Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System

Embedding a feminist analysis, this book critically addresses the British asylum system in its treatment of women fleeing conflict and persecution and seeking sanctuary in the United Kingdom. Based on empirical research exploring the impact of conflict related violence and sexual abuse on women seeking asylum, the book specifically addresses ways in which the system itself instils further harm and structural violence on women awaiting asylum decisions. By critically exploring issues such as detention, destitution and dispersal, Canning adopts critical perspectives from a number of key criminological thinkers to address elements of state crime and social harm in the asylum process.

Overall this project establishes an ‘Intersectional Continuum of Violence’ by considering the multitudes of gender-based violences women can be subjected to prior to and during conflict or persecution, as well as in the aftermath, during flight and awaiting asylum. The longer term impacts of abuses, such as trauma or mental health problems are, Canning argues, compounded by a structurally violent system that responds to survivors of conflict and persecution as parasitic ‘Others’ rather than seekers of sanctuary.

Of interest to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, human rights, migration policy, state violence and gender, this book develops on and adds to the expanding literatures around immigration, crimmigration and asylum.

Victoria Canning is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.