ABSTRACT
In this concluding chapter, I will first provide a summary of my findings. I argue that female asylum applicants are constructed by legal experts in the country where they apply. Central to this construction are the distinctions between "normal" versus "women's" cases, and the West versus the Rest. These two distinctions are concentrated on the family and regulation of sexuality and reproduction. The construction of the female applicant is unstable, but this instability is productive in more than one way. Next, I will address the question of how the qualitative analysis in this study can lead to a different result than the quantitative analysis. How can it be that refugee law discourse is thoroughly gendered while women do not appear to suffer negative treatment when the outcomes of the asylum procedures are examined? The central idea will be that gender is not necessarily negative for women, and that gender is not to be equated to female. In a third section, the question of why refugee women emerged as an issue at the moment they did, namely over the last decade, will be addressed. Why do the authors of the main textbooks on refugee law presently find women an inescapable topic? Why are Western governments willing to issue "liberal" guidelines on refugee women while the general asylum policies are becoming ever more restrictive? I will argue that refugee law is taking on a new role since the end of the Cold War, namely an ideological role in the West-South conflict. Women play an important symbolic role in this conflict. Finally, the practical conclusions which can be drawn from this study will be addressed. My analysis of the issue of women in refugee law turns on issues which are contested in Western societies. What in fact I advocate is that these contested topics be clearly articulated instead of glossed over in legal terms. Therefore, what I suggest is not a "solution" in a static sense but constant contestation of dominant discourse and a strategy with mobilisation of people as its goal. The adoption of governments measures may be part of such a strategy, but is not considered an aim in itself.
