The Role of the State, Law and Policy in the Gender-Based Violence Experiences of Asylum Seeking Women in the Eastern Mediterranean
This paper focuses on gender-based violence (GBV) in a forced migration context at the external, common border of the EU in Greece in the second decade of the 21st century. As EU countries in the north of Greece have been erecting walls to prevent asylum seekers from reaching their territories, and EU Asylum regulations and enforcement have been turning to an increased neo-liberal securitization approach, hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers have found themselves either trapped within Greek borders or taking more dangerous routes, following the EU-Turkey agreement of 2016. EU refugee protection and border regimes have rapidly deteriorated. GBV is violence against a person on account of their gender; it also encompasses gendered consequences of systemic/structural and institutional violence. Moreover, gender inequalities that are mutually constitutive with class, race and other forms of social divisions make the experiences of some asylum seekers even more challenging. Drawing upon the qualitative analysis of interviews with 20 key informants and 35 asylum-seeking women arriving in Greece in the second decade of the 21st century, we explore how interpersonal experiences of GBV during the journey and upon arrival to EU “safety” can be traced to state bordering practices, and EU and Greek legal and policy frameworks.