Feminism,Asylum and the Limits of Law

Gender-based asylum claims remain difficult to win, even when petitioners narrate their claims in conventional language that celebrates United States progressivism. Despite national anxiety over Islam and its portrayal as the anti-feminist, anti-“west” cause of terrorism, garnering asylum for female petitioners on the basis of their objection to Islamic laws, notably those around dress, are rarely if ever successful. Arguing that courts produce meanings around (racial) difference, this article examines a series of asylum appeals involving Iranian female petitioners in order to understand how the racialization of their brown female bodies negotiates the limits and contradictions of (asylum) law.