Who Is Worthy of Protection?: Gender-Based Asylum and U.S. Immigration Politics (Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations) - Hardcover

Nayak, Meghana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199397627 ISBN 13: 9780199397624

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2015

Synopsis

A surprisingly understudied topic in international relations is gender-based asylum. Gender-based asylum offers protection from deportation for migrants who have suffered gender violence and persecution in their home countries. Countries are increasingly acknowledging that even though international refugee law does not include "gender" as a category of persecution, gender violence can threaten people's lives and requires attention. But Meghana Nayak argues that it matters not just that but how we respond to gender violence and persecution.

Asylum advocates and the US government have created "frames," or ideas about how to understand different types of gender violence and who counts as victims. These frames are useful in increasing gender-based asylum grants. But the United States is negotiating the tension between the protection and the restriction of non-citizens, claiming to offer safe haven to persecuted people at the same time that it aims to control borders. Thus, the frames construct which migrants are "worthy" of protection. The effects of the asylum frames are two-fold. First, they leave out or distort the stories and experiences of asylum seekers who do not fit preconceived narratives of "good" victims. Second, the frames reflect but also serve as an entry point to deepen, strengthen, and shape the US position of power relative to other countries, international organizations, and immigrant communities. Who Is Worthy of Protection? explores the politics of gender-based asylum through a comparative examination of US asylum policy and cases regarding domestic violence, female circumcision, rape, trafficking, coercive sterilization and abortion, and persecution based on sexual and gender identity.

About this title

About the Author

Meghana Nayak is Associate Professor of Political Science at Pace University.

Review

"With Who is Worthy of Protection? Meghana Nayak provides a powerful and much needed critical examination of US immigration politics via the problematic handling of gender-based asylum cases. Her careful and compelling deconstruction of the 'worthy victim frame' brings to light the detrimental processes of racialization and heteronormativity inherent in contemporary conceptualizations and practices of asylum, as the United States' flawed immigration system constructs and negotiates a fine line between 'restriction' and 'protection.' She provides a provocative argument regarding the ways in which the United States utilizes these frames as a means of shaping, strengthening, and legitimizing US interventions in global politics. It is a must-read for scholars, activists, and practitioners working on gender-based violence, sexuality rights, immigration rights, or human rights more broadly." - Celeste Montoya, Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

"A thoughtful and well-researched analysis of the conditional rights of migrant women that shows how asylum depends on framing and constructions of gender. The book notably pushes feminist IR in a more grounded, constructive direction." -Alison Brysk, Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance, University of California, Santa Barbara

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0199397627
• ISBN 13: 9780199397624
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272