Women Seeking Asylum THE POLITICS OF GENDER IN THE ASYLUM DETERMINATION PROCESS IN FRANCE

The issue of asylum seekers and refugees has been a major source of debate in European countries in recent years. However, little attention has been paid to the gendered impacts of recent developments in asylum policy and legislation. This article will explore the experiences of women seeking asylum in France in order to analyse the way that the asylum decision-making process operates through gendered lenses that ignore the complexity of women's experiences. The multiple actors involved in the process, and the role played by discretionary power in the decision making on asylum means that it is impossible to point to just one source of gendered inequalities within this process, and thus a careful unpacking of legislation, jurisprudence and official policies but also of more informal procedures and practices is required.