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.