Conclusion

Abstract

The attempt to consider gender issues in the politics of asylum and refugees reveals a complex and varied set of relations and representations. Within dominant political discourses this complexity is often hidden beneath dichotomous and opposing constructions: the refugee as a victim and an object of pity versus the asylum seeker as a menace and an object of dislike; the ‘refugee woman’ alone with her children as a vulnerable victim in need of special protection versus the asylum-seeking single mother as a ‘sponger’ using her maternity to gain benefits from the welfare state. Within these broad categories of oppositions further distinctions and oppositions emerge created around stereotypes relating to national or ethnic categories or to causes of flight: asylum seekers from the former Yugoslavia may be more easily accepted in the West than those from Africa, being seen as ultimately easier to ‘integrate’ and somehow more ‘deserving’; or those who have been persecuted for leading a political opposition party more worthy of protection than those who are ‘merely’ fleeing a forced marriage or domestic violence. All of these dichotomies and divisions and the many others which exist are shaped by national and international pressures which define and redefine who exactly is a refugee or an asylum seeker. As we argued in the introduction to this volume, the nature of contemporary migratory movements in fact makes it almost impossible to set up clear definitions and categories, and to distinguish between voluntary and forced migration, or an asylum seeker and an economic migrant, and new categories such as that of the ‘environmental refugee’ merely add to the complexity of this debate.