Strategies of denial: women’s experiences of culture of disbelief and discreditation in the treatment of asylum claims on the grounds of female genital cutting (FGC)

Emmaleena Käkelä

doi:10.1080/1369183x.2021.1943337

Emmaleena Käkelä

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2021.1943337

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Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing from qualitative research with female asylum seekers in Scotland who had claimed asylum to protect their daughters from female genital cutting (FGC), this article examines the workings of the culture of disbelief during asylum interviews. In this article I illustrate how the treatment of FGC-related asylum claims is informed by the convergence of hostile environment, gender and refugee stereotypes and the dominant representations of FGC. I argue that at the collision of anti-immigration and anti-FGC discourses, asylum seeking women are confronted with conflicting expectations whereby they are simultaneously expected to reinforce the constructions of themselves as victims of ‘backward’ cultural practices, and to narrate their vulnerability beyond cultural terms in order to meet the criteria for asylum outlined in the Refugee Convention. This paper illuminates the multiple strategies asylum interviewers employ to undermine women’s lived experiences of persecution, revealing the contradictions in how interviewers simultaneously question the threat of FGC, women’s inability to resist these practices and women’s own experiences of being subject to FGC. Through this, I problematise the assumptions that FGC as an ‘extreme’ form of gender-based violence would offer an exception to refugee women’s persistent struggles in being recognised as victims of persecution.

Highlights

Female genital cutting,1 known as ‘female genital mutilation’ or ‘female circumcision’, refers to a range of practices altering or removing parts of female genitalia for non-medical reasons (World Health Organisation 2020)
The sections present the findings on the different strategies of denial that interviewers had employed to undermine female genital cutting (FGC)-affected women’s claims for asylum
The findings are presented under three sub-sections which focus on the assessment of the claimant’s credibility, interviewers’ responses to evidence and the internal relocation and protection alternatives, which states can invoke to deny refugee status even if the risk of persecution has been established

Summary

Introduction

Female genital cutting (hereafter FGC), known as ‘female genital mutilation’ or ‘female circumcision’, refers to a range of practices altering or removing parts of female genitalia for non-medical reasons (World Health Organisation 2020). FGC encompasses a range of practices including different degrees of cutting, pricking and cauterisation The inclusion of elongation (stretching of the labia) in the typology of FGC remains debated, the study discussed in this paper covers both cutting and elongation practices. This decision was informed by my emphasis on privileging the perspectives of the participants who had experienced elongation, and who self-identified as victims of FGC

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