Gender in Refugee Law ─ From the Margins to the Centre

Questions of gender have strongly influenced the development of international refugee law over the last few decades. This volume assesses the progress toward appropriate recognition of gender-related persecution in refugee law. It documents the advances made following intense advocacy around the world in the 1990s, and evaluates the extent to which gender has been successfully integrated into refugee law.

Evaluating the research and advocacy agendas for gender in refugee law ten years beyond the 2002 UNHCR Gender Guidelines, the book investigates the current status of gender in refugee law. It examines gender-related persecution claims of both women and men, including those based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and explores how the development of an anti-refugee agenda in many Western states exponentially increases vulnerability for refugees making gendered claims. The volume includes contributions from scholars and members of the advocacy community that allow the book to examine conceptual and doctrinal themes arising at the intersection of gender and refugee law, and specific case studies across major Western refugee-receiving nations. The book will be of great interest and value to researchers and students of asylum and immigration law, international politics, and gender studies.

Efrat Arbel is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia. She works in the areas of constitutional law, refugee law, Aboriginal law, and prison law, in Canada and the United States.

Catherine Dauvergne is Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia. She works in the areas of immigration and refugee laws, in Canada and around the world.

Jenni Millbank is Professor of Law at University of Technology, Sydney. Her socio-legal scholarship is broadly concerned with gender and sexuality and takes place across a number of sites including: family, relationship, reproduction and refugee law.