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Embargoed Sexuality: Rape and the Gender of Citizenship in American Immigration Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2009

Joe Rollins
Joe Rollins
Affiliation:
Queens College, City University of New York
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Abstract

Immigrants seeking asylum in the United States face an unpredictable area of the law. Nonetheless, gay male applicants for asylum seem more likely to succeed if they present evidence of persecution that includes allegations of rape; gay Asian immigrants are less likely than other men to be granted refugee status even when they report having been victims of rape. These two findings suggest that immigration judges, officials with the Bureau of Immigration Appeals, and appellate court judges read and interpret the gender, sexuality, and persecution of the applicants before them through lenses colored by racial expectations. An intersectional analysis of gender, sexuality, and citizenship shows that whereas immigration law is unstable, Western conceptions of sexuality are static and that ethnicity influences judges' conceptions regarding the gender of citizenship.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 519 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2009

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