Abstract
This chapter offers a study of women seeking asylum in France to analyse the specific challenges to health and well-being that arise at the crossroad of migration and gender. We seek to foreground the voices and experiences of women asylum seekers to highlight the continuum of violence which they face and the precarity induced through the denial of access to services, and the continued enforced precarity they experience once they have arrived in France. Migrant women have unequal access to healthcare services and services for survivors of violence owing to different entitlements attached to precarious administrative statuses, and policies of planned neglect of migrant welfare. We focus on the experiences recounted by five young women to demonstrate the continuum of gendered violence that characterises their trajectories, from the motives of their flight, to the risks faced en route, to the conditions encountered in France.
Keywords
- GBV
- Continuum of violence
- Asylum seekers
- Refugees
- France
- Health
- Pregnancy
- Vulnerability
If someone [back home] asks me about the situation in France I’m going to say it’s hard but people won’t believe me.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Basilien-Gainche, Marie-Laure, and Serge Slama. 2014. Implications Concrètes du Droit des Demandeurs d’Asile aux Conditions Matérielles d’Accueil Dignes. Droit d’Asile (Directive 2003/9/CE). La Revue des Droits de l’Homme. Revue du Centre de Recherches et d’Études sur les Droits Fondamentaux.
Canning, Victoria. 2019. Degradation by Design: Women and Asylum in Northern Europe. Race & Class 61 (1): 46–63.
Cockburn, Cynthia. 2004. The Continuum of Violence: A Gender Perspective on War and Peace. In Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict, ed. Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2014. A Continuum of Violence: Gender, War, and Peace. In The Criminology of War, 357–377. Routledge.
Courty, Marie-Renée, Agnès Faivre, and Paul Grolleau. 2018. Décourager l’Asile? Esprit 4 (4): 17–21.
Davies, Thom, and Arshad Isakjee. 2019. Ruins of Empire: Refugees, Race and the Postcolonial Geographies of European Migrant Camps. Geoforum 102: 214–217.
Davies, Thom, Arshad Isakjee, and Surindar Dhesi. 2017. Violent Inaction: The Necropolitical Experience of Refugees in Europe. Antipode 49 (5): 1263–1284.
Davies, Sara E., and Jacqui True. 2015. Reframing Conflict-Related Sexual and Gender-Based Violence: Bringing Gender Analysis Back. Security Dialogue 46 (6): 495–512.
Fassin, Didier, and Estelle d’Halluin. 2005. The Truth from the Body: Medical Certificates as Ultimate Evidence for Asylum Seekers. American Anthropologist 107 (4): 597–608.
Freedman, Jane. 2008. Women Seeking Asylum. The Politics of Gender in the Asylum Determination Process in France. International Feminist Journal of Politics 10 (2): 154–172.
———. 2015. Gendering the International Asylum and Refugee Debate. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2016. Engendering Security at the Borders of Europe: Women Migrants and the Mediterranean “Crisis”. Journal of Refugee Studies 29 (4): 568–582.
———. 2019. The Uses and Abuses of “Vulnerability” in EU Asylum and Refugee Protection: Protecting Women or Reducing Autonomy? Papeles del CEIC, vol. 2019/1, papel 204, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1387/pceic.19525.
Grotti, Vanessa, Cynthia Malakasis, Chiara Quagliariello, and Nina Sahraoui. 2018. Shifting Vulnerabilities: Gender and Reproductive Care on the Migrant Trail to Europe. Comparative Migration Studies 6 (1): 1–18.
Grotti, Vanessa, Malakasis Cynthia, Quagliariello Chiara, and Sahraoui Nina. 2019. Temporalities of Emergency: Migrant Pregnancy and Healthcare Networks in Southern European Borderlands. Social Science & Medicine 222: 11–19.
Grove, Natalie, and Anthony Zwi. 2006. Our Health and Theirs: Forced Migration, Othering, and Public Health. Social Science & Medicine 62 (8): 1931–1942.
Hovil, Lucy. 2018. Conflict, Displacement, and Refugees. In The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict, ed. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Nahla Valji, 276. Oxford University Press.
Hyde, Rob. 2016. Refugees Need Health Cards, Say German Doctors. The Lancet 388 (10045): 646–648.
Joseph, Liz, Ismail Sharif, D. Prior, Meghan Gunst, K. Jarman, Matthew Harris, and Ali Abbara. 2018. Barriers to Healthcare Access for Refugees in Greece. European Journal of Public Health 28 (Suppl_4). https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/cky214.285.
Kelly, Liz. 1987. The Continuum of Sexual Violence. In Women, Violence and Social Control. Explorations in Sociology (British Sociological Association Conference Volume Series), ed. Jalna Hammer and Mary Maynard, 46–60. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kousoulis, Antonis A., Myrsini Ioakeim-Ioannidou, and Konstantinos Economopoulos. 2016. Access to Health for Refugees in Greece: Lessons in Inequalities. International Journal of Equity in Health 15 (1): 122.
Krause, Ulrike. 2015. A Continuum of Violence? Linking Sexual and Gender-based Violence During Conflict, Flight, and Encampment. Refugee Survey Quarterly 34 (4): 1–19.
Krystalli, Roxanne, Allyson Hawkins, and Kim Wilson. 2018. “I Followed the Flood”: A Gender Analysis of the Moral and Financial Economies of Forced Migration. Disasters 42 (S1): S17–S39.
La Cimade. 2019. Premier Bilan de la Demande d’Asile en France et en Europe 2018. Paris: La Cimade, March 8.
Mahroug, Naoual, and Yasmine Bouagga. 2020. Demander l’Asile dans sa Langue. Plein droit 1 (1): 15–18.
Mayblin, Lucy, Mustafa Wake, and Mohsen Kazemi. 2020. Necropolitics and the Slow Violence of the Everyday: Asylum Seeker Welfare in the Postcolonial Present. Sociology 54 (1): 107–123.
Mbembe, Achille. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40.
Mekdjian, Sarah. 2016. Les Récits Migratoires sont-ils Encore Possibles dans le Domaine des Refugee Studies? Analyse Critique et Expérimentation de Cartographies Créatives. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 15 (1): 150–186.
Menjívar, Cecilia, and Shannon Drysdale Walsh. 2019. Gender, Violence and Migration. In Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration, ed. Katharyne Mitchell, Reece Jones, and Jennifer L. Fluri, 45–57. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
OFPRA. 2020. Rapport d’Activité 2019. https://ofpra.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/atoms/files/rapport_dactivite_2019.pdf.
Pannetier, Julie, Andrainolo Ravalihasy, Annabel D. du Loû, France Lert, and Nathalie Lydié. 2020. Les Violences Sexuelles Envers les Femmes Immigrées d’Afrique Subsaharienne Après la Migration en France. Population Sociétés 577: 1–4.
Pestre, Elise. 2008. Anna, un Sujet en Quête d’Asile. Les Effets Psychiques du Système Politique sur Le réfugié et Son Thérapeute. L’Information Psychiatrique 84 (6): 569–576.
Pickering, Sharon, and James Barry. 2013. Women Fleeing Iran: Why Women Leave Iran and Seek Asylum in Australia. Australian Journal of Human Rights 19 (3): 79–99.
Pickering, Sharon, and Brandy Cochrane. 2013. Irregular Border-crossing Deaths and Gender: Where, How and Why Women Die Crossing Borders. Theoretical Criminology 17 (1): 27–48.
Pinelli, Barbara. 2018. Control and Abandonment: The Power of Surveillance on Refugees in Italy, During and After the Mare Nostrum Operation. Antipode 50 (3): 725–747.
Poncet, Lorraine, Armelle Andro, Mireille Eberhard, Marion Fleury, Francoise Riou, Maud Gelly, Alfred Spira, et al. 2019. Investigating and Improving Access to Reproductive Healthcare for Vulnerable Migrant Women in France. Social Science Protocols 2: 1–13.
Razack, Sherene. 1995. Domestic Violence as Gender Persecution: Policing the Borders of Nation, Race and Gender. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law/Revue Femmes et Droit 8 (1): 45–88.
Saglio-Yatzimirsky, Marie-Caroline. 2018. La Voix de Ceux Qui Crient. Rencontre avec des Demandeurs d’Asile. Paris: Albin Michel.
Sahraoui, Nina. 2020. Gendering the Care/control Nexus of the Humanitarian Border: Women’s Bodies and Gendered Control of Mobility in a EUropean Borderland. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 38 (5): 905–922.
Shuman, Amy, and Carol Bohmer. 2014. Gender and Cultural Silences in the Political Asylum Process. Sexualities 17 (8): 939–957.
Slama, Serge. 2018. De la Défaillance Systémique à la «Policiarisation» des Conditions d’Accueil des Demandeurs d’Asile en France. La Revue des Droits de l’Homme. Revue du Centre de Recherches et d’Études sur les Droits Fondamentaux, no. 14.
Spijkerboer, Thomas, ed. 2013. Fleeing Homophobia: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Asylum. Routledge.
Tyszler, Elsa. 2018. Sécurisation des Frontières et Violences Contre les Femmes en Quête de Mobilité. Migrations Société 3 (173): 143–158.
Vandentorren, Stéphanie, Erwan Le Méner, Nicolas Oppenchaim, Amandine Arnaud, Candy Jangal, Carme Caum, et al. 2016. Characteristics and Health of Homeless Families: The ENFAMS Survey in the Paris Region, France 2013. European Journal of Public Health 26 (1): 71–76.
Virokannas, Elina, Suvi Liuski, and Marjo Kuronen. 2020. The Contested Concept of Vulnerability—A Literature Review. European Journal of Social Work 23 (2): 327–339. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2018.1508001.
Wagner, Heike. 2009. Migration and Violence Against Women About Invisible Migration Reasons and New Negotiations in the Migration Process. Anthropos 104 (1): 41–61.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sahraoui, N., Freedman, J. (2022). Gender-Based Violence as a Continuum in the Lives of Women Seeking Asylum: From Resistance to Patriarchy to Patterns of Institutional Violence in France. In: Freedman, J., Sahraoui, N., Tastsoglou, E. (eds) Gender-Based Violence in Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07929-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07929-0_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-07928-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-07929-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)