. However, little attention has been paid to the gendered impacts of recent developments in asylum policy and legislation. This article will explore the experiences of women seeking asylum in France in order to analyse the way that the asylum decision-making process operates through gendered lenses that ignore the complexity of women's experiences. The multiple actors involved in the process, and the role played by discretionary power in the decision making on asylum means that it is impossible to point to just one source of gendered inequalities within this process, and thus a careful unpacking of legislation, jurisprudence and official policies but also of more informal procedures and practices is required. Keywords: asylumFrancegender-related persecutionrefugees Notes 1. Including Algeria, Chechnya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Turkey. The women interviewed were contacted first through the means of NGOs and agencies, which help asylum seekers, and then through 'word of mouth' with introductions to various friends and acquaintances of those already interviewed. 2. These included Amnesty International (French Section), CIMADE, FASTI, Femmes de la Terre, France Terre d'Asile, GRAF and RAJFIRE. Some of these associations provide specific support for women asylum seekers, including special women-only consultation sessions; others make no special provision for women asylum seekers. Including officers working at the OFPRA (Office Français de Protection de Réfugiés et Apatrides), assessors and judges at the CRR (Commission de Recours de Réfugiés), lawyers involved in representing asylum seekers at hearings at the CRR, representatives of the UNHCR in France. The interviews were carried out in French or in English, and were all tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed. All translations into English are my own. 3. Several interviewees for this study remarked on the fact that the pressure to 'speed up' the asylum decision-making process had led OFPRA to consider more and more dossiers as 'unfounded' and therefore to dispense with the interview procedure for these asylum candidates. 4. UNHCR (2005) United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 2005. 2004 Global Refugee Trends, Geneva: UNHCR. [Google Scholar]. 5. See, for example, the then foreign secretary Dominique De Villepin's speech to the National Assembly, 5 June 2003. 6. Interview with head of Commission de Recours des Réfugiés, 29 September 2005. 7. Interview 29 September 2005. 8. Interview 5 November 2005. 9. Interview 11 January 2006. 10. Interview 5 November 2005. 11. Interview 8 December 2005. 12. Interview 9 December 2005. 13. Interview 14 November 2005. 14. Interview 24 October 2005. 15. Particularly the GAMS (Groupe pour l'Abolition des Mutiliations Sexuelles). 16. Interview 17 November 2005. 17. Gérard Noiriel (1991) Noiriel, G. 1991. Réfugiés et Sans-Papiers, Paris: Calmann Lévy. [Google Scholar] points to the way in which a lack of proof has become the key excuse for labelling asylum claims as 'false'. 18. For an analysis of the use of strategic framing in international discourse on gender and the protection of civilians see Carpenter (2005) Carpenter, R. C. 2005. "Women, Children and Other Vulnerable Groups": Gender, Strategic Frames and the Protection of Civilians as a Transnational Issue. International Studies Quarterly, 49(2): 295–334. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. 19. Interview 21 September 2005. 20. Interview 21 October 2005. 21. Currently asylum seekers are eligible to claim an allowance of 280 euros per month for a maximum of one year. 22. Interview 15 November 2005. 23. Interview 2 December 2005. 24. Interview 3 November 2005. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJane FreedmanJane Freedman CRPS Université de Paris 1, Sorbonne 14 Rue Cujas 75005 Paris France E-mail: j.l.freedman@soton.ac.uk
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