Gendered Perspectives on Refugee Determination in Canada

Abstract

This article discusses refugee determination from an intersectional perspective to unpack the impacts of gender on the refugee determination hearing in Canada. The article highlights the importance of dominant discourses in a legal context, focusing particularly on how discursive constructions of subjectivity affect refugee determination where claimants’ trustworthiness depends not only upon their abilities to describe their past experiences, but also how well their story corresponds with dominant discourses about refugees. It also discusses how these dominant discourses are racialized, gendered, and hetero-normative, and how feminist theories of intersectionality could be of use to deconstruct the ways they affect different groups of refugee claimants. The article concludes by considering the implications of the newly shortened timelines in refugee adjudication.