Believing Asylum-Seeking Women: Constructing Credibility in Asylum Narratives of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

• In Event: 1564 - Gender and Immigration

Abstract

In this article I seek to expand our theoretical and practical understanding of the “doing gender” (West and Zimmerman 1987) framework to consider what it means to credibly do gender as an asylum-seeking woman. Asylum seeking women must do gender intersectionally, inter-personally, and institutionally, as they navigate the complex and sometimes competing imperatives of law and culture. I present an analysis of women’s asylum claims involving sexual and gender-based violence, which reveals how credibility is refracted through deeply gendered legal and cultural lenses. Women’s narratives reveal how credibility is achieved interactionally in narratives which reflect culturally salient ideas about who asylum seeking women are, how they do and should behave, and the conditions under which they rightfully seek protection. By exploring what is means to perform gender credibly we can identify that women must do much more than “tell the truth” when they claim asylum. Recognizing how law and gender, in interaction, reframe and reconstitute the social meaning of individual actions and narratives, we can see how this process produces and reinforces a limited range of potential stories that asylum-seeking women can tell.

Author

• Abigail Stepnitz, UC Berkeley