Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:43:45.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abelove, Henry, et al. 1993. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Almaguer, Tomás. 1993. “Chicano Men: A Cartography of Homosexual Identity and Behavior.” In The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Abelove, Henry et al. New York: Routledge, 255–73.Google Scholar
Bromer, Zachary. 2006. “Boer-Sedano v. Gonzales: The Increasing Influence of HIV/AIDS on Asylum Cases Based on Homosexual Identity.” Law & Sexuality 15: 163–73.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2002. “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?” In Left Liberalism/Left Critique, ed. Wendy, Brown and Janet, Halley.Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 229–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. 2003. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Thought, and Antiracist Politics.” In Critical Race Feminism: A Reader, ed. Adrien, Wing.New York: New York University Press, 23–33.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lee. 1993. “Tearooms and Sympathy, Or, The Epistemology of the Water Closet.” In The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Abelove, Henry et al. New York: Routledge, 553–74.Google Scholar
Eng, David. 2001. Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1978. History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Franke, Katherine M. 1998. “Constructing Heterosexuality: Putting Sex to Work.” Denver University Law Review 75: 1139–80.Google Scholar
Fung, Richard. 1991. “Looking for my Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Porn Video.” In How Do I Look? ed. Bad Object Choices. Seattle: Bay, 145–68.Google Scholar
Halley, Janet. 1993a. “Reasoning about Sodomy: Act and Identity in and after Bowers v. Hardwick.” Virginia Law Review 79: 1721–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halley, Janet. 1993b. “The Construction of Heterosexuality.” In Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, ed. Michael, Warner.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 82–102.Google Scholar
Katyal, Sonia. 2002. “Exporting Identity.” Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 14: 97–176.Google Scholar
Lancaster, Roger N. 1988. “Subject Honor and Object Shame: The Construction of Male Homosexuality and Stigma in Nicaragua.” Ethnology 27 (2): 111–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leap, William L., and Boellstorff, Tom. 2004. Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Leonard, Stephen T., and Tronto, Joan C.. 2007. “The Genders of Citizenship.” American Political Science Review 101 (1): 33–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luibhéid, Eithne, and Cantú, Lionel Jr., eds. 2005. Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catherine A. 1988. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McIntosh, Mary. 1968. “The Homosexual Role.” Social Problems 16: 182–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neilson, Victoria. 2005. “Homosexual or Female? Applying Gender-Based Asylum Jurisprudence to Asylum Claims.” Stanford Law & Policy Review 16: 417–44.Google Scholar
Park, Jin S. 1995. “Pink Asylum: Political Asylum Eligibility of Gay Men and Lesbians Under U.S. Immigration Policy.” U.C.L.A. Law Rev. 42: 1115–56.Google Scholar
Patton, Cindy, and Sánchez-Eppler, Benigno, eds. 2000. Queer Diasporas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pfitsch, Hollis V. 2006. “Homosexuality in Asylum and Constitutional Law: Rhetoric of Acts and Identity.” Law & Sexuality 15: 59–89.Google Scholar
Puar, Jasbir K. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ramji-Nogales, Jaya, Schoenholtz, Andrew, and Schrag, Philip G.. 2007. “Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication.” Stanford Law Review 60: 295–411.Google Scholar
Rollins, Joe. 2004. AIDS and the Sexuality of Law: Ironic Jurisprudence. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scaperlanda, Michael A. 2002. “Kulturkampf in the Backwaters: Homosexuality and Immigration Law.” Widener J. Pub. L. 11: 475.Google Scholar