Producing victim identities: female genital mutilation and the politics of asylum claims in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Drawing on research with Gambian female asylum seekers in London, who are claiming asylum on the basis of the threat of forced female genital mutilation, this article examines their narratives of self-production in the asylum claims process. Refuting representations of asylum seekers as victims of such a process we argue that they must be seen as partly complicit in the production of a victim identity, as they assume the identity of victim to verify and strengthen their narratives. By focusing on the production of victim identities, we seek to problematise Western liberal notions of agency. We argue that recognition of a claim entails the representation of the claimant as victim of a ‘backward’ practice and patriarchal society, thereby feeding into Western feminist accounts of oppressed ‘third world’ women. It is within these ‘historically specific relations of subordination’ that female asylum seekers exercise their agency.

Keywords:

• victim identities
• agency
• gender
• asylum seekers
• female genital mutilation
• migration

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was funded by the British Academy Small Research Grants (SG100274). I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Notes

1. In 2009, of the 24,450 applications received in the United Kingdom, 8045 were by women applying in their own right. Of the total initial decisions for women (8225), 23% were recognised as refugees and granted asylum, 5% were granted discretionary leave or humanitarian protection and 72% were refused (Control of Immigration: Statistics United Kingdom 2009, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 15/10).

2. The experiences of female asylum seekers are largely negative, given their poor ‘treatment’ in relation to ‘legal rights, accommodation, social support, etc. and in the way their claims are dealt with by the UK border agency’ (Ceneda 2003, p. 73).

3. I make use of the term FGM, rather than circumcision, because the latter implies that the practice is equivalent to male circumcision.

4. Following Hollstein and Miller (1990, p. 105) a victim ‘… typically refers to persons believed to have been unjustly harmed or damaged by exogenous forces beyond their control’.

5. Since the 1980s migrants to the United Kingdom have consisted of ‘relatives of primary migrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and/or stateless peoples from Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East’ (Guine and Fuentes 2007, p. 479). Estimated long-term migration to the United Kingdom in the year to September 2011 was 589,000 (Migration Statistics Quarterly Report May 2012). In 2011, 54% of these were women. Most immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa come from South Africa and Nigeria. However, there are no statistics on numbers of Gambian migrants to the United Kingdom (Migration Statistics Quarterly Report May 2012).

6. A person claiming asylum usually also makes a claim for humanitarian protection or Discretionary Leave to Remain (Muggeride and Maman 2011).

7. Refugee claimants are people who enter a country, claim to be refugees and apply for asylum on that basis. Convention refugees are claimants who meet the criteria of the 1951 Geneva convention (UNHCR 2009).

8. It is important to draw attention to the subsequent feminist critique of the gender–sex distinction, which maintains that such an understanding takes for granted the existence of a sexed body prior to the effects of discourse (Butler 1990).

9. The UK Border Agency is a department of the Home Office, the main government department for immigration.

10. It includes the need to have ‘gender sensitive procedures such as providing female interviewers and interpreters and, the importance of country information’ (Asylum Aid 2008).

11. This is based on population data from the last census. In terms of entrance to the United Kingdom and European Union (EU) in 2010 the United Kingdom received 22,640 new asylum claims (UNHCR 2011). There were 1336 asylum applications from the Gambia made in the EU (Ibid.).

12. Following WHO guidelines infibulation (type 3), one of the most severe types of FGM is excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching of the two cut sides together to varying degrees.

13. Conversely, the number of women being granted asylum on the basis of the threat of FGM remains small. Some argue that this is because of the charge of cultural imperialism that such recognition entails (FORWARD 2002).

14. All had, as a minimum, a secondary education, and were from lower middle class and middle class families.

15. Her initial claim was turned down because she had not established a well-founded fear of persecution (Reasons for Refusal Fatou 2010).

16. Yahya was granted indefinite leave to remain because of the credibility of her statement and the acknowledged difficulty of a single woman living in The Gambia with two daughters.

17. Amie's appeal was refused on the basis that she could relocate in order to avoid her family and the threat of FGM.